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Gene Lichtenstein

Gene Lichtenstein

Books: Mailer scrutinizes evil in form of young Hitler

Power, politics and sex. War and violence. What more could he write about, you might well ask. Now, just turned 84, he has published \”The Castle in the Forest,\” which attempts to engage and scrutinize the nature of evil personified in the life of the young Adolf Hitler. He — Hitler as a youth — ostensibly is the subject of the novel.

Believe It or Not

\”It\’s All True\” (Simon & Schuster, 2004) by David Freeman offers us a portrait of an outsized Hollywood, so unbelievable that it must be dead on. It is, more precisely, a novel, lovingly unfolded about the movie business: How it works and how its players — adults spoiled by too much money and power — act out their lives. \”Oh me-oh, my-oh,\” as Henry Wearie would say.

Wearie is the novel\’s hero. He is actually a fictitious character, a screenwriter trying to hustle a script idea into a movie deal, but in a voice that sounds eerily like that of Freeman, who himself is a screenwriter. In its way, this book serves as a more knowing successor to Freeman\’s earlier work, \”A Hollywood Education,\” published 18 years ago, after the author had moved to Los Angeles from New York.

The Silent Minority

If there had been any doubts that I was in another country, they were erased when the first reviews of Mel Gibson\’s "The Passion of the Christ" began to appear in the London press.

Tikkun Alone

Tikkun has, of course, changed since its early magazine years. Its statement of purpose today describes Tikkun as a center for those of all religious and spiritual traditions who seek to integrate spiritual depth with social change. It is no longer in its ambition a voice solely of and for Jews.

When Marriage Sinks Into Madness

Over the past 40 years, Ted Solotaroff has developed a reputation as a distinguished literary critic and editor. Then, in 1998, at 70, he suddenly appeared, full-blown, on the literary stage as a writer, winning the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction for the first volume of his memoirs, "Truth Comes in Blows."

Hollywood, History and the Holocaust

The process of changing Nazi history in films and television actually began some time ago in films and television. From Chaplin\’s \”The Great Dictator\” to \”Hogan\’s Heroes,\” from Ernst Lubitsch\’s \”To Be or Not to Be\” to \”The Grey Zone,\” World War II and the Holocaust have been told almost solely from the point of view of the victors and the victims.

Secession Question

USC recently hosted a panel discussion around this topic: Is secession good for the Jews?

Land of the ‘Lost’

In 1936, there were 130 million Americans, roughly 3 percent were Jewish, and many existed on the margins of an anti-Semitic society. FDR was re-elected president of the United States in 1936 — a landslide victory.

Gathering for Peace

Last Sunday afternoon, I and about 30 other Angelenos accepted an invitation to gather at the Brentwood home of Joan and Rabbi Leonard Beerman to meet with Nafez and Laila Nazzal, two Palestinian professors who were visiting Los Angeles.

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