The novelist Philip Roth, who died on May 22 at age 85, was showered with honors for his 31 books. Yet from early in his career, he was also confronted by charges of anti-Semitism, even from professional critics who admired his literary talent. The vehemence of this opposition, which Roth countered energetically for most of…
I’m moving again and my books are packed up and sealed in boxes. Just two days ago I took all the Roth books down from my highest shelf: The first edition of “Portnoy’s Complaint,” the first book I gave to my boyfriend, now my husband, twenty years ago at the Shark Bar in Soho; “American…
Richard Goodwin, who died in Massachusetts on May 20 at age 86, was more than just a distinguished speechwriter for John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Robert F. Kennedy. Goodwin furthered social progress with his brilliantly crafted words, coining the phrase “Great Society” to describe the Johnson’s government’s efforts to battle poverty and racial…
Nobody’s Girl Friday: The Women Who Ran Hollywood By J. E. Smyth Oxford University Press, 328 pages, $29.95 Just the Funny Parts: … And a Few Hard Truths About Sneaking Into the Hollywood Boys’ Club By Nell Scovell Dey Street Books, 336 pages, $27.99 It’s even worse than you suspected. But it was once better…
The Jews on the country’s second-largest military base haven’t had a rabbi for years. Until very recently, though, they had Jeanette Mize. She and her family led services and cooked holiday meals there. Because of her, the Jews of Fort Campbell, the Army base that straddles the Kentucky-Tennessee border, didn’t have to drive 60 miles…
On May 14, Israeli soldiers shot and killed 60 Palestinians and wounded over 2,500 while they were demonstrating inside Gaza. That fact is not in dispute. But according to Matti Friedman, a Canadian-Israeli author who lives in Jerusalem, neither the snipers who chose their targets and pulled the triggers nor the officers who ordered them…
“I hate ni—ers, Jews, Mexicans, spics, chinks, and anyone else that does not have pure white Aryan blood in their veins,” the African-American actor John David Washington (son of Denzel) barks into the telephone receiver, leaning back in his office chair during a key scene in Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman,” which recently won the Grand Prix,…
Ruth Beckermann is sick of people telling her that her films are timely. “It’s really boring,” says the Austrian director who has been digging into the dark corners on her country’s history since “The Paper Bridge,” which screened at the 1987 Berlin Film Festival. But with a far right political party leading Austria for the…
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