"We've got ourselves a tragedy. Heart attack. Two a.m., passed away in intensive care. Not that she's any sort of spring chicken. Marlene Miller-Weinstock, you know her?"

"So there's no play," Matt said; he was out of a job.

"Let me put it this way. There's no playwright, which is an entirely different thing."

"Never heard of her," Matt said.

"Right. Neither did I, until I got hold of this script. As far as I know she's written half a dozen novels. The kind that get published and then disappear. Never wrote a play before. Face it, novelists can't do plays anyhow."

"Oh, I don't know," Matt said. "Gorky, Sartre, Steinbeck. Galsworthy. Wilde." It came to him that Silkowitz had probably never read any of these old fellows from around the world. Not that Matt had either, but he was married to someone who had read them all.

"Right," Silkowitz conceded. "But you won't find Miller-Weinstock on that list. The point is what I got from this woman is raw. Raw but full of bounce. A big look at things."

Silkowitz was cocky in a style that was new to Matt. Lionel, for all his arrogance, had an exaggerated courtly patience that ended by stretching out your misery; Lionel's shtick was to keep you in suspense. And Lionel had a comfortingly aging face, with a firm deep wadi slashed across his forehead, and a wen hidden in one eyebrow. Matt was used to Lionel — they were two old war horses, they knew what to expect from each other. But here was Silkowitz with his baby face — he didn't look a lot older than that boy out there — and his low-hung childishly small teeth under a bumpy tract of exposed fat gums: here was Silkowitz mysteriously dancing around a questionable script by someone freshly deceased. The new breed, they didn't wait out an apprenticeship, it was drama school at Yale and then the abrupt ascent into authority, reputation, buzz. The sureness of this man, sweatshirt and jeans, pendant dangling from the neck, a silver ring on his thumb, hair as sleek and flowing as a girl's — the whole thick torso glowing with power. Still a kid, Silkowitz was already on his way into Lionel's league: he could make things happen. Ten years from now the scruff y office would be just as scruff y, just as out of the way, though presumably more spacious; the boy out front would end up a Hollywood agent, or else head out for the stock exchange in a navy blazer with brass buttons. Lionel left you feeling heavy, superfluous, a bit of an impediment. This Silkowitz, an enthusiast, charged you up: Matt had the sensation of an electric wire going up his spine, probing and poking his vertebrae.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/books/chapters/first-chapter-dictation.html?_r=1&pagewanted=4

Is writing idolatry? (see full interview here: http://www.parisreview.com/viewinterview.php/prmMID/2693 )

OZICK
Until quite recently I held a rather conventional view about all this. I thought of the imagination as what its name suggests, as image-making and I thought of the writer’s undertaking as a sovereignty set up in competition with the sovereignty of—well, the Creator of the Universe. I thought of imagination as that which sets up idols, as a rival of monotheism. I’ve since reconsidered this view. I now see that the idol-making capacity of imagination is its lower form, and that one cannot be a monotheist without putting the imagination under the greatest pressure of all. To imagine the unimaginable is the highest use of the imagination. I no longer think of imagination as a thing to be dreaded. Once you come to regard imagination as ineluctably linked with monotheism, you can no longer think of imagination as competing with monotheism. Only a very strong imagination can rise to the idea of a noncorporeal God. The lower imagination, the weaker, falls into the proliferation of images. My hope is someday to be able to figure out a connection between the work of monotheism-imagining and the work of story-imagining. Until now I have thought of these as enemies.

not the writer, who paased away a few years ago, but his cousin of the same name. (http://www.crownheights.info/index.php?itemid=22698)

mordecai richler is considered canada's greatest writer, and yes, he did grow up in chabad. i wrote about him before but that post was deleted.

a few tidbits,

he writes about coming to visit the previous lubavitcher rebbe by bus from montreal.

his maternal grandfather, yidel rosenberg, translated the zohar into hebrew and was also the promulgator of the golem legends in poland. in "son of a smaller hero" richler writes about his zeide's deathbed, with his zeide saying that the ba'al shemtov, the magid, and the alter rebbe are standing around his bed.

in "solomon gursky was here", about the bootlegging bronfmans, there is a main charachter, who is half-eskimo, half bronfman, who becomes a chabad ba'al teshuvoh, but then runs away to manhattan and smokes weed all day.

i was told that two years before he died a few bochurim went to visit him at his home in quebec and richler requested that they sing the beinoni, and he was crying throughout…

if you dislike reading novels, you got the movie "the apprenticeship of duddy kravitz", starring richard dreyfuss, based on richler's novel with the same title.

_______

(i see my richler posts are still up. oh well, so this post is redundant but i'm keeping it here. to see the other posts search for "richler" in the left sidebar.)

And God Saw Literature, That It Was Good
(for complete essay: http://www.tnr.com/article/and-god-saw-literature-it-was-good )
…The necessity of the Bible, if it is to be seen solely as poetry and story, may flatten in the same way. All sacred books contain the wise or stirring pleasures of narrative: the Bhagavad-Gita tells stories, the Taoist scriptures of Chuang-Tse tell stories, the Zoroastrian Zenavesta tells stories, the Koran tells stories, Confucius and Mencius tell stories, the Buddha tells stories; African and American Indian sacred tales abound. The earth is flooded with stories, hymns, and parables regarded as holy in their origins. The literary approach can deflate them all. Flannery O'Connor, an intransigent believer, said of the Christian mysteries that if they were not true, "then the hell with them." A skilled teller of tales, she insisted on a distinction between imagination of the kind that she herself could wield and what she took to be divine revelation. And it may be that if all the world's scriptures had long ago been flattened into literature, and packed side by side, despite their dissimilarities and divergences, into a single bookshelf–much as Madame Bovary, say, can stand in civil proximity to Crime and Punishment, and Joyce cheek by jowl with Proust–all our habitations and histories might have been far more pacific. Novels and stories do not war with one another; neither, pace Harold Bloom, do they always engage in supersessionism (at least not of the jihadist variety).

But stories, though they influence and enlarge us, do not deliver Commandments. The Bible cannot be pumped up from literary prestige to divine prerogative through arguing from the power of human imagination, even when that power is "kindled" by positing measureless structures of transcendent dominion. What, then, are unbelieving readers of the Five Books left with? Unless they happen to be moral philosophers who will deduce law and right conduct from reason, it is stories they are left with, and–for non-philosophers–isn't that enough?

On their face, the Patriarchal Tales, like all literature that endures, touch on everything recognizable in ordinary human life: crises between parents and children, between siblings, between husbands and wives; hunger and migration, jealousy and reconciliation, sudden ascent and sudden subjugation, great love and great hatred. Universally felt, they are family annals in a family album. The Joseph narrative is doubtless the most moving story of all: here stands Joseph, Pharaoh's mighty viceroy, interrogating the humbly petitioning brothers who in the past flung him into a pit and sold him to traders on their way to Egypt. Catching sight of Benjamin, the tender younger son of their mother Rachel, "Joseph hurried out, for his feelings for his brother overwhelmed him and he wanted to weep, and he went into the chamber and wept there. And he bathed his face and came out and held himself in check and said, 'Serve bread.'"

In this enclosed fraternal scene, God is not needed, and seems not to be present. So far, the drama of Joseph appears to resemble the stories we call literature; and yet it does not, because Joseph will not permit God to be exiled out of his world. When, bowing before Pharaoh's deputy, the brothers plead for forgiveness, Joseph is again swept into weeping, and invokes not only God, but God's design: "And Joseph said, 'Fear not, for am I instead of God? While you meant evil for me, God meant it for good.'" And further: "Do not be pained and do not be incensed with yourselves that you sold me down here, because for sustenance God has sent me before you … to make you a remnant on earth and to preserve life, for you to be a great surviving group. And so, it is not you who sent me here but God." A few verses on, Joseph dies, at one hundred ten, and is embalmed according to Egyptian custom. And now, portentously, the Book of Genesis ends: "He was put in a coffin in Egypt."

That coffin signifies more than a human story. It is God's story: Egypt will become a coffin for the Hebrews until God redeems them. God in the Hebrew Bible is Causality, and Causality, unlike Joseph or Benjamin, cannot be a character in a tale–an assertion that has been broadly contradicted, or at least qualified, in formulations by both Harold Bloom and Jack Miles. In his winning and ingenious book God: A Biography, Miles is moved to ask, "How did all this feel to God?" and sets out to see Him as a "character who 'comes to life' in a work of literary art." Miles's God has an indelible, even a familiar, human personality, not unlike the mercurial protagonist of an epic, or an opera, or a labyrinth of motives by Henry James. And while it may be possible to transmute aspects of Scripture into literature by means of the fictive imagination– certainly Thomas Mann succeeded in turning the Joseph chronicle into a massive and masterly novel–finally Scripture itself rebels against it. Mann's fiction can claim no greater authority than writerly genius.

Just here is the nub and the rub of it: if the God of the Bible is not "real, " then–in creative-writing-course argot–the Bible's stories won't and don't work. For the faithless skeptic or rationalist confronting Scripture (a category of modernity that includes, I suppose, most of us), there is nothing more robust to lean on than suspension of disbelief, the selfsame device one brings to Jane Austen. Mr. Darcy and Mr. Knightley, salvational creations both, are not real; we believe in them anyway. Causality deserves better. Causality escapes the mere "comes to life" of character.

It is the directness and the consummate clarity of Robert Alter's rendering that forces this conclusion. The translator's richly developed notes and reflections are informed by scholarship, wit, and intuition; without the intrusions of didacticism, they educate. But the antique words, on their own power, and even in a latter-day language, draw us elsewhere, to that indeterminate place where God is not a literary premise but a persuasive certainty–whether or not we are willing to go there.

i was in brooklyn college in 1992, in the spring, after pesach… i was in the stacks section looking for old american Jewish literature review articles about chaim potok. (out of suny albany, this publication had some nice stuff, one with a title "the crucifixion of chaim potok" about "my name is asher lev", including a rebuttal by potok in the next or same issue. i am paraphrasing here, it being some years ago…this name kept on popping up in these fancy periodicals which at first i completely ignored. then it kept on coming up, and the titles appeared to be straight up my alley. so finally one day i took out "the pagan rabbi and other stories" and headed for the overpass on bedford avenue sitting down on the cement table-seats , seats which nobody ever used and have since been torn down.it was a sunny day. i began at noon and remained there until i could no longer read…. i don't remember even going to the bathroom. i was that transfixed. and it has never really left me. the next book i read was "the messiah of stockholm", a fictional account of an auschwitz survivor turned book reviewer for a stockholm newspaper who believes his dad to be bruno schultz, and of rumors swirling that schultz' mythical lost manuscript, "the messiah", which had thought to be written by him and destroyed along with schultz in the holocaust, that this very document had popped up in stockholm.but besides for brilliant  plot and her sheer b'kius in  jewish texts, from the talmud to history to hallacha to yiddish, and her command of many languages, and the fact that she hapens to be a frum woman who puts up the chulent every friday afternoon for her family, all of this, peaked shall i say, my interest.I wish to do a series here on Ozick, her essays and perhaps excerpts from her fiction, both short stories and novels.She is of the Lithuanian persuasion. she is considered to be one of the top living american writers by the international literary establishment… she is right wing on Israel… but very explorative and open about everything in her fiction. this is hardly what some term "charedi fiction".

Shallow Graves

The novels of Paul Auster.

by James Wood (i'm copying and pasting the entire article to sevenfatcow since this might be archived in a week)

Ben Atlas gives some serious treatment to the Coen Brothers' most personal and most Jewish movie, A Serious Man, and here's an excerpt (Ben Atlas should be writing for commentary, not a blog),

The film opens with a rashi quote: “accept with simplicity everything that happens to you”(where did he say that?). Larry Gopnik, the father, enters a Kafkaesque plot preempted by the five-minute Yiddish mini-film. An episode with the Dybbuks omewhere between Lvov and Lublin. And although there is no obvious connection to rest of the story, I see it as an announcement by the Coen brothers that the film is about Jews who call themselves ivrim because they are m’ever, from the other side of the river and everything they do is connected to what happened elsewhere, i.e not here. Ethan Coen said “it feels right”. The paradox of this film is that you are not really sure if this is a comedy or a horror. I am leaning and landing on the horror side of the river.

Continue reading A Serious Man, the Film by and about Coen Brothers by Ben Atlas and here is the addendum.

Tzemach wrote pertinently in an email,

 The problem with Chulent is most people there need to move forward but
the framework is set up to pull people backwards. Instead of detox
from the Judaic indoctrination it is a comfortable opiate figuratively
and literally.

I cant believe that in NY there is no place for cultural
deconstruction and reconstruction. Instead there is a regurgitation of
the same uninspired and gaseous matter. People need to take the past
to task instead of succumbing and resigning to it.

For a while, i've preferred quietly bowing out to dramatic public announcements, not wanting to endlessly retire like an aging rock band. But now, a solid three years into the exciting creation and invitation of theis forum into being, i'm stepping down formally, from any inolvement with 7fatcow, unconvinced that it exists at all.

No bitterness. Dissapointment would imply expectations, and all my hopes and expectations for this blog where satisfied right away, constantly, along with all my concerns and suspicions, re: the inevitably difficult nature of True Expression and Engagement. That was understood from the beginning to be OK. Sometimes, when you talk with people, a lot of bullshit comes out as cushion for any insight and genuine heart-of-self that might be revealed, and that condition was understood from the beginning: along with the genius in our wider community of not-quite-ex/not-quite-ohs is a multitude of protective layer of ego and dogma; of noise and principle, of assumption and of flawed language, furious at the implication that it must be probed to be understood. That's OK, as much as any of the troublesome nature of our world is to be called OK, it's part of who we have been, and how we have expressed.

All that said, it's boring now, because maybe we've gone as far as any of us wanted to go. One of our founding members has moved beyond interest in the conversation here, as a funner life beckoned where the wit was expresseable and the company close enough that trying to blog in a noise filled room of cheesy links and ironically repressive vulgarity became uncompelling, especially once the Twitter and Facebook Status update was given unto us, to let the impulse sound more immediately, without need for context, or consensus. And so, the chance to say just a few things here was all he needed.

Another founding member has tried to give up so many times, and the clamor of each dramtic farewell, combined with the unelaborated links and occasional disavowels of entire identities for fear of Who May Be Listening, and Who May Be Judged along with him, often prevented the depth of his insight from being expressed. He erased all his posts, psuedonym after psudonym, and tried to convince somebody that he was somebody, and not actually somebody. And in that noise, his genius is silenced, and a certain unconfrontational decadence tried to grow around him; alas, woe unto those who think their sacrifices will provide security, money, or love.

And around that, behind that, so much genius was expressed.  Zoroastro/IslamoYid's and Atgate231's Scholarship, Class and Humor, Shitalpin's withering and ultimately humanist hot/cold sarcasm-masking-authenticity, Hashemsucksdick's marriage of post-religious concience and artistry, Mohammed's strange and shocking form of concience, Anivaho's Mercurial genius to let words permute into sublime association (even as any conceit towards divine synchronicty was despaired of) Yalhak's Majestic magnimamity and wholeness of vision/purity of impurity of perspective (along with the  lucid clarity of Yesod, Aisav, and the other maaminim he brought) and the writers we never even really identified, who bought so much class, genius, and perfect kvetchery to the conversation (who was Hiavrom anyway? he was brilliant! I hope he's OK.)

All the Neo-Nazis who stopped by to let us now what was going on, all the feminists and fetishists, all the excited Chabadskers, all the grieving relatives– so much got circulated, and maybe so little was heard, who knows? who knows. Who knows how much we ever hear from each other that we weren't ready to chap. But I feel like a lot of rare expression and relative taboo was aired here, and i'm really proud of that. As proud as one can be of something that one just let happen.

All the martyrs and all the victims; all the heroes and all the wimps. All the Faggotry and all the ugly, ugly Charedi shock-porn. All the piety and simple faith. Everything but the bullshit, and the noise, and the hiding of ourselves inside of our conceptions. It really has been a great ride, and I can only pray that some of this survivesinto the annals ofHistory, the story of how the Jewish Problem was, if only for a moment, touched upon, if not successfully adressed, from within, rather than just from without. God bless you all, to move on, and see how easy it is just to start up a crazy fucking conversation in this great, wide future of accessible interests, may we one day merit to see it to it's end.

Shana Tov, and i'll see you at the Jubilee

Yoseph Leib,

AKA Yhosephus,

AKA the guy that fucked your sister, back when she was still cute.

I was going to write a poem while walking on Eastern Parkway but chanced upon a Psalm when I suddenly found myself outside the Rebbe's room.Forget the poem, David's way better…

PSALM 88

1 1 A song; a psalm of the Korahites. For the leader; according to Mahalath. For singing; a maskil of Heman the Ezrahite. 2 LORD, my God, I call out by day; at night I cry aloud in your presence. 3 Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry. 4 2 For my soul is filled with troubles; my life draws near to Sheol. 5 I am reckoned with those who go down to the pit; I am weak, without strength. 6 My couch is among the dead, with the slain who lie in the grave. You remember them no more; they are cut off from your care. 7 You plunged me into the bottom of the pit, into the darkness of the abyss. 8 Your wrath lies heavy upon me; all your waves crash over me. Selah 9 Because of you my friends shun me; you make me loathsome to them; Caged in, I cannot escape; 10 my eyes grow dim from trouble. All day I call on you, LORD; I stretch out my hands to you. 11 3 Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the shades arise and praise you? Selah 12 Is your love proclaimed in the grave, your fidelity in the tomb? 13 Are your marvels declared in the darkness, your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion? 14 But I cry out to you, LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you. 15 Why do you reject me, LORD? Why hide your face from me? 16 I am mortally afflicted since youth; lifeless, I suffer your terrible blows. 17 Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have reduced me to silence. 18 All the day they surge round like a flood; from every side they close in on me. 19 Because of you companions shun me; my only friend is darkness.