Stumbling Into Jews

The Basement Tapes — Allan Sherman version

markcohen12 — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:47:55 +0000

Half-century old reel-to-reel tapes stored in an East Coast basement recently surfaced, and they held three lost Allan Sherman parodies. I was tempted to say they are legendary, but they are too obscure for that. Nobody knew of them, and so no legends could be promulgated.

Two of the songs parody tunes from Porgy and Bess. They are “Summertime” and “There’s a Jaguar Leaving Soon for the Concord.”

The third Sherman song is, “You’re a Nudnick, Sondara Goldfarb.” It is a parody of “You’re a Queer One, Julie Jordan,” from Carousel.

Thank you, Mark! (Not myself. Another Mark)

Sephardic history, Sephardic Voices

markcohen12 — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:31:19 +0000

My review of Sephardi Family Life in the Early Modern Diaspora. The title is an intimidating mouthful, but the voices of 16th century Sephardim, found in Inquisition records and rabbinical responsa (legal opinions and rulings), are fresh and alive.

“I thought that Jesus Christ was the same person as Moses, son of Queen Esther,” one woman told the Inquisition.

You don’t hear that everyday.

Saul Bellow’s Letters draws another rave

markcohen12 — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:19:21 +0000

Got a kick just now from a review on NPR of Saul Bellow Letters, by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. She quoted one of my favorite lines from the book,

“and then a nice police dog chained to a parking meter, wearing a cast on his broken leg and barking. He may have been asking to see the humanity in relation to which he was supposed to be a dog.”

I quoted the line in my review in the Forward.

Listen to Goldstein here.

On Sitting Down To Read The New York Review of Books Once Again

markcohen12 — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 09:44:48 +0000

O golden-tongued Know-It-Alls of serene learning!
Fair plumed Applebaum! Queen of baleful histories!
Breathe deep-thinking on my reveries,
Speak up Daniel Mendelsohn, it’s page turning:
Table for two! for once again the fierce communing,
Between Brooklyn and Manhattan
Must I wade through; once more tattlin’
On myself and my television tuning.
Chief Editor! and ye titans of sitzfleish,
Begetters of my unleaped eternal dream,
I am not of mensch but of mische!
(What do they call this killer rhyme scheme?)
But when I’ve consumed this issue,
Give me faux degrees from Old Sofa U.

Letters of Saul Bellow are great

markcohen12 — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 23:38:10 +0000

Letters by Saul Bellow is a new book — and also probably the last new book — from Saul Bellow (unless someone issues the Bellow laundry lists, per the Woody Allen parody).

Read about it here.

Allan Sherman gets a nod from the Times

markcohen12 — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 23:33:16 +0000

Which made this article about him in the Forward even more timely than when I first thought of it.

Thanks, guys.

Choice decides Missing a Beat is choice

markcohen12 — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 23:15:02 +0000

Choice says it is the premier source for reviews of academic books, electronic media, and Internet resources of interest to those in higher education.

I sure hope so, because Choice likes Missing a Beat: The Rants and Regrets of Seymour Krim. Calls it “an excellent resource for anyone interested in journalism or in cultural or American studies.”

Plus,

“The volume includes brilliant essays on Norman Mailer, ‘white slumming’ in Harlem, and the so-called New York intellectuals—it includes something to stimulate or offend everyone (in keeping with Krim’s intent).”

Exactly right.

Two moods: rants, or regrets about earlier rants

markcohen12 — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 23:01:29 +0000

That’s how I put it in this podcast interview about Seymour Krim with Dan Friedman at the Forward newspaper.

And we talk about Krim from a Jewish angle, naturally.

Unedited thoughts on Seymour Krim

markcohen12 — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:58:37 +0000

Fans of Seymour Krim show up here and there, and writer and editor Ezra Glinter showed up at Zeek. He interviewed me about my new Krim collection, Missing a Beat, and I talked and talked.

Here it is.

“To find a shoe has always been my dream.”

markcohen12 — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:23:12 +0000

Ah, what a sweetie. We need a million more like her.

“To find a shoe has always been my dream,” is what Armenian doctoral student, Diana Zardaryan, told a New York Times reporter about her discovery of a 5,500-year-old leather shoe during a dig in Armenia.

How many people have their own individual dreams like Zardaryan? Too few. We dream the common dreams, leftover dreams — doggy-bag dreams — of fame and wealth, not ancient shoes or their equivalent.

We need a new movement of shoe dreamers.