● The Flamethrowers By Rachel Kushner Scribner, 400 pgs, $26.99 In many ways, “The Flamethrowers,” Rachel Kushner’s novel about the historical, political, cultural and — most daringly — ideological chaos of the 1970s, is a simple bildungsroman. It tracks the sentimental education of its heroine, Reno, from starry-eyed, eager youth, lusting after experience — her…
A plump, cherubic bar-mitzvah boy beams from the cover the new memoir “Oy Vey! I’m Glad I’m Gay!” (Intracoastal Media). That’s Barry Losinsky, the book’s author, a retired Maryland school psychologist and one of many unsung pioneers in a generation of gay men who came out when it still felt dangerous. Born to Russian-immigrant parents,…
Yesterday, Peri Devaney wrote about working on the postscript for her anthology, “A Jewish Professor’s Political Punditry: Fifty-Plus Years of Published Commentary by Ron Rubin” (Syracuse University Press). Today we hear from Ron Rubin, the prolific professor she anthologized. Their blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and…
Life in London’s Jewish community and Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, billionaires in China and hard times in Ireland all feature in the novels vying for this year’s Man Booker Prize. The longlist for the prize, one of the English language’s top fiction awards, names 13 writers from seven countries. “This is surely the most diverse longlist…
Things I Don’t Want to Know: A Response to George Orwell’s Why I Write By Deborah Levy Notting Hill Editions In his 1946 essay “Why I Write,” George Orwell identified four great motives for writing, including aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose. The other, he observed, was that writers are “vain and self-centred,” motivated…
Peri Devaney’s new book, “A Jewish Professor’s Political Punditry: Fifty-Plus Years of Published Commentary by Ron Rubin” (Syracuse University Press), is now available. Her blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit: As a…
On both occasions that the KGB arrested the Yiddish writer and poet Naftali Herts Kon, it burned his writings. When Kon escaped from the Soviet Union to Poland in 1959, he thought everything would be different — but it wasn’t. When the Polish Communists arrested Kon in 1960, they simply confiscated his writings and refused…
Earlier this week, Melissa R. Klapper wrote about abortion and the complexity of halacha and five American Jewish women you’ve (probably) never heard of. Her blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit: At…
Earlier this week, Gayle Redlingshafer Berman wrote about mourning the loss of a non-Jewish parent. Today we hear from Gayle’s co-author, her husband Harold Berman, the former Executive Director of the Jewish Federation of Western Massachusetts. Gayle and Harold are the co-authors of “Doublelife: One Family, Two Faiths and a Journey of Hope.” Their blog…
Earlier this week, Melissa R. Klapper wrote about five American Jewish women you’ve (probably) never heard of. Her blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit: I recently came across a copy of the…
Gayle Redlingshafer Berman is co-author, with her husband, Harold, of “Doublelife: One Family, Two Faiths and a Journey of Hope,” the first true-life account of “an intermarriage gone Jewish.” She is also an internationally acclaimed singer, and has performed and conducted throughout North America, Europe and the Middle East. Her blog posts are featured on…
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