Ilan Stavans
By Ilan Stavans
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The Schmooze Houdini’s Escape From Death
Extra! Extra! Houdini has done it again: he’s managed yet another fabulous trick. But this is the Big One, the one in which he comes back from the dead. Just look around: Google has adopted him for its logo; he’s on novels, Broadway shows, museums exhibits, movies, biographies, playing cards, computer games… Not bad for…
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Books Moacyr Scliar, 73, Storyteller of Jewish Latin America
The death of Brazilian fabulist Moacyr Scliar, at the age of 73, on February 27, in his native Porto Alegre, represents the loss of Latin America’s most popular Jewish writer of his generation, and the most influential. Scliar engaged a large audience, at home and abroad, reflecting on crucial issues that define modernity: the place…
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Culture Harry Houdini: The Art of Assimilation
How to explain the durability of Harry Houdini — subject of a new exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York? He died more than 80 years ago in Detroit, yet his fame remains undimmed and unabated. Indeed, utter his name to adolescents and — even though they’re unlikely to have seen any of the…
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Culture Mexican Jews in the Land of Death
One might think, since two of the more or less half dozen Jewish-themed Mexican films are about a wake, that the Mexican-Jewish community of about 35,000 is obsessed with death. And indeed, it might well be. After all, Mexico’s fascination with death is ubiquitous, from the Aztec ritual of sacrificing virgins to the gods at…
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News Venezuela Community in Eye of Storm As Chavez Assails Israel
It was just a few weeks ago that Fidel Castro condemned anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in Iran, telling the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg: “I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say, much more than the Muslims.” And already, the impact of Castro’s self-described message to Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is…
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Culture Letters From Permanent Exile in Argentina
The poetry of Juan Gelman bears urgent witness to the bankruptcy of Argentine morality. Rather than addressing abstract political questions, though, Gelman focuses on the small things: a handkerchief, a conversation on Carlos Gardel, the ways to remember a family moment. He thrives on exploring the quotidian aspects of life under tyranny. How do people…
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Books On Becoming a ‘Beaner’: A Mexican American Story
‘Mexicans are the scum of the earth,” a student of mine said after being asked to describe the status of the immigrants at her South Carolina high school. She wasn’t menacing. We’ve known each other for years; she knows I’m both Mexican and an immigrant. My student was simply expressing the general view of the…
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Culture Philip Roth’s New Novel About Philip Roth
[ ![][2]][2] THE PLAGIARIST By Philip Roth Houghton Mifflin. 212 pages. $25 Philip Roth has always been a conflicted warrior, balancing his high regard for his literary and sexual talents against a contempt for his own venality. His newest novel, “The Plagiarist,” is, yet again, a recapitulation of his overarching career, but the master has…
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