Laura Hodes writes about the arts frequently for the Forward and other publications.
Laura Hodes
By Laura Hodes
-
Culture Laughing in the Face of Evil
Joseph Skibell’s third novel “A Curable Romantic” evokes the spirit of “Candide” with a Jewish postmodern twist in order to ask the same question as Voltaire: How can we be optimistic in the face of evil? Voltaire wrote “Candide” to revolt against Gottfried Leibniz’s philosophy of optimism after experiencing the suffering of the Seven Years’…
-
Culture Of Schmucks and Schlemiels
Paramount Pictures’ new laugh-out-loud comedy “Dinner for Schmucks” is only the latest in a crop of recent films and novels to idealize not the schmuck, but the schlemiel. Directed by Jay Roach and executive produced by Sacha Baron Cohen — no stranger to the appeal of the schlemiel — “Dinner for Schmucks” is a remake…
-
Culture Caught Between Burlesque and Belief
Peep Show By Joshua Braff Algonquin Books, 272 pages, $13.95 After Joshua Braff’s excellent but largely unheralded “The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green,” his second novel is another coming-of-age story set in the mid-1970s. In “Peep Show,” though, the protagonist, David, and his sister are trapped by divorcing parents between two closed Jewish worlds of…
-
Books Immortal Bloodsucking Opportunists
Angel Time: The Songs of the Seraphim By Anne Rice Knopf, 268 pages, $25.95. Anne Rice declared in 2005 in the Author’s Note to her novel “Christ the Lord” that her return to Catholicism meant she would no longer “write anything that wasn’t for Christ.” She professed no more vampires, since they reflected a “world…
-
Culture Furious Responsibilities
The Kindly Ones By Jonathan Littell, translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell *HarperCollins, 992 pages, $29.99. * *‘But you should be able to admit to yourselves that you might also have done what I did….. If you were born in a country or at a time not only when nobody comes to kill your…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
- 2
Fast Forward Tucker Carlson calls for stripping citizenship from Americans who served in the Israeli army
- 3
Opinion This German word explains Trump’s authoritarian impulses — and Hitler’s rise to power
- 4
Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion How I got AI to create fake Nazi memos — and what that means for the future of antisemitism
-
Fast Forward How the Jewish commandment to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ could help a woman challenge Kentucky’s abortion ban in court
-
Yiddish ווידעאָ: יוטוב־פּערזענלעכקייט רעדט אויף ייִדיש וועגן אַ משפּחה־טראַגעדיעVIDEO: Youtube personality speaks in Yiddish about a tragedy in the family
מאַטי מענדלאָוויטשעס ברודער, וואָס האָט יאָרן לאַנג געליטן פֿון דעפּרעסיע, האָט הײַיאָר זיך גענומען דאָס לעבן. .
-
Music Can 6 hours of Billy Joel turn critics into believers?
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
