
Breaking! President Obama Dark Past as a "Shabbos Goy" Uncovered! Glenn Beck Wets Himself |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 19, 2010 |
|
National Day of Unplugging: Shabbos is all the Rage |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 19, 2010 |
|
A Pre-Shabbat Blessing: Emily Gould and Sam Lipsyte "Cooking Books" |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 19, 2010 |
|
Sam stops by Emily Gould's kitchen to do a little "cooking".
You Might be White Trash if... You Have Sex With a Woman Who Dresses Like a Nazi |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 19, 2010 |
|
1. Your name is Jesse James
2. You allegedly have sex with a woman who dresses up like a Nazi, and has "W.P." tattooed on her legs.
Tmz reports: "The woman who reportedly had an affair with Sandra Bullock's
husband Jesse James has another bombshell to drop -- a
full scale Nazi photo shoot."
Okay, sure. Anybody can dress like a Nazi, doed that mean they are a Nazi?
"In child custody documents filed in January, Michelle's
ex-husband says she "makes the Nazi salute," and has a swastika tattoed
on her stomach (not seen in these pics).
In one photo the letter
"w" is on Michelle's left leg, and the letter "p" on her right. We're
told Michelle tells people it stands for 'white power.'"
This makes it a little harder to argue any sort of case that you aren't white trash.
Photo of the Day: Anti-Israel Protesters Ruin SXSW "Buzz" |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 18, 2010 |
|
Nothing says "statement" more than dressing up in the finest Top Shop and Urban Outfitters gear, taking a trip to a hip music conference, and telling the world how bad Israel is for having musicians.
Took up cause because they were denied entry to Levis Fader Fort
Silly Things Rabbis Say: World not "Compassionate" Enough for Vegetarians |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 18, 2010 |
|
You know those times where you think a rabbi makes sense, but you also think he might be bat-shit crazy? Let's use Rabbi Dov Lioras an example:
"We still are not compassionate towards people in our times, so having mercy on animals is irrelevant," explained the rabbi. "Only when the world ascends spiritually and we have mercy on people will we be able to be vegetarians." (Via)
Meat eaters and plant munchers: debate!
The Weekly Yiderati |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 18, 2010 |
|
A Baseball Fan Gets His Day |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 18, 2010 |
|
In the rare event the Chicago Cubs win (they haven't captured a World
Series title since 1908), you will hear legions of drunken Northsiders singing
a simple tune of "go Cubs go" together in unison. The song was written
by the late Steve Goodman, who even after being diagnosed with Leukemia
in 1969, would spend his life writing songs that Johnny Cash, Chet
Atkins and Willie Nelson, would go on to record. While that is no small feat, he
will always be remembered for his endearing anthem for the lovable
losers he was a fanatic fan of.
Now, nearly 30 years after his
death, Illinois Congressman Mike Quigley has introduced a bill honoring
the late folk singer, that would rename the Lakeview Post Office
--located a few blocks from the Cubs home field of Wrigley Field-- after
the man who gave Cubs fans something to sing about.
Alex Chilton Gets a Cohen Blessing |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 18, 2010 |
|
As if I didn't like Rep. Steve Cohen enough.
The first Jewish congressmanin the history of Tennessee, just gave a farwell to the late, great Alex Chilton on the House Floor. Chilton, one of the founding members of Big Star, passed away at the age of 59.
Happy Meal Celebrates One Year of Being Least Kosher Thing Imaginable |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 18, 2010 |
|
A 15-Year-Old Yeshiva Girl Tackles Music Reviews |
|
by Tessa G., March 18, 2010 |
|
We love to read Pitchfork, Impose, and Brooklyn Vegan for most of our music news, but those guys listen to music for a living, and have obviously developed specific tastes. While we love long, well-written proclamations as to why the newest Diplo remix of Neon Indian covering a Yeasayer song is the greatest thing since the time Panda Bear re-remixed Diplo's work on a Beach House song, we think it's time for a fresh point of view.
Introducing that new point of view: 15-year-old Yeshiva student, Tessa G.
April Smith and
the Great Picture Show
Songs For a Sinking Ship
Self-made and self-popularized, April Smith seems to get her kicks from retro beats and polka style odes to happy-go-lucky love and sad, sad hurtful love. The first song on the album, "Movie Loves a Scream", mixes what sounds like a 40's jazz band and a ukulele. It's a little daring, but it actually makes it a somewhat catchy, toe tapping song. The next few songs are comprised of a polka sad song, an oldies inspired slow song about a presumably "drop dead gorgeous" person, and the list goes on. The songs are pretty much either sassy and upbeat, or sad ballads. April has a sweet yet strong voice that owes a great deal to older-era music that charms, but lacks depth and the ability to be listened to without getting bored of it after a few minutes.
S/T EP
Self-released
First thought... a whole ablum-about Los Angeles? JEEZ. Well the first song is literally just , surprise surprise: some repeating French monologue and mellow tones in the background. A wee creepy, but if that's what the cool kids are doing these days why not? For one thing, it sounds like a song in the soundtrack to an indie tragedy about depression and death and destruction and dying puppies and whatnot. The next song: more of the sad stuff. And of course deep, woeful violin chords, with xylophone. This turns out to be sort of mellow and lament-alicious. The album itself sounds a little repetitive and almost like an introduction to a song, not a song itself. Sometimes drab, and bad mood inducing.
New Home
Ahhh! It's that guy who prides himself because all his lyrics are a play on words. The music incorporates violin and guitar strumming. There's even some accordion. The lead singers voice is slightly high and smooth, and doesn't prove to be falsetto heavy. In fact, his voice is kind of rustic and natural sounding. Overall, the music sometimes feels like it was born in the backroom of a tavern frequented by sailors, a little nautical and invoking the spirits of long dead depressed musical pirates. Other songs are almost nursery rhymes, soft and sweet and under not too much foreign influence other than harmony of the instruments. This album has some nice sparkly gems, and a few songs that just make me wanna say "ARRRG" and bury some treasure.
March Madness Hits Yeshiva University! Sorta... |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 17, 2010 |
|
The Daily Jewce |
|
| News Bites From a Very Old Man | |
by Maury Newserman , March 17, 2010 |
|
The Pogues Never Played a Klezmer Song |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 17, 2010 |
|
CNN Watchers Who Twitter: Not so Hot on Israel |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 17, 2010 |
|
Whoops.
The Closest Thing to Kosher at SXSW |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 16, 2010 |
|
Anne Frank's Diary to Become Stuffy British Television Drama |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 16, 2010 |
|
Obama Gets Some Weiner |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 16, 2010 |
|
"The appropriate response was a shake of the head - not a temper tantrum," Weiner said in a statement to be released shortly. "Israel is a sovereign nation and an ally, not a punching bag. Enough already."
Jason Segel: Living the Dream |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 16, 2010 |
|
Jason Segel is a lucky man for many reasons:
1. He's rich. That isn't so bad.
2. He's tall. I'd like to be tall.
3. He's in movies. While blogging is fun, I'd assume being a movie star is better.
But to be honest, 1, 2, and 3 mean nothing as the former Freaks and Geeks star prepares his next, and possibly awesomest role: working with the Muppets.
The Influence: Zach Lupetin of The Dustbowl Revival |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 16, 2010 |
|
In this new series, Jewcy will be asking artists --Jew and non-Jews
alike-- to discuss in their own words, a specific influence Jewish
culture has had on their work. This week, Zach Lupetin, leader of
California old-timey songsters, The Dustbowl Revival, discusses how the
Middle Eastern sounds he heard on his trip to Israel helped broaden his
world view of music.
I was raised in a multi-denominational
household, with a Jewish-born mother and a Roman-Catholic father. I
have always valued both sides of my heritage and was happy to take part
in the birthright trip to Israel while at college at the University of
Michigan. It was an eye-opening experience to say the least, one that I
wish everyone, regardless of faith, could take part in. Our mandolin
player Daniel Mark is also Jewish and I've spent many hours with his
family here in Los Angeles celebrating the holy days. One of my favorite
parts of the synagogue and holiday services that I have taken part in
over the years (mostly reform or liberal) are the songs. The chord
structures are really cool, dark, moody and get my foot tapping. I was
inspired, when in the Middle East, to learn more about Eastern music
traditions and fuse those rhythms with blues, gypsy and jazz and tell
secular stories with them. There's a reason these songs have endured
this long - there's a power in the structure and like a great twelve-bar
blues, it just feels good to play and to hear.
The Dustbowl Revival
Jerry Lewis: Another Year Older/Still Hasn't Released Holocaust Film |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 16, 2010 |
|
Alexander Portnoy is Bad for the Jews |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 15, 2010 |
|
Jewish Pride at Shamrockfest |
|
by Michael Croland, March 15, 2010 |
|
Her crowning jewels were her smolderin' opalescent eyes
Which she cast up at our hero, sippin' his watery wine
Sent the power of Abraham coursin' down his spine
The rabbi nodded, "Oh, I understand, me son
The Lord provideth in many ways, and yours has just begun"
So he ordered up two pints of Ireland's finest beer
With a couple of shots to wash 'em down, he said, "I do declare
I hear the bells of heaven a'ringin' in me head
That goy would be a joy in any son of Israel's bed"
Izzy's sacred mother was beside herself with grief
'Til the rabbi took her to the pub down on Delancey Street
Her eyes lit up when she heard the till go clang-a-lang
"Oy vey, that Irish shiksa could use an honest man!"
So if you're down on Orchard Street and you see some red-haired men
They're all the seed of Izzy, sons of Israel to the end
But each and every one of them will drink you out of the house and home
They're sprung from the womb of Rosie Eileen Statia Ann McKnowles
It isn't all that shocking that a New York band would make a link
between the Irish and the Jews. I've been exploring this link for years,
and as I blogged about in January, musicians like Mick
Moloney and Saints & Tzadiks have made a strong case that there is a
connection. As I wrote then, "Thematically, songs in both traditions
display cultural pride and refer to the longing for a homeland by a
people living in diaspora." Musically, Jewish and Irish folk music are
often exuberant and both give the fiddle an iconic status.
Sláinte and l'chaim!
Israeli Nationalist Mounts Pathetic Attempt to Date Bar Refaeli |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 15, 2010 |
|
Baruch Marzel and his friends at Lehava sent Bar Rafaeli a letter
asking her to dump her loser boyfriend Leonardo DiCaprio. Using some
very Goebbelsesque phrasing, the people at Lehava put it bluntly, asking the supermodel not to "dilute" the Jewish "race". You might
remember Baruch Marzel as the guy who declared a "holy war" against
homosexuals in Israel last year.
Putting your thoughts and
feelings about interfaith marriage, gay rights, and political
correctness aside for a few minutes, lets call a spade a spade on this:
Baruch Marzel is a total stud who just wants the world to know he isn't
gay, and that Bar Rafaeli will one day be his. Oh yes, she will be
his...
Baruch Marzel
Jewish Banker FAIL |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 15, 2010 |
|
Dear conspiracy theorist,
You might think we rule all the banks, but to ease your mind a little bit, here is some proof that we don't always necessarily know how to run them.
"Real estate developer Shaya Boymelgreen's Web site proclaims his finance business is "built on a solid foundation." He might wish to revisit that statement after federal regulators seized LibertyPointe Bank, an institution that he helped start and served as chairman."
Failed Messiah reported on the story, and also gave us what we have to think is the best Elders of Zionesque quote of the week from one of the partners in the failed venture: “Money is begging us to come out.”
Sure, you can chalk this one up to a failure, but you somewhere, deep in an Idaho bunker, some dude is sitting next to his Charles Lindberg biography and collection of Nazi knives thinking to himself, "filthy shylocks with their magic ability to talk to money."
Sam Lipsyte: The Jewcy Interview |
|
by Jon Reiss, March 15, 2010 |
|
For Sam Lipsyte, it is time. He is now a Guggenhiem fellow, a writing professor at Columbia University and he is about to publish what people are calling his masterwork with Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. In reality, Homeland, Lipsyte’s second novel was nothing short of masterful work. It created an entirely new vehicle for story telling by expressing a post college age slacker’s angst through bubbly toned updates to his high school’s alumni newsletter. Homeland is the kind of book people will claim to have taken to right away, years from now when it’s considered a literary staple for the times. Before that, he published The Subject Steve, a novel about a man diagnosed with a fatal and unknown disease. His first book is a collection of short stories called Venus Drive, which reads like less gruff Hot Water Music. Therein lies Lipsyte’s wheelhouse. He writes with the kind of edginess reserved for the hard drinking cult writers of American literature, but with an eloquence and a focus on cadence and sound that we associate with old time poets and literary greats.
Lipsyte’s new novel, The Ask, takes place in the life of a new dad with a job in the development office at a liberal arts college. Milo’s job is to procure donations from anybody with deep enough pockets and big enough egos. It requires him to keep a singular focus on these wealthy individuals or, “asks” and what he could potentially talk them into donating, or, “gives.” Early in the novel, Milo snaps, delivering a tirade at a young art student whose parents happen to be big shot asks. Milo is fired and left to worry about how to support his already flailing family life and pay for his comical toddler Bernie’s hippie-run nursery school. Then, Milo is suspiciously offered his job back if he can land an even bigger ask. The big ask proves to be darkly complicated and challenging. It will require him to re-examine his past, and to ask himself what kind of man he wants to become.
I phoned Lipsyte with my own ask. I wanted to know about the path that led him to his current success, and what the rest of us could stand to learn from it.
I want to ask you about Dungbeetle, the band you sang in before you became a writer. I've read that Dungbeetle was known to put on strange and memorable stage shows but I've never really heard specifics aside from the fact that James Murphy aka LCD Soundsytem was your soundman. There's a character in Venus Drive that's an ex noise rock band frontman who talks about kissing male audience members, wearing a cape, and a shoving a microphone up his ass while on stage. Yet, I've been unable to find pictures, videos or songs from the real Dungbeetle.
Lipsyte: That's good.
Tell me about Dungbeetle. What did you guys sound like? What was the stage show actually like? Can we find any Dungbeetle artifacts?
The band was very noisy. Our stage show was very much about denying audiences that moment, that sort of wink that makes everything okay. We were very deadpan the entire time. The band would be making a racket and I would go down into the audience and maybe find the meanest, most homophobic looking dude and stroke his cheek gently. Or I would writhe on the stage and cry about my father, that sort of thing. It's an acquired taste I'm sure.
We're there any bands you played with often?
Six Figure Satellite were sort of a big brother band to us. We played with them a lot and they were just an incredibly powerful machine. So we would compete with them on the level performative insanity, but certainly not musicianship. We got to play with lots of great bands. We played on a bill with The Jesus Lizard one night. I think you can find one of our songs on iTunes. It's on the soundtrack for a movie called, "Half Cocked." You'll get a sense of what the guitar sounds like. But the drummer wasn't feeling well that day, lets put it that way. So it's not as punchy as it usually was.
Speaking of music, people talk a lot about you as a musical writer and about the musicalityin your prose. One writer even compared you to Dr Seuss.
Seuss is a master.
Is music a big part of your writing?
I think a lot about rhythm and cadence and the acoustics of what I'm writing. Which probably has to do with my background as a flailing frontman and enjoying certainkinds of explosive punk songs and other kinds of music that reach heights in a very limited amount of time. I think that's translated in the length of my prose. I've often wanted to create that feeling for a reader that I've gotten from great songs.
So, punk rock prose?
I think I've found different ways to work those rhythms and acoustics so that sometimes it's not just a short blast, it's a long extended glimpse. There's a reason people talk about music in relation to prose. There is something performative in writing, especially for the kinds of writers who pay attention to it. So I wouldn't want to brand it that. But the punk ethos of not being afraid to let out your joy and sorrow in an impossibly abrasive but also exultant manner, isn'tfar off.
Do you think music is interesting right now, anyone in particular?
I wish I were not someone who gets so stuck in the music he came of age to. In a sense sometimes it sounds like the stuff you've heard before. But I'm sure everything when I was young sounded to older people like the stuff they'd heard before and it goes on and on like that. The bands that are interesting to me are, LCD Soundsystem, The Hold Steady have made some great records, Liars, that drum record I liked a lot. I like The Reigning Sound. But I also like what Juan Maclean is doing, so at this point I don't really have to choose a camp or a genre to listen to. Also there are some compositions by this dead composer named Julius Easton from the 70's and 80's. I stumbled upon it and just found it kind of mesmerizing.
In your new novel, The Ask, the protagonist is put under pressure by the liberal arts college that he works for to procure a major donation from a wealthy potential donor. In other words he's asked to ask for a large ask from an ask. He's told that, "The whole game is poised for a gargantuan fall," referring Liberal Arts Schools. Basically meaning that in the new economy, parents aren't willing to shell out money to Liberal Arts schools the way they once did. You work at a university, is this based in real experience?
No.
I didn't think so.
As it turns out I think applications at many places are up. So people are still applying in large numbers, as I understand. I wasn't really trying to predict the economic future for liberal arts colleges as I was trying to present a crisis.
What do you think of the supposed "Death of the Novel"? What about the possibility of physical books disappearing in favor of E-Readers? Do you think that would be a good or a bad thing?
Well the Death of the Novel thing has been going on for centuries and centuries. The novel is a form of fiction and for a few hundred years it's been the primary delivery system. I think we need to stop thinking about there being one thing called, "the novel." But, I mean, will the novel morph? I think as people continue to innovate and be bold, all sorts of fiction will come and a lot of it will continue to be in some sense connected to the traditional. Anything from Jane Austen to Thomas Pynchon, they're all, "the novel." I think you can draw that line from Laurence Sterne to David Foster Wallaceand many others. I think people are still going to be feeding off of that tradition for a long time to come and then they will also be branching off into other modes of fiction making. What's always going to be important to me is that it be text based, it be language based, it be about how different combinations of words help us access human consciousness. That's the death of the novel part. Whether the novel will always continue to be a mass-market item, I have no idea. As a popular form, even in it's degraded state it's still strong. You know, Dan Brown, that's nothing I would want to read but when he writes a new novel, millions of people read it. So it's hard to tell. The other part of it is, I think there will still be a market for books on paper because I think people will want the books they really care about to be something they can put on their shelf. I think it's different than say vinyl, because you can be nostalgic about vinyl, and the warmer sound that comes from vinyl but still the old records are kind of cumbersome. At this stage, I don't see the Kindle being any better than a book. It's far less pleasurable to use and there's something about the texture of pages in a bound book that people will still desire. As for everything else, an electric file like Chicken Soup for the Soul #33? I don't know. I've had people tell me that it's over for text, that since everyone emails and text messages, text-based art forms are over. That we're all going to move to this kind of global visual culture which everyone can understand. I don't think that's so great.
Have you observed a sense of doom in the publishing industry? Did they want you to do all kinds of Internet tricks for this book?
They're doing them. They haven't asked me to do them. You can become friends with the book on Facebook. There's some guy twittering or tweeting lines from the book. But I mean it's very effective in terms of getting the word out that there's this book made of paper coming out.
But yes, there's a lot of panic in the publishing industry. Absolutely, they try to mask it, but they don't know what's going to happen.
Who do you think reads your novels? I mean, I'm a 26-year-old guy who recently finished college. Do you have a sense of what your readership would look like or who would make up the lion's share?
Did it take you a long time to finish college?
Yeah, it did. I transferred a lot and did some fucking up along the way. I'm just curious who you envision being the kind of person that would pick up your books?
I don't know. I mean, initially I thought it was 26-year-old fuck ups like you. But I was checking out the book on Amazon and they give you your rank and then there are several sub-categories. One of them was single women and I seem to be number five. So that gave me a whole new perspective.
Congratulations.
Well, I' m not on the market. My point is, you don't know, and I think more and more it's lots of different kinds of people and that's what I'm hoping, as much as my heart is with the 26 year old fuck ups.
Speaking of fuck-ups, there are two things, or themes, that you mention very casually in all, or almost all of your books. Two rather lofty subjects that I think other writers, if they broach these topics they tend to harp on them a bit more. But these two things keep coming up, male bisexuality and heroin.
No one has ever brought this up to me before. That's some deep reading.
I just wanted to throw it out there.
Well, it's no secret that I've dabbled with [heroin] and consequently struggled with it. It's something that was for a substantial amount of time a very commanding presence in my life. There was a very tense period where I struggled with it and had to deal with it. It's a very powerful drug.
And the bisexuality stuff? I guess I'm asking because these are the kinds of topics that writers tend to make a much bigger deal about when they write them, where as with you they are mentioned so casually, or as just sort of passing thing. It almost makes me surprised that you didn't have a publisher or editor saying, "I'd like to hear more about this."
I would have told them to fuck off. I find it's much more effective in fiction to treat potentially big subjects more glancingly and the potentially trivial subjects with greater detail. I think when you do that you're kind of bending and distorting in a way that gives a truer perception. We live in an age where people make declarations about their sexuality, and that's great but I think the rest of us are a little more flux than we would admit. But instead of making that a huge deal I'm interested in that being just part of the texture of life. It's also an anxiety-producing subject that can be a good source of comedy.
Speaking of comedy, you did an excellent interview/discussion with Gary Shteyngart, the author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook, in which you said something that I found both fascinating and confusing. You said, "Comedy is hard, pathos is easy." How is pathos easy? What's the trick to it?
I think I was probably talking about the famous saying, which I think was from a Yiddish theater actor who was on his deathbed and people were gathered around him and someone said, "this is so hard," and he said, "comedy is hard, dying is easy." I guess what I meant is that I've seen a lot more examples of a moving sad story than a moving funny story.
I've read that you studied with Gordon Lish, who is known as being a very off the wall,non-conventional writing teacher. Specifically I've read that in his workshops students would read their work aloud and Lish would cut them off at what he considered to be a "false note," and then he'd move on to the next student. What were the most common kinds of "false notes," that came up? Where did people get stopped often? What about your "false notes?"
Well, each of us had our own forays into inauthenticity. Gordon was very good at spotting when someone was trying to get away with something or using a very stock phrase, or just beginning in a very watered-down way. So there weren't really any one or two specific things that people hit up against. I can talk about what it was for me. I think there were times when I would strain, perhaps, to be poetic. Or I would use a phrase that was perhaps meant to be ironic, but it wasn't reading that way. Usually, it's when what you have in your head or in your heart has yet to appear on the page.
With the undergrad students that you teach, is there anything you find that you have to break them of? Is there some problem you find that beginning writers tend to have, something universal?
Yeah, they are really wedded to the information of their story. A lot of the information they've devised about the world they're creating and characters they're writing about, they think the time the character woke up is very important, they think the make of the car that the character drove to work is very important. Sometimes it's a good idea to break from that...
But aren't those just details?
Right but are they really the ones we want to begin our adventure with? The main thing, and this is something that Lish talked about, is that you have this very brief window to get somebody into your book. It's those first sentences that matter in terms of getting them to keep going. Those first sentences need to be undeniable. If their chock full of clunky details that we don't really care about. That may not be the optimal effect. If instead there's this constant feel of a new world through a strange and exciting combination of words and a sense of the writers full command of the rhythms and sentences, that's what's going to seduce somebody. Not what kind of car the character drove to work.
What was the first novel you remember really enjoying as a kid? Not a children's book.
When I was about fifteen, I was a junior counselor at a camp and senior counselor gave me an anthology of fiction with a Donald Barthelme story called, "Shower of Gold" and two years later I read these Robert Stone novels that really sort fired my imagination. Earlier than that, I read a lot of science fiction. There was a friend of the family who joined a cult and had to give away all of his possessions, so he gave me all of his Phillip K Dick novels. I was probably about twelve then and I really devoured those. I also read other science fiction books around that time. Those books were very important to me.
Do you watch television? If so, is there anything on TV that you consider to be particularly well written? Would you every consider writing for TV?
Yeah, I would consider if it was the right people, if it was something that seemed exciting and challenging. In terms of good writing on television, The Wire is good. My favorite TV show is a British show that was done in the late 90's called Brass Eye. To me, that's the funniest television I've seen in my entire life. It was a fake magazine show. But the controlled outrageousness of it is something that's just been unmatched by anything else that I've seen. The writing is just beautifully absurd. He did a show called "The Day Today," before "Brass Eye," and he wrote and directed a show called "Nathan Barley" that was hilarious although it got mixed reviews.
Can you tell me about your life before getting published, after graduating college? You were living in New York City, how did you stay afloat? Any horrible jobs?
I was a substitute teacher. For a long time I worked for an online magazine called Feed. I did the occasional freelance journalism. I scraped by. When I graduated college I spent another year in Providnece with my band and then we moved together to New York City. The worst work I did around that time was telephone survey work. There's a story about that in Venus Drive. That was probably the most demoralizing job. I hated reading from that script and I hated talking to people who seemed pretty desperate for a human connection and I was just kind of pressing them to tell me about which kind of coffee they preferred. The title of story in Venus Drive is "Probe to Negative," and the idea is that you're trying to eliminate people from the survey. You keep asking questions to see if you can disqualify them, they're either too old, or they're not making enough money. Sometimes you would get people who really needed to talk and you'd just have to kind of throw them overboard.
Before your first book got published, when you were scraping by, was there any point when you considered saying, "fuck it" and giving up on being a writer? Is there anything else you ever imagined yourself doing?
No, and I think that was the problem. If I could have imagined myself doing something else, I think that I would have done it.
So, you have these classes full of kids who are hedging their bets on ending up where you are, do you ever tell them that it's not worth it, that they need a safety net.
Well, the fact is that you have a better chance arriving at something if you don't have a safety net. But it doesn't really matter what you tell people because they're either going to stick with it or they're not and if they don't then that's fine because that wasn't really what it was about for them anyway and they can go on and do other things. So I never feel like I'm in the position of making or breaking someone'swill because it's all desire. If nothing else seems possible, if everything else seems like a kind of death, then people will persist.
What I do tell them though, is not to count on making a living off of it, especially now. Everybody I know has to teach or do some other kind of work. I can't even think of someone who just makes a living off of fiction.
If you could do that, make a living off of your fiction, would you still teach? Do you think teaching helps you as a writer?
Yes. I would teach. I wouldn't teach as much, but I would teach. I learn a lot.
Do you have any major regrets regarding anything you've written?
There's a UK version of Homeland that came out before the American version and the novel begins, "It's confession time, Catamounts." Publishers in the UK were worried that British readers wouldn't really understand the frame of the book because they don't have high school reunions and alumni bulletins in the same way. So they wanted me to write a short prologue to that first chapter that would create another frame to explain, as subtly as possible, the notion of high school reunions and alumni newsletters. I didn't write anything new I just pulled some pages from later in the book and re-fashioned them and it was fine,but I realized that the book really needed to begin, "It's confession time, Catamounts."
If you could place a quick call to a seventeen-year-old Sam Lipsyte, what would you tell yourself?
Stop panicking. It's going to be okay. Stay away from the hard stuff and don't bank on a career in music.
The D'Var Torah For St. Patrick's Day |
|
by Patrick Aleph, March 13, 2010 |
|
I have a strong urge to make St. Patrick's Day a Jewish event, because my name is Patrick, and for the past twenty years or so, people around me have acted like St. Patrick's Day was like my second birthday.
I'm not going to get into the particulars about who St. Patrick was. Bottom line: he was a Catholic missionary who went to Ireland and converted the natives. That simple. It's goy.
Like most great things in America, this holiday came from immigration. After the Great Potato Famine, Irish immigrants flooded the United States seeking better opportunities. They were met with strife: a Protestant nation that considered itself settled that did not want any more people "polluting" its shores. Yet, they came, and integrated into society. Eventually, their cultural practices blended with other cultures in the key metropolitan immigrant cities, and became normalized. As people left these large cities for smaller cities and towns to escape overcrowding and to find better opportunities, they took this Americanized Irish identity with them. Over time, people found themselves attracted to their culture and eventually we got the St. Patty's Day that we have today.
The Jews, like all other religious cultures that survived the Axial Age, are really good at adapting to the world that surrounds them and integrating other cultures' ideas to meet their needs. The Purim story is a great example. This tale of survival is most likely an adaptation of the Babylonian story of Ishtar (Esther) and Marduk (Mordechai). Most of what we call "Jewish food" is really "kosherized" versions of dishes that already existed in Europe and North Africa. The wearing of kippah is another folkway that found a means of expression in the Talmud and became the yarmulkes that we wear in synagogues.
Today, Jews celebrate St. Patrick's Day, like everyone else in America, in a secular sense. Wearing green, pinning a shamrock to your chest, searching for four-leaf clovers, eating traditional Irish dishes and of course, drinking copious amounts of dark lager, are all a part of the festivities. The fact that Jews can celebrate this holiday without feeling less Jewish is what makes the holiday Jewish!
Our survival has been based on taking what the world provides us, and making it Jewish, so that we can always have a place to be. By being active in the culture around us, but with a Jewish inflection, Jews show that we are the same as everyone else. And it's this adaptability that makes us both attractive, and unique.
There are no "Jewish" people in the way that there are no "American" people. We aren't one culture, one language, one race. In fact, we are a collection of cultures, languages and races. But we fuse these elements together, each of us with a different slant, to create this amazing Oneness called "Jewish". This is the same way that America made an Irish holiday a favorite past time.
Shalom, and save a beer for me!
The Weekly Lipa |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 12, 2010 |
|
This week, Lipa Schmeltzer gave us far more than his standard misspelled and gramatically incoherent tweets. Through the God that is Twitter, he provided us with news that he has recently published a Passover Hagadah, linking to a yidenglish "exclusive" interview with a reporter from VIN news, who not only announced to his viewers that he waited an hour for his VIP interviewee, but reported the wrong date for the release of Lipa's next album, stating a date for the album drop that in no way resembled the actual one.
Follow that link and what do you get...Lipa's thoughts on his recent haggada, including images of what happened in Egypt during those wretched ten plagues. Did you know that Egyptians and their Jewish slaves drank out of the same water glass using colored flexi-straws!? - Neither did we. Did you know that the four sons were Hassidic? Or all children of Lipa's? Fascinating.
Before parting, leaving readers begging for more, Lipa leaves us with one last video in which after comparing himself to a spicy tuna roll he informs us how much he spent to make each Haggadah, how pricy yet luxurious the art of lamination is, and how much work goes into giving folks a Haggadah that's multi-lingual, translating Passover Seders into English and the ever-loving dead language of Yiddish. He also tells us how many he ordered from his Israeli distributor, how he made his family reinact a Seder in mid-January, and how he avoids phlegm by resisting the temptation to drink kosher virgin strawberry daquiris topped with reddi-whip.
Bad Jew Gives up Saturday Brunch: God Doesn't Care |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 12, 2010 |
|
Is James Brown Moshiach? |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 12, 2010 |
|
A Pre-Shabbat Blessing: The Warren Zevon Séance |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 12, 2010 |
|
The Weekly Yiderati |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 11, 2010 |
|
Political or Not, Useless ID Brings Israeli Punk to Brooklyn |
|
by Michael Croland, March 11, 2010 |
|
Our lives, one minefield
There's more to this than two nations burning up
No one can save us once it's done
They've got an urge to ruin
Every step they're taking leads to worse
It's time we all take action
Because every word is a misconception
Out! Keep the soldiers out
The enemy is wearing a suit and tie
Doubt what they preach about
We heard it all and see it now
Resist! Our nation
Hides the past and makes the same mistakes again
We didn't vote for war
Despite
my impressions, Useless ID does not portray itself as a political band.
The band did not talk about the meaning behind any of these songs while
performing. When I
interviewed guitarist Ishay Berger in 2008, he said that the band
is not overly political and that "Misconception" was the only political
song on The Lost Broken Bones.
Last night, he added, "I think it would've been smarter for us
career-wise to be outspoken like that, but it's not natural for us."
It
seemed that Berger did not want to agree with several of my
suggestions. I asked if Useless ID had more fans in the U.S. than any
other country besides Israel, and he said he didn't know. I asked if he
thought that American Jews might embrace Useless ID because they're an
Israeli band, and he replied, "I don't think we're that much out there
for the Jewish community to be aware of it." He said that they certainly
aren't against playing for the Jewish community but that they haven't
pursued that approach.
There was at least one issue where Berger
and I saw eye to eye: vegetarianism. The band's members are all
vegetarian, and they've said on multiple occasions that they are fueled
by falafel. He didn't have high expectations for falafel and hummus in
the U.S., which he had tried on previous tours, but he is greatly
enjoying American veggie burgers and burritos on the current tour.
This article was cross-posted with Heeb'n'Vegan
The Jewish Meat: Noah Bernamoff of Mile End |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 11, 2010 |
|
When historians look back on 2010 Brooklyn, they will uncover dozens of
articles on the phenom that is the Mile End Delicatessen, and for good
reason: owner Noah Bernamoff opened the restaurant not to cash in on the
foodie
trend, but for the simple fact
that he missed the smoked pastrami of his home to the north, Montreal.
To
say that Mile End has busted out of the gate and onto the pages of
every New York magazine that matters is an understatement,
but the Canadian restaurateur is modest about his quick success, and as
you will read in this interview, the guy really cares about the food he
makes, and the hungry Brooklynites that are fast becoming his biggest fans.
You dropped out of law school to open Mile End? Is your mother
worried?
Well, I'm technically still on a leave of absence. I
indeed left permanently or temporary to do this. I wasn't very happy
in law school, and this was something I really wanted to do for awhile,
and I suppose I felt inspired at the time. It was a bold moment perhaps,
and rather just feeling enslaved to the process that law school puts
you, or fits you into, I decided to do something I really wanted to do.
I
have a lot of friends who are either in law school or have recently
finished it, and I can't tell who seems more unhappy.
It's
not rare that I speak to a lawyer that's been practicing for 20 or 30
years that they say I wish I did what you did. Even if I do finish it's
more to feel a sense of completion. It's not my primary focus.
What
started your interest in smoked meat? Obviously it's popular in
Montreal, but was it something you've been doing your entire life, did
you have to go back home and take a class or something, was the talent
bestowed upon you in a dream?
It was born out of a loss. I
moved [from Montreal], and when you lose something, you miss something.
I was yearning from it. It's not even the same to buy some in Montreal
and just bring it back down because it just loses it's entire
character. It's not warm, it's not sliced by hand. It's the kind of
thing I did because I wanted it for myself.
Prior to moving to
Brooklyn, did you have any preconceived notions that the delicatessens
were better than they actually are?
I don't think I had any
opinions. I just did it. It's important to me, but it wasn't the do
all, end all. I wasn't born on a meat slicer. My families not at all
in the food business. It's just something that's part of my
Jewish-Montreal psyche. It's that embedded with the culture I grew up
with. But the fact that I moved into an area and there was not a single
deli that I'd ever come across is astonishing given that it's New
York. There are no delis left. The ones that are, are based off being
tourist traps...
The meat that comes out of Montreal is
different that what their making at a Katz's or 2nd Ave. Deli...
Yeah,
it's not a huge distinction, but it is a different thing. The meat is
butchered differently. It's spiced differently, cured differently.
Like a place like Schwartz's, that has the most smoked meat in Montreal,
for the reason that they are one of two delis that actually make their
own meat. It's also the vibe. There's more to the final product. It's
about dedication in Montreal, there's an authenticity to things: the
original way of doing things. The bagels speak to that too. That's one
reason why I'm a big fan of Montreal bagels is yeh, their a totally
different product, but there is a totally different philosophy to making
bagels.
Another thing I find interesting is that when the
meat runs out, you're done for the day...
We usually go a
little bit past when the meat runs out, but more or less. During the
week that's roughly around 4 o'clock, sometimes just a hair earlier, and
then on the weekends, it's typically earlier. But sometimes I'm able
to sit an extra brisket or two for the weekend, but not every time.
It
seemed like the last few years, Brooklyn has been undergoing something
of a bacon trend. Is Canadian smoked meat the next big thing?
I
love bacon. I'd be happy for the bacon trend to continue because I
just have an affinity for all food. I have a cultural love for Jewish
food. Kashrut is bogus anyway.
So now that you have your own
smoked meat place in Brooklyn, do you feel more at home?
Yes
and no. I still miss the way I was able to live in Montreal, but since
I've moved here, I've loved living in Brooklyn. Could I imagine a place
other than Brooklyn to do this? Probably not. I definitely feel at
home.
One last question, since you're a Canadian living in
New York, and the NHL regular season is coming closer to an end: have
you become a Rangers fan?
Hell no. There's no way. No
fucking way. I could be cool with the Knicks because I've never had a
team of my own, but when it comes to hockey, there's one team that has
my heart and that's the Montreal Canadians.
Israeli Novel Wins Best Translation Award |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 11, 2010 |
|
There seems to be a renaissance of translated literature in American underway. Maybe it started due to the popularity of the late Chilean scribe Roberto Bolaño's exquisite novel, 2666, but today, a novel by Israeli writer Gail Hareven is being recognized as the 2010 Best Translated Book Award for Fiction.
The Book, The Confessions of Noa Weber, is available through Brooklyn-based indie press, Melville House; best known for the novella series that includes works by Tolstoy, Pushkin, Proust, Twain, and also original works by contemporary writers like Tao Lin and Zachary German.
Chuck Norris: 70 Year Old Friend of the Jews |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 11, 2010 |
|
Dear Chuck Norris,
You are a conservative Christian who has an award for being "Jewish Humanitarian of the Year" (see #4) sitting on a mantle that you surely made with your bare hands. We aren't sure how you acquired this award, or who gave it to you, but it's no matter. We still remember all the work you did a few years back as a somewhat hilarious internet meme, and of course, your role alongside Johnathan Brandis (RIP bro) in Sidekicks; a movie that made a thousand young Jewish nerds in suburbs all across America think, "if I just karate kick a little higher, maybe I'll kick the shit out of a star."Rick Rubin Top Ten |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 10, 2010 |
|
Rick Rubin turns 47 today, and considering that he has spent the last 30 years being one of the most important and influential figures in music, we figured that calls for a little roundup of the production gurus finest achievements.
10. The Less Than Zero soundtrack.
Sure, he produced a good chunk of the artists on the soundtrack for the adaptation of one of the defining novels of the 1980's, but seriously, Public Enemy, Slayer, Joan Jett, and Roy Orbison (among many others) on one album? Are you kidding? What could be better than that?
9. His role in Krush Groove
8. Danzig
Walk into any hipster bar, put "Mother" on the jukebox, and thank Rubin for producing one of the most classic metal albums ever.
7. Slayer by Regin in Blood
There's one of the greatest metal albums, and then there is the actual greatest metal album ever made. This is it, and Rubin produced it.
6. Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers
Make fun of the band all you want now, but there is hardly any room to deny that next to Nevermind, this is the quintessential 90's rock album. You can thank Rubin's production for that.
5. "99 Problems" by Jay-Z
Yup, Rubin produced it.
4. The resurrection of Johnny Cash.
Thank Rubin for the fact that everybody and their mother loves Johnny Cash.
3. Licensed to Ill by the Beastie Boys
The fact that "Fight for Your Right" is played at 85% of all bar mitzvahs is one of Rubin's greatest gifts to his people.
2. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Public Enemy
Do you remember the last time music was really dangerous? And I'm not talking Marylin Manson's brand of post-high school theater kid angst, I mean the real deal like this album that Rubin co-produced with The Bomb Squad.
1. Raising Hell by Run-D.M.C.
The reason this is #1? Simply because if there was never a Rubin-produced Raising Hell, would hip hop have gone from an underground movement to the worldwide phenomenon that we know today? I'm guessing no. So while #1 goes to an album, it is actually a testament to Rubin's importance in bringing hip hop to the masses via one of the greatest albums ever made, and through his vision (along with Russell Simmons) of what could be.
Long Island! Are You Ready to ROCK?!? |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 10, 2010 |
|
One Corey Left |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 10, 2010 |
|
TMZ reports that Corey Haim has passed away.
The son of an Israeli-born computer operator, and a guy named Bernie who "worked sales", will always be remembered as the guy who made only two movies that I really cared about, but those two movies were INCREDIBLE.
Crazy Jewish Family of the Decade: The Feld's |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 10, 2010 |
|
Jah for Jews? |
|
by Jewcy Staff, March 9, 2010 |
|
Explains this:
And On The 7th Day, God Created 3D Glasses |
|
by Emily Goldsher, March 9, 2010 |
|
Obama Gets All Hillel on Our Asses |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 9, 2010 |
|
I could be very wrong here, but there was a little snippet from the presidents speech on health care in Philadelphia yesterday that sounded vaguely familiar.
Here's the breakdown:
"My question to them is: When is the right time? If not now, when? If not us, who?"
-Barack Obama: smart black guy, low poll ratings
"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And when I am for myself, what am 'I'? And if not now, when?"
-Hillel the Elder: smart Jew, maybe created the sandwich
Black, Jews, and Seymour Krim |
|
by Mark Cohen, March 9, 2010 |
|
"Oh, not another article on Black-Jewish relations!" is what anyone has the right to feel when the production of books, articles, seminars, and conferences on the subject over the past decades has amounted to what one scholar called an industry.
But before we close up the factory and lay-off all the workers, can we spare a moment for the overlooked Beat writer Seymour Krim? Like an eccentric tech pioneer tinkering alone in his garage, Krim practically started the whole black-Jewish thing in the late 1950s in his Greenwich Village studio apartment. Then, years after his death in 1989, this highly talented flake gets mangled in the official history of the whole period. A little justice, please.
Buddy, can you spare some tikkun olam?
I mean it would be one thing if Krim was mistakenly dismissed in one of the many doomed-to-the-stacks volumes on the subject, but Eric J. Sundquist's Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America, published by Harvard University Press, won the 2007 Weinberg Judaic Studies Institute Book Award and was called the "definitive study."
In other words, this might be it.
And what happens? In a discussion of Krim's 1957 Village Voice article, "Anti-Jazz," and his 1959 follow-up, "Ask for a White Cadillac," two of his earliest I-can't-believe-he-just-said-that essays on black life and its white imitators, Sundquist gets it wrong.
He just goes ahead and assumes that James Baldwin, the black novelist and uncontradictable authority on black anger at that time, would have dismissed Krim the way he did Mailer. Baldwin condescended to Mailer's controversial 1957 essay, "The White Negro," by calling the writer a "real sweet ofay cat." Sundquist adds, "Baldwin might just as well have directed his ire at Seymour Krim."
But Baldwin did not. In fact, in Baldwin's Village Voice review of Krim's 1961 Views of a Nearsighted Cannoneer collection, which included his essays on blacks, Baldwin called Krim, "God bless him, almost the only writer of my generation who has managed to release himself from the necessity of being either romantic or defensive about Negroes." And Krim's "Anti-Jazz" made Baldwin exclaim, "Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, King Oliver, and my mother and my father thank you, baby."
Let's find out why.
lIn 1957, Krim's "Anti-Jazz" and Mailer's "White Negro" both treated the same subject of black influence on white behavior. Mailer clearly won the marketing contest. "The White Negro" was a brilliant formulation. But Mailer took the romantic view that the influence was profound, that white hipsters "had absorbed the existentialist synapses of the Negro." Krim saw a lot of ignorant white people playing dress-up.
These people, the white jazz-lovers, hear only the extract of the kind of life that produced this music; its sensuality, rhythm, humor, passion, even closeness and intimacy. It is especially attractive to young people who are disillusioned with the values of white society. But no matter how beat they are themselves, the majority have literally no idea of the conditions of life that lie behind this music.
What did the white listeners have no idea about? Well, Krim spelled it out. And these lines are what made Krim, as Baldwin noted, neither romantic nor defensive about black life.
Does the reader think that jazz, that great beat, those beautiful melodies, the way a blues singer belts a song, the way a sax man raises up on that platform like an athlete and lets the combinations fly and flow from his horn are anything but Negro in their central heart? They are the Negro in America thus far, the humor, wit, easy stride, subtle rhythm, great power; but also, which is harder to accept, the awful ignorance, poverty, violence, lack of constancy, me-firstism, and all the other facts that open-minded people who know Negro life well-the inner lower-middle-class communities of Harlem, or Newark, or Durham, North Carolina-see all too often. And that too is part of jazz.
It's not hard to see how politically incorrect this would be if written today, but it also turned out to be politically incorrect in 1957. Even Baldwin's defense did not quiet Krim's critics in the Village. So in 1959, Krim revisited the topic in "Ask for a White Cadillac," which appeared in a little magazine called Exodus, published by Greenwich Village's very hip - and still impressively progressive - Judson Memorial Church.
But if Krim's Village detractors were hoping for an apology, they did not know Krim. In fact, in 1959, nobody did. He was 37 years old that year and still just starting to turn out the personal, subjective, proto-New Journalism articles that would win him his scattered but passionate and sturdy fans. Even Krim did not know Krim. The excitement of his essays is in traveling alongside him as he discovers his own mind; undaunted if not unafraid to follow his thoughts wherever they led him.
They led him into some dangerous mental neighborhoods.
In "White Cadillac," Krim recounts his own youthful admiration, infatuation, and eventual disillusionment with 1940s Harlem. Like an excited tourist who experiences a personal liberation in a new land Krim felt that, yes, this is my true home! This is where I belong. "Here was the paradise of sensuality (to my thirsting eyes) that I had dreamed of for years," he writes. "The streets hummed and jumped with life right out in the open, such a contrast to the hidden, bottled-up phobias that I knew so well."
But his time in Harlem also revealed to him his participation in American racism and how it transformed him in ways that were uncomfortable to discover. He even saw that racism released him from certain problems of Jewish identity that confronted him elsewhere. "For the first time in my adult life I felt completely confident and masterful in my relationship to both sexes because society judged me the superior, just as in a different,
Irish-bar-type scene it made me stand out unto myself because of the Yiddish bit," he wrote.
In Harlem, the Jewish Krim was simply white, and he briefly experienced life "like a southern white, understanding for the first time the tremendous psychological impregnability to the cracker (every white man has a built-in colonel-kit!) in having an "inferior" class beneath him. It was an astonishing revelation to realize that you could be a better person-more attentive, calmer, happier, and that last word is the truth-for the wrong reasons."
These revelations about himself, and equally uncomfortable revelations about black life in Harlem, ended Krim's sojourns there. But they are exactly why we should give Krim a job on the dayshift of the black-Jewish relations industry.
Kosher Police Blox Lox |
|
by Emily Goldsher, March 8, 2010 |
|
You know, I've taken a lot of crap from the Kosher police in my lifetime: marshmallows, select Dunkin' Donuts locations, fancy cheese, and while I was growing up, Oreos! All verboten by the munchy-hatin' rabbis that make the Kosher rules. But now they are going after my beloved lox, and I am putting my foot down.
Gothamist reports that though the OU denies it, ultra-Orthodox group Chevra Mehadrin is revoking the hechsher (stamp of approval) of all lox, due to a parasite that sometimes infests wild salmon. Personally, I'm willing to risk a few worms here and there if it means chowing down on that perfect bagel on a Sunday morning!
Sure, I might be falling prey to the sensationalist nature of internet news, but I can't help starting a call to arms when a Jewish delicacy is threatened: save the lox!
Jimmy Carter Finds Common Ground With Pro-Israel Republicans |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 8, 2010 |
|
While the former president has had, at best, a spotty relationship with pro-Israel supporters in the past, we couldn't help but wonder, is it simply a coincidence that The Carter Centers logo has a striking resemblance to the logo of the Republican Jewish Coalitions?
Carter Center logo
RJC logo
If anything, we at Jewcy find this to be a hilarious coincidence, especially when you take into consideration the differences between Carter and Jewish republicans.
The Breakdown:
Carter Center: Founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Carter.
Mission: "wage peace, fight disease, and build hope by both engaging with those at the highest levels of government and working side by side with poor and often forgotten people."
On Israel: "When Israel does occupy this territory deep within the West Bank, and connects the 200-or-so settlements with each other, with a road, and then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, or in many cases even crossing the road, this perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa."
Republican Jewish Coalition: Founded in 1985
Mission: "to be a permanent Jewish presence in the Republican community and a credible Republican presence in the Jewish community."
On Israel: "Israel is a democracy in a region that is unstable and where rogue countries continue to be hostile to America. Israel is also the U.S.'s strongest ally in the War on Terrorism, and is in a unique position to facilitate the war effort in the Middle East, as well as share her extensive experience in battling terrorism domestically, militarily, and diplomatically. The evil and vicious September 11th terrorist attacks against the U.S. are indicative of the sort of terrorism Israel is threatened with every day"
So what's the answer to this silly mix up? Stay tuned and find out.
Justin Taylor: The Jewcy Interview |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 8, 2010 |
|
You hear a lot of writers say that their work is, at often times, auto-biographical, especially in their early work. While reading through Everything... I got the distinct feeling that might be the case with some of your stories. Is that assumption correct?
Sometimes an event that really happened inspired a
story-such as "Go Down Swinging." I really did know a guy who broke his
ankle jumping off a roof, then considered undertaking the insane DIY
medical care described in that story, but I don't think it counts as
"autobiographical" in the sense that you seem to mean. My character,
Roger, is not a cipher for that guy I knew, and that guy is not
answerable for anything that my fictional character is or does. If
he-the guy-even ever sees the story, I hope he gets a kick out of it. If
not, well that's just part of the price you pay knowing a writer: we're
like explorers with old-timey cameras, and sometimes the natives are
going to wind up getting a bit of soul stolen. But the final word on
these stories is that they are emphatically not reportage. You
can't find Andrea from "Jewels Flashing in the Night of Time" among my
Facebook friends. She has no reality independent of the short story she
appears in.
You talk about (Silver Jews) David Berman an awful lot, and you contributed a pretty extensive playlist over at Largehearted Boy: How much influence does music have on your writing?
I don't understand how music works on a technical level well enough to be able to steal ideas from it. And even in terms of the prose itself, while I do hope my work has a strong auditory dimension, I'm more interested in the aesthetics and poetics of the voice, and the rigorous play of language. But I'm definitely predisposed toward name-checking artists or particular works of music, and toward characters for whom music is a large part of how they relate to the world and to themselves. That last part is definitely my fully conscious attempt to reproduce on the page a sense of the role that music plays in my own day-to-day life.
Berman is off in
his own whole category, as far as I'm concerned. He just hits me in a
way that's not like anything else. There's not a single Silver Jews song
I would skip if it came on my stereo, and his poetry collection, Actual
Air, is one of my favorite books of poems. (I wrote a big piece
about it for The Believer last year.) Just a major, major
artist, in my opinion. If my protracted exposure to his work has shaped
my own at all, so much the better.
In the New York Times review of your book, Todd Pruzan describes the story "Tennessee" as "a classic Jews-out-of-water tale". Beyond your fiction, is the label "Jew-out-of water" something you relate to?
All Jews are out of water all the time. Isn't that like our whole thing?
That's the joke answer-except I'm not really kidding. The truth is, I've always been more likely to feel out of water within Judaism than out of water on account of being a Jew. It kind of amazes me how much attention the "Jewish angle" of this book has gotten. "Tennessee" notwithstanding, it felt to me like I had almost completely sidelined any notion of Jews or Judaism, but that's coming from someone who grew up in an enormous Jewish community-the descriptions of Jewish life in South Florida in "Tennessee" are more or less nonfiction-so my sense of what counts as a lot versus a little is probably way off.
And actually, my family was consistently involved
in synagogue life when I was growing up. Both my parents sat on various
boards, volunteered time, and so on. I did Hebrew school, Bar Mitzvah
lessons, plus of course the thing itself, and later on something called
Thursday Night School, which I never really understood the point of-but
of course my understanding it was at best incidental to my having to do
it. That's how it is with kids: you sign them up; they go. In any case,
my family was actually a good deal less derelict in their participation
in Jewish life than the family depicted in "Tennessee." But I did always
have-and to some degree, retain-a sense of unease about that
involvement, like everyone else actually belongs there but I'm only
faking, or something. Which leads us nicely into your next question,
does it not?
I feel like outsiders play pretty important roles in many of your stories, did you feel like an outsider growing up?
Yeah, absolutely. In retrospect, though, I often
wonder if that perception of being an outsider was really as accurate as
I thought/felt at the time or times. I was never one of the
super-popular kids, but I also never really wanted to be. I had some
pretty lonely stretches, and all the usual struggles that kids have, but
generally speaking I was always good at finding or creating
communities, circles of friends, etc. I definitely didn't experience
anything like the isolation that, say, Brad from "The New Life" feels
after he ditches his only real friend in the world. There were times
when it felt that way, though, and so irrespective of whether
younger-me's perceptions really corresponded to any given reality on the
ground, or whether it was more of a self-romanticizing angst thing, the
emotions generated by those perceptions were real, and were true, and
in a certain sense still are true and always will be. Because emotional
memory is like pangs in a phantom limb-you're staring at this empty
space, and you know there's nothing there, but damn if it isn't aching.
Personally, though, I think that what a lot of these stories are
concerned with-more than being an outsider-is that attempt to forge
communities or connections, pairs and trios and small groups that are
based on an intimate affinity of some kind, and then to negotiate the
terms and conditions of existence within that world, which is of course
no less difficult or fraught a proposition than doing so in the larger
world.
do you feel like one now?
Oh, I don't know. A writer, like a Jew, is a kind of eternal outsider, not least of all among his own people or in his own skin. That's a kind of breathless, bumper-stickery answer, and you'd be right to be suspicious of it, but for whatever it's worth I really do believe it to be the truth. That said, I certainly can't complain about the way this book has been received-people have been very supportive, and they seem to be reading it and "getting" it. And I feel very lucky to be part of several communities of artists-I'm thinking specifically here of the scene that's coalesced around HTMLGiant.com, and also of working with Jeremy Schmall, Mark Wagner, and Amy Mees on our arts annual, the Agriculture Reader. So in every practical, pragmatic or, you know, real sense, I'd be delusional to try and claim "outsider" status. But the heart is a strange place with its own rules or lack thereof, and so in the deeply irrational and emotional senses of the word "feel"- yeah, definitely, an outsider always and forever.
You know when I don't feel like an outsider? When
I'm writing. Sitting at the desk, not warming up or editing drafts, but
actually in the act of producing words in a new order they've never been
in before, telling a story that's never before been told. That's when I
feel like the best incarnation of myself; that's me being who and what
and where and how I'm meant to be.
What does the future hold for you?
The next few months will see a bit of touring to support the collection, and the completion of an anthology of photographs that I'm co-editing with my friend Eva Talmadge. And I'm working on revisions and additions to my first novel, with an eye toward finishing the manuscript sometime this year and putting it out sometime in 2011. I've been very lucky to have this semester off from teaching, but I assume I'll be back in the classroom this fall, and I'm looking forward to that-to all of it, actually. I mean, why not?
Justin Taylor: The Jewcy Interview |
|
by Jason Diamond, March 8, 2010 |
|
You hear a lot of writers say that their work is, at often times, auto-biographical, especially in their early work. While reading through Everything... I got the distinct feeling that might be the case with some of your stories. Is that assumption correct?
Sometimes an event that really happened inspired a
story-such as "Go Down Swinging." I really did know a guy who broke his
ankle jumping off a roof, then considered undertaking the insane DIY
medical care described in that story, but I don't think it counts as
"autobiographical" in the sense that you seem to mean. My character,
Roger, is not a cipher for that guy I knew, and that guy is not
answerable for anything that my fictional character is or does. If
he-the guy-even ever sees the story, I hope he gets a kick out of it. If
not, well that's just part of the price you pay knowing a writer: we're
like explorers with old-timey cameras, and sometimes the natives are
going to wind up getting a bit of soul stolen. But the final word on
these stories is that they are emphatically not reportage. You
can't find Andrea from "Jewels Flashing in the Night of Time" among my
Facebook friends. She has no reality independent of the short story she
appears in.
You talk about (Silver Jews) David Berman an awful lot, and you contributed a pretty extensive playlist over at Largehearted Boy: How much influence does music have on your writing?
I don't understand how music works on a technical level well enough to be able to steal ideas from it. And even in terms of the prose itself, while I do hope my work has a strong auditory dimension, I'm more interested in the aesthetics and poetics of the voice, and the rigorous play of language. But I'm definitely predisposed toward name-checking artists or particular works of music, and toward characters for whom music is a large part of how they relate to the world and to themselves. That last part is definitely my fully conscious attempt to reproduce on the page a sense of the role that music plays in my own day-to-day life.
Berman is off in
his own whole category, as far as I'm concerned. He just hits me in a
way that's not like anything else. There's not a single Silver Jews song
I would skip if it came on my stereo, and his poetry collection, Actual
Air, is one of my favorite books of poems. (I wrote a big piece
about it for The Believer last year.) Just a major, major
artist, in my opinion. If my protracted exposure to his work has shaped
my own at all, so much the better.
In the New York Times review of your book, Todd Pruzan describes the story "Tennessee" as "a classic Jews-out-of-water tale". Beyond your fiction, is the label "Jew-out-of water" something you relate to?
All Jews are out of water all the time. Isn't that like our whole thing?
That's the joke answer-except I'm not really kidding. The truth is, I've always been more likely to feel out of water within Judaism than out of water on account of being a Jew. It kind of amazes me how much attention the "Jewish angle" of this book has gotten. "Tennessee" notwithstanding, it felt to me like I had almost completely sidelined any notion of Jews or Judaism, but that's coming from someone who grew up in an enormous Jewish community-the descriptions of Jewish life in South Florida in "Tennessee" are more or less nonfiction-so my sense of what counts as a lot versus a little is probably way off.
And actually, my family was consistently involved
in synagogue life when I was growing up. Both my parents sat on various
boards, volunteered time, and so on. I did Hebrew school, Bar Mitzvah
lessons, plus of course the thing itself, and later on something called
Thursday Night School, which I never really understood the point of-but
of course my understanding it was at best incidental to my having to do
it. That's how it is with kids: you sign them up; they go. In any case,
my family was actually a good deal less derelict in their participation
in Jewish life than the family depicted in "Tennessee." But I did always
have-and to some degree, retain-a sense of unease about that
involvement, like everyone else actually belongs there but I'm only
faking, or something. Which leads us nicely into your next question,
does it not?
I feel like outsiders play pretty important roles in many of your stories, did you feel like an outsider growing up?
Yeah, absolutely. In retrospect, though, I often
wonder if that perception of being an outsider was really as accurate as
I thought/felt at the time or times. I was never one of the
super-popular kids, but I also never really wanted to be. I had some
pretty lonely stretches, and all the usual struggles that kids have, but
generally speaking I was always good at finding or creating
communities, circles of friends, etc. I definitely didn't experience
anything like the isolation that, say, Brad from "The New Life" feels
after he ditches his only real friend in the world. There were times
when it felt that way, though, and so irrespective of whether
younger-me's perceptions really corresponded to any given reality on the
ground, or whether it was more of a self-romanticizing angst thing, the
emotions generated by those perceptions were real, and were true, and
in a certain sense still are true and always will be. Because emotional
memory is like pangs in a phantom limb-you're staring at this empty
space, and you know there's nothing there, but damn if it isn't aching.
Personally, though, I think that what a lot of these stories are
concerned with-more than being an outsider-is that attempt to forge
communities or connections, pairs and trios and small groups that are
based on an intimate affinity of some kind, and then to negotiate the
terms and conditions of existence within that world, which is of course
no less difficult or fraught a proposition than doing so in the larger
world.
do you feel like one now?
Oh, I don't know. A writer, like a Jew, is a kind of eternal outsider, not least of all among his own people or in his own skin. That's a kind of breathless, bumper-stickery answer, and you'd be right to be suspicious of it, but for whatever it's worth I really do believe it to be the truth. That said, I certainly can't complain about the way this book has been received-people have been very supportive, and they seem to be reading it and "getting" it. And I feel very lucky to be part of several communities of artists-I'm thinking specifically here of the scene that's coalesced around HTMLGiant.com, and also of working with Jeremy Schmall, Mark Wagner, and Amy Mees on our arts annual, the Agriculture Reader. So in every practical, pragmatic or, you know, real sense, I'd be delusional to try and claim "outsider" status. But the heart is a strange place with its own rules or lack thereof, and so in the deeply irrational and emotional senses of the word "feel"- yeah, definitely, an outsider always and forever.
You know when I don't feel like an outsider? When
I'm writing. Sitting at the desk, not warming up or editing drafts, but
actually in the act of producing words in a new order they've never been
in before, telling a story that's never before been told. That's when I
feel like the best incarnation of myself; that's me being who and what
and where and how I'm meant to be.
What does the future hold for you?
The next few months will see a bit of touring to support the collection, and the completion of an anthology of photographs that I'm co-editing with my friend Eva Talmadge. And I'm working on revisions and additions to my first novel, with an eye toward finishing the manuscript sometime this year and putting it out sometime in 2011. I've been very lucky to have this semester off from teaching, but I assume I'll be back in the classroom this fall, and I'm looking forward to that-to all of it, actually. I mean, why not?