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novelist

On the tricky question of ‘who is a Jew[ish writer]?’

So we return, with the inevitability of quarrels in a shul, to the question posed at the outset: what makes a Jewish writer? I promised to avoid it, but there is a Wittgensteinian way out (and by the way, was he a Jewish philosopher?) A Jewish writer is someone whom we choose to call a \”Jewish\” writer. Would we rather have a clear category or fecundity and individuality of expression? Uniformity of commitment or divergence? The dilemma of modern Jewish writing is the same as that which bedevils modern Judaism: Where one can be everything, how likely is it that in the end, bristling with talent and showered with opportunity, one will come to nothing?

Books: Brits behaving badly

Interview with author Charlotte Mendelson about her novel \”When We Were Bad\”.

UJ’s Levy crafts confab to celebrate authors

A new bookshelf, overflowing with volumes, testifies to Gady Levy\’s latest and perhaps most ambitious endeavor: the Celebration of Jewish Books, which begins on Monday and extends through an all-day festival on Sunday. The celebration will offer lectures and signings with 40 authors — including big names, such as Larry King, Michael Chabon, Kirk Douglas and Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) — plus music and dance performances, food and a thousand titles for sale, provided by Borders and the Hebrew-language bookseller Steimatzky.\n

A ‘Victory Garden’ grows (in Brooklyn) from writer’s fertile mind

In the living room of novelist Merrill Joan Gerber\’s home in Sierra Madre is a harpsichord that is most often played by her husband, a retired Pasadena City College history professor. The presence of this musical instrument is fitting, because music plays a major role in Gerber\’s latest book, \”The Victory Gardens of Brooklyn.\” At one point in \”Victory Gardens,\” Gerber\’s 27th book, the central character, Musetta, a pianist and stand-in for Gerber\’s own mother, ponders the magic of music. It \”made her feel she was flying outside over the treetops, over the river, away past Brooklyn, past the cemeteries and the houses and the endless stores of dead chickens and glassy-eyed fish.\”

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