I met the late Abe Rosenthal once and spent a couple of hours with him, long enough to experience his famous temper. He had alot of rage inside him, which the fly-by psych in me would pinpoint to a tortuous childhood, including his near-crippling illness and the deaths of his father and four sisters, as Read More
So, I’m moderating this panel up at the Newport International Film Festival a little while ago, and it’s on Shakespeare on film, and I’m talking to one of the panelists, Michael York, the British actor who’s just come out with a valuable book, A Shakespearean Actor Prepares–but more to the point, he was a featured Read More
I feel conflicted about writing a review of Antony Sher’s embodiment of the Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi in Primo, although Sir Antony’s achievement is very fine, magnificent even, restrained, important, honest and uncorrupted.
An actor, however great, relating the horrors of the death camps on Broadway is nothing I relish seeing. I can’t even accept Read More
I feel conflicted about writing a review of Antony Sher’s embodiment of the Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi in Primo, although Sir Antony’s achievement is very fine, magnificent even, restrained, important, honest and uncorrupted.
An actor, however great, relating the horrors of the death camps on Broadway is nothing I relish seeing. I can’t even accept Read More
I haven’t been to ground zero. I have friends who have, fashionable people who make the trip of a Saturday morning to “bear witness” and then head back uptown for lunch at Swifty’s. Life must go on, we are told, and even were we not so advised, life would go on because that’s what life Read More
I teach two writing courses at Mt. Holyoke College, normally an orderly drill in which I try to supply useful strategies for a series of expressive tasks.
But of course “normally” vaporized this year as soon as the semester began, and I found myself, like every teacher in the country, faced with the question of Read More
Speak You Also: A Survivor’s Reckoning , by Paul Steinberg. Metropolitan Books, 163 pages, $21.
There is a character in Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz called Henri, one of the few figures in the book whom the master Holocaust memoirist singles out for contempt. Henri is a Jewish inmate from Paris, so young he Read More
“I didn’t want to make a movie proving the world is round,” Errol Morris keeps telling me. And “For my next movie I’m going to prove the sky is blue.” Things like that. And I can understand the source of his concern. His new film, Mr. Death , is more than a refutation of Holocaust Read More
Recently, we’ve had a heavy rainfall of books on the virtues and pleasures, the excitement and opportunity of living after 50. We’ve seen Gloria Steinem as beautiful as ever, more beautiful perhaps now the wind has made its mark on her willow-in-the-field look. We’ve seen Erica Jong, still playful, a blend of wit and hope, Read More
The Jell-O Lady
High above Times Square, in bright letters, we see the intimate thoughts of regular folks-intimate thoughts about Jell-O. “I make Jell-O gelatin shimmy, shake, and jiggle just for fun. It makes me giggle,” wrote one Joan Verdeal of Arvada, Colo.
It’s part of a contest. Those who entered were asked to explain Read More
