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Judith Butler, Once More a Target of Critics Who Would Silence Her

February 23, 2014 /0 Comments/in /by

Readers here may recall I’ve written and shared about literary scholar and contemporary philosopher Judith Butler, a frequent target of criticism by right-wing conservative Jewish commentators, owing to positions of hers such as support for the boycott/divest/sanction (BDS) movement with regard to Israel. Some people in this debate–like Peter Beinart in his book The Crisis of Zionism–support boycotting only those goods that come from the Occupied Territories, not all of Israel. That’s my position, too. I’m not certain where Butler lands on that point–but regardless, unlike her opponents, I fully support her right to freely express herself and be heard, in all realms–political, critical and aesthetic.

All this comes up again because of a new instance of the Jewish establishment trying to banish her voice from the communal conversation. In the current episode, Philip Weiss writes in a blog post headed, “Jewish community commits intellectual suicide before our eyes,” that Butler had been asked to participate in a March 6 discussion of Franz Kafka at NYC’s Jewish Museum, but the invitation was withdrawn, owing to what Weiss believes was ‘pressure from donors.’ Weiss writes, “One critic said, ‘The hosting of [BDS] advocate Judith Butler by The Jewish Museum is a slap in the face to every Jew,’ Richard Allen, head of JCC Watch, told JNS.org.” This, all about a discussion of Kafka, with no direct relevance to Israel.

In the same vein of craven submission to angry types, the museum also recently canceled a panel that was to discuss John Judis’s important new book Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict. Many Jews on the right are nowadays inflamed by discussions like these, and many organizations, whether or not they share the same conservative ideology, succumb to threats and pressure.

This is all kind of personal to me. Judith Butler and I grew up in the same Jewish community in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, where her father, known to all his patients as “Danny,” was a friendly family dentist. He looked after the teeth of all five Turners. He resembled Jack Paar, but nicer looking. Judith’s sister Diane was in my same year in school, where we knew each other. She moved to NY at around the same time I did, as part of a modern dance company, and we continued to see each other in the city from time to time. I occasionally heard from Diane about her sister, Judith, already then a professor, and a rising star in academia. She is an honorable person and a serious scholar. She should not be castigated or exiled for what I know to be an honest expression of belief, arrived at through careful deliberation and the weighing of difficult moral choices. As an example of her thoughtfulness, I submit this transcript of a talk she gave last February at Brooklyn College. It is well worth reading, and all in her own words.

#FridayReads, April 4–A Week for Bookselling & Publishing Memoirs: “Amazonia” by James Marcus & “Stet” by Diane Athill

February 21, 2014 /0 Comments/in , /by

Amazonia #FridayReads, April 4–AMAZONIA: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.com Juggernaut by Employee #55, James Marcus’s witty and winning memoir of working at Amazon from 1996-2001, which he published with The New Press in 2004. Having earlier this year read and written about Brad Stone’s THE EVERYTHING STORE: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, which briefly cited Marcus’s book, I also read Marcus’s review of it in Harper’s. I made a point to also read George Packer’s February 2014 New Yorker articles on Amazon, “Cheap Words” and “Amazon and the Perils of Non-Disclosure.” In the latter piece, Packer likens Amazon executives, secure in their Seattle redoubt parceling out only the most limited information about the company, to American officials during the Iraq War confined to Baghdad’s Green Zone who only shared information that suggested the war was going great. I found this analogy quite striking, and suggested, that at least from Packer’s perspective, things may not be going so well for the retail “juggernaut.” Seeing that Marcus was a quoted source for Packer, Marcus’s book has been squarely on my radar for a few months, so I’m glad now to have gotten a copy and begun reading it. It’s immediately enjoyable, with Marcus chronicling the decidedly weird and geeky culture of Amazon and his first meeting with Bezos, when the Amazon founder asked him to “explain a complicated process in as simple a manner as possible.” Humor is sprinkled throughout, as when he begins his new editorial job by writing a 45-word spiel on the seafaring novels of Patrick O’Brian.Amazonia back

I’m also reading STET: An Editor’s Life, Diane Athill’s London publishing memoir spanning the end of WWII 40s to the 90s with Andre Deutsch Ltd. Athill knew and edited many great writers, including Brian Moore and Mordecai Richler for several of their early books. She recounts having also published Philip Roth’s first novel, LETTING GO, which did well enough that they were going to make an offer on his second book, WHEN SHE WAS GOOD. I love the way she presents this embarrassment:

Stet “[We] decided to calculate the advance on precisely what we reckoned the book would sell–which I think was 4,000 copies at the best–and that [offer] was not accepted. As far as I know WHEN SHE WAS GOOD was not a success–but the next novel Philip wrote was PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT.

This space represents a tactful silence.”

 

These are illuminating and humorous recollections, gossipy but never malicious, coupled with a wise presentation of editing essentials. She’s also a very endearing narrator. I heard a lot of good things about this publishing memoir when it came out in 2000, and bought it on a trip to a Bay Area publishing sales conference back then. I’m glad I’ve finally made time to read it.Stet

Spurred by a 1928 Walker Evans Photo, Barbara Scheiber Publishes Her 1st Novel at Age 92

February 19, 2014 /5 Comments/in , /by

Amazing Washington Post story by Richard Leiby on 1st-time novelist Barbara Scheiber, 92 years old, who in a 1928 Walker Evans photograph saw what she and other family members believe is her father, with his mistress. From this, and much more, she’s written a novel, We’ll Go To Coney Island, published last month by Sowilo Press. Evans was from what I’ve read unabashed about photographing unsuspecting people. he famously did it on NYC subways, with a camera secreted in the folds of his coat. He noted on the print, “Couple at Coney Island, N.Y., 1928.”Walker Evans

Congratulations to my friend and longtime author of mine Dave Scheiber, and his mother Barbara. Dave, a veteran journalist, co-authored former NBA referee Bob Delaney‘s two books, the memoir Covert: My Years Infiltrating the Mob (2008) and Surviving the Shadows: A Journey of Hope into Post-Traumatic Stress (2011). I edited and published the former and co-agented the latter.

In Barbara Schieber’s bio I was interested to learn she grew up in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, “where one of her joys was writing and putting on plays with neighborhood friends. She graduated from Vassar shortly after Pearl Harbor, joining two classmates in a plan to organize local community support for the war effort. Their work led them to Clarion, Iowa, where her writing about the success of their innovative project came to the attention of Eleanor Roosevelt, who invited the young women to dinner at the White House to describe their experience to President Roosevelt. She went on to write news reports and radio plays on the war’s progress for United Press Radio, and later, produced a prize-winning series of radio plays for the Jewish Theological Seminary, broadcast on NBC.”

Scheiber’s intrepidity reminds me of the same trait exhibited that decade by my author and friend Ruth Gruber, who in 1940 was working as FDR’s Interior Secretary Harold Ickes ‘special representative in Alaska. For Gruber–who had become the world’s youngest Ph. D. in 1931 at age 20 after writing the first doctoral dissertation on Virginia Woolf, and who had traveled to the Soviet Arctic in the late 1930s–one of her assignments in Alaska was to study the feasibility of the territory as a haven for American homesteaders. Later, when the FDR administration began promoting homesteading in the vast space as a serious option for Americans, Ruth was the person who answered the large volume of mail addressed to Eleanor Roosevelt about Alaska. Later, after Ickes selected Gruber to escort 1,000 WWII refugees and Holocaust survivors from Italy to the US by ship–history that Ruth covered in her book Haven, which was dramatized in a CBS miniseries in 2000, with a tie-in edition I brought out the same year–she hosted Eleanor at Fort Ontario in Oswego, NY, where the refugees were housed until the war ended. Ruth lives in New York City today. At 102, I suspect she is probably the oldest surviving member of the FDR administration.

Reading Leiby’s story I was also reminded of another book about an inconstant father, The Duke of Deception by Geoffrey Wolff. Geoffrey’s brother Tobias Wolff wrote his own memoir of the same family, from his perspective, This Boy’s Life. Leiby’s story makes We’ll Go To Coney Island seem fascinating and I’m eager to read it.

Sam Roberts Band Launches New Album, “Lo-Fantasy,” at Mercury Lounge

February 13, 2014 /1 Comment/in , , /by

SATURDAY MORNING TV UPDATE: On Feb 15 the Sam Roberts Band will appear on CBS This Morning as part of their ‘Saturday Sessions’ series. According to press materials, they should go on at 8:45AM.
—-Sam Roberts Band
Had a blast Tuesday night as the Sam Roberts Band of Montreal blew into town for one night to launch their terrific new album “Lo-Fantasy,” drawing a boisterous crowd to a sold-out Mercury Lounge. It was my first time hearing them live, after years of enjoying their music on CBC Radio 3. They are a tight rock n’ roll machine, starting with a tremendous rhythm section of of bassist James Hall and drummer Josh Trager, who played on a clear see-through kit allowing the audience to peer through the armature and really see him bashing away on the skins. I stood directly in front of Hall and Trager, and for the first half of the show I thought maybe that was why they sounded so good, then I decided, nah, they’re just great players. At center-stage was frontman Roberts, a small guy and a powerful rock n’ roll package–a handsome man and a lithe performer who bursts with vocal energy while striking insistent guitar chords, and moving around a lot on stage. On the far side of him from me were a keyboard player, lead guitarist, and saxophonist. The 6-piece outfit ripped through the 11 songs on the new album. Several I had heard already, like “We’re All In This Together”–with good lyrics expressive to me of a communitarian ethic. There’s an extended video of it below, and the process of making the new album. Once they worked through the new record, they took a bow and left the stage. It was clear though they’d be back for more. When they came back out for encores, they really gave the crowd full value, by playing another four songs, all from earlier albums. The sound was a mix of pure pop propulsion–most songs were uptempo, driven by the bass and drums–with Roberts’ vocals and strong riffs and tasty licks from the other three instrumentalists.

Lo-Fantasy Sam Roberts BandYesterday was Paperbag Records‘ official release date of “Lo-Fantasy.” They put out many of my fave Canadian bands, like Elliott Brood, Cuff the Duke and Rural Alberta Advantage. Sam Roberts is well known beyond Montreal and Canada, with the current tour taking him and his band to many US cities between now and March 28: Chicago; Grand Rapids, MI; St. Paul; San Francisco; San Diego; Seattle; Portland; Boston area; Washington, DC; and Philadelphia, where they’ll be playing World Cafe Live, a show that I’d bet will end up on public radio here in the States.


As good as Sam Roberts Band turned out to be, I also liked the opening act, Heaven’s Jail. I walked in as they started and was glad I had arrived on time. Love when that happens at a live show, walking in on the first notes to a new sound that’s immediately likable. Going to hear live music ought to be as much about discovering new bands as hearing longtime faves. Mercury Lounge did a smart thing booking them as the stage-setter for the evening. Based here in NYC, they’re a basic drums/bass/lead guitar trio, and so offered a clean sonic appetizer that went down real easy. For reference, their sound reminded me in the vocals of Warren Zevon, and in their bright jangling guitar-driven riffs they made think of the Felice Brothers from upstate New York who I heard open for Josh Ritter last year. Heaven’s Jail also have a current album, “Angelmakers,” which you can hear at their bandcamp page. I look forward to hearing them again.

After the Sam Roberts Band left the stage for the last time, a lot of the crowd melted away in to the cold NY night. I had already met some great people during the course of the long evening–like Emily Curran, a NYC schoolteacher who had seen Sam Roberts several times–so I stuck around, eager to meet other folks who’d enjoyed the evening, either from among the audience or the musicians. It being a release party it’s no surprise there were lots of music industry people on hand, like Ben Liemer of music distributor The Orchard who I really enjoyed talking with. Next I recognized two of the three members of Heaven’s Jail, and so chatted with them–Francesco and Ethan, guitarist and drummer. I complimented them on their set and we launched in to a spirited discussion of our rock n’ roll upbringings. I mentioned mine in Cleveland, and the great shows I was able to see in my early days as a live music fan, beginning with a Canned Heat and Cream bill back in the day. These conversations–plus one in a group with Sam Roberts’ brother Tom, who I learned lives in NY, and with his friend Jim, a bass player, capped off a fun night.

Via this link are more pictures from last night’s show, two black & white publicity shots of the Sam Roberts Band, and two videos of them performing.
Cross-posted at my blog Honourary Canadian.

 

 

Lee Child Announces Next Jack Reacher Novel: PERSONAL

February 11, 2014 /2 Comments/in /by

As readers of this blog may recall from previous posts, I love Lee Child’s books, so I was excited to see this announcement on Twitter today: New Jack Reacher novel, PERSONAL
I love the title on this, because if you’ve read a Jack Reacher novel, you know that from injustices inflicted on others to antagonists trying to hurt him or push him off a case, he takes things personally. And yet,  he does it without ever losing his enormously capable ways and impressive self-possession. Last October I had the good fortune to meet Lee Child at a book party celebrating Valerie Plame’s novel Blowback . Here’s a shot of Valerie signing her book for Child.Lee Child, Valerie Plame

Clumsy Mansplaining Strikes the Republicans Yet Again

February 10, 2014 /0 Comments/in /by

Chinese finger trapClumsy mansplaining about the Clintons by Rand Paul & other Republicans shows, I suppose, that they want to try and shame Hillary out of the public square, and weary her of the race before it starts, before she can even declare in our out for 2016. But I don’t think it’ll will have that effect, not on her decision, nor on many key voting groups. In fact, it’s more likely to just lock in natural and growing Democratic advantages among key demographic groups nationally.

First, younger voters, many of whom weren’t even alive in the ’90s, will wonder why the enormous bother about illicit sex of a sort that surveys show is more and more common among that cohort. Women voters over forty will loathe the badgering of another woman, one whom history has shown they empathize with, especially when this issue is continually forced into the media by Republicans. In short, this is just the sort of innuendo campaign that drives negative inferences about the opposition up to the stratosphere. Over the past 2-3 decades, the Republican party has become an increasingly unsupportable proposition. I’m reminded of the Chinese finger trap, the toy you stick your fingers in at opposite ends where the harder you pull, the greater is its grip. That is the effect of Republican positions on their standing with voters—the more they cling to them pandering to their narrower and narrower base, the deeper they fall in to their toxic grip, making themselves less and less acceptable to large chunks of the electorate for national and federal offices in states that are not deep red politically.

Always Happy to See Novelist Walter Tevis Remembered and Appreciated

February 9, 2014 /4 Comments/in , , /by

Thursday January 28, 2016 Update: Though saddened by the recent death of David Bowie, I was buoyed to to learn that “Lazarus,” Bowie’s musical, is described as a sequel to the 1976 movie “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” which itself was based on Walter Tevis’s 1963 novel of the same name. Although Tevis died in 1988, I’m glad to know that his longtime agent, Susan Schulman, is still finding ways to license and repurpose his work, and in this instance to keep alive Tevis’s interplanetary visitor, Thomas Jerome Newton.

Monday February 10 Update: In a pleasant coincidence, this morning’s email brings more affirmation of the talents of the late Walter Tevis, whose novels I praised in yesterday in the post below. It was announced in the daily deal memo of Publishermarketplace.com that another his novels has been optioned for film:

Walter Tevis’s MOCKINGBIRD, to Robert Schwartz at Seismic Pictures, by Susan Schulman at Susan Schulman Literary Agency.*

Walter Tevis, gone 26 years and still having his books optioned. Pretty amazing, huh? Here’s a shot of an old galley I have of the novel. Mockingbird—
Sunday, February 9
Good essay by Malcolm Jones in the Daily Beast on how Walter Tevis’s novel The Man Who Fell to Earth, published in 1963, differs from the 1976 film version directed by Nicholas Roeg, starring David Bowie. I still love all Walter Tevis’s books, especially his chess novel, Queen’s Gambit. I met him when he was touring for that book in 1983. He came to visit Undercover Books despite a blizzard in Cleveland that day, because his editor at Random House had urged him to come see our bookstore. Though he had limited time between flights, he was genial and met several of our customers while signing copies of the new novel.

Tevis, who died in 1988, is way under-appreciated. He never wrote a mediocre book. His others include his pool novels The Hustler and The Color of Money (also both adapted for memorable films) and his other science fiction novel, The Steps of the Sun, which I brought out in paperback in 1988 when I was an editor at Collier Macmillan. Tevis’s characters were often in the midst of existential crises, certainly true for Bowie’s alien character in “The Man Who Fell to Earth”; Beth, the struggling teenaged chess prodigy in Queen’s Gambit; and Eddie Felson, the hard-drinking pool-player in “The Hustler,” played by Paul Newman opposite Jackie Gleason. For years there have been rumors of someone making a film of Queen’s Gambit but no one’s done it yet. Guess it’s in the same category as Jack Finney’s Time & Again, also much loved as a novel, and much discussed as a film, but not made, at least not yet.

Steps of the SunSteps of the Sun back cover
* Coincidentally, some years after I published Steps of the Sun, Tevis’s agent Susan Schulman introduced me to Eleanora Tevis, the late author’s widow, a Scotswoman. She in turn introduced me to friends of hers in Scotland, who then became good friends to me and my whole family, lodging us numerous times at their comfortable home in Glasgow. This was the Metzstein family, whose patriarch Isi was a notable architect, whom I eulogized after his death in 2012.