I have been reading two books lately, sort of shifting from one to the other — a bad habit, I know, but it has been with me too long to correct at this point.
I despise \’Schindler\’s List\’ because it ends on a redemptive note, and I don\’t see the slightest bit of redemption in the Shoah…There\’s all this nonsense out there about healing, but I don\’t want to heal anything. I want to rip open the stitches. I want readers to bleed.\”\nDon\’t get author Melvin Jules Bukiet started about the cliché of the sad-eyed Holocaust survivor.
In these scandalous times, is there anything left to say about sex?
TV offers us All-Monica all the time. The globally accessible Internet offers its own virtual red-light district. Surrounded by wall-to-wall visuals and 24-hour media blather, we\’re inundated with sexual information. Ultimately, inevitably, it has become boring, degenerating into vaguely provocative background noise.
The idea for Rochelle Majer Krich\’s new mystery, \”Blood Money,\” goes back to the day she discovered some startling photographs in her parents\’ china closet.
Think Jean-Claude van Itallie, and you think, \”icon of the 1960s.\”
While cities such as Detroit and St. Louis were holding major Jewish book festivals year after year, drawing celebrity authors such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, observers here asked, Why isn\’t there a Jewish book festival in Los Angeles?
For as long as she can remember, Dr. Beth Karlan has been driven to answer one elusive question: what is the difference between a normal cell and a cancerous cell? While the question is common among medical researchers, Karlan\’s progress in discovering at least a partial answer has been both heartening and a continuing stimulus to continue the search.
When thecolumnist and author Jack Newfield started work on his documentaryabout Robert F. Kennedy, his mind was rooted as much in the presentas it was in the past. Yes, a large part of the purpose of thethree-hour special, \”Robert F. Kennedy: A Memoir\” (Discovery Channel,Sunday, June 7, 8 p.m.), was to commemorate and honor the latesenator on the 30th anniversary of his assassination.
\”He was a satyr, a black marketeer, a drunk and a savior.\”\nThe pithy description by author Thomas Keneally refers, of course, to Oskar Schindler, the flawed but ultimately heroic German businessman who saved his 1,200 Jewish employees during the Holocaust.
In March 1996, John Turturro packed a trunk filledwith Primo Levi\’s books and traveled to a remote part of the Ukraine.His destination was the set of \”The Truce,\” Francesco Rosi\’s filmbased on Levi\’s searing 1963 memoir \”The Reawakening.\” Portraying theHolocaust author, Turturro sensed, would be the most difficult roleof his life.
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