Appreciating Kafka
The marvelous thing is that the bareness brought him not to self-denial or self-hatred but rather to a kind of tense curiosity about every Jewish phenomenon, especially the Jews of Eastern Europe, the Yiddish language,…
Category: World Literature
Some Things Take Time
I read the following in 2005; Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine came out in 2015: Ironic essay, novelistic narrative, autobiographical fragment, historical fact. Flight of fantasy—the synthetic power of the novel is capable of combining…
Our Father
In the constellation of geniuses, he is a blinding light and father of us all. (I exclude Shakespeare because for Shakespeare no human epithet is enough.)… I think Ulysses is the most diverting, brilliant, intricate,…
Writing En Plein Air
Have you longed for the chance to sit outside and write while listening to the birds, smelling the sweetness of the grass and blooming trees, watching the beauty of the dancing trees, and feeling the…
What To Do/14
There was nothing to do but wait it out. My mind has to become accustomed to loneliness. And when one is alone there is nothing to do but study. — I.B. Singer, In My Father’s…
Svetlana Alexievich: Fascinated by People
Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year. Her oral history, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, appeared this spring in the US. Translated by Bela Shayevich, the book is a compelling…
Accept Loss Forever: Ono No Komachi & Izumi Shikibu
I am glad to have read The Ink Dark Moon, Jane Hirshfeld’s translations, with the aid of Mariko Aratani, of the Heian Court’s poets—Izumi Shikibu and Ono No Komachi. Several of Kerouac’s writing maxims came to…
The Knight of the Mournful Countenance
“The calling that I profess,” replied DQ, “does not permit me to do otherwise. An easy pace, pleasure, and repose — those things were invented for delicate courtiers; but toil, anxiety, and arms — they…
Let Emily Dickinson Reassure You
Dear Bella Levenshteyn Let Emily Dickinson reassure you– Much Madness is divinest Sense — To a discerning Eye — Much Sense — the starkest Madness — ‘Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail —…