Akiva Gottlieb nailed the Krimian essence in the LA Times book review of Missing a Beat,
“Krim’s verbose, misogynistic, endlessly vulgar vernacular caught some of the bop inflections of the Beat era, but the Beats never welcomed him. Certainly he cared more about the concrete than the numinous: You wouldn’t find a naked Krim penning odes to [...]
Seymour Krim review in Los Angeles Times
Allan Sherman’s judaizing impulse—the case of David Susskind
It’s a seeming throwaway on Allan Sherman’s first album, My Son, The Folk Singer,
Little David Susskind, shut up
Please don’t talk, please don’t talk
Little David Susskind, eat first
Then you’ll talk
David Susskind came to public fame in the late 1950s with the talk show Open End, which sometimes ran for hours. It had no predetermined time slot. [...]
New review of Seymour Krim book praises his Harlem pieces
It’s been interesting to see that Seymour Krim’s entertaining, honest, and outrageous articles on Harlem and New York black life have been embraced by reviewers who disagree otherwise. There’s something there that can’t be denied.
From NewWorld Review,
“If Krim does occasionally lapse into self-indulgence, he also exhibits one of the most acute and, ironically, objective social [...]
Yes, the blacks and the Jews, but cool this time
Head Butler is a great source for learning about great stuff and when I checked it today these lines about blues musician Junior Wells and his record, Hoodoo Man Blues, jumped off the screen and into my brain’s Seymour Krim arena,
If they sound as if they’re in a club, that’s deliberate; this is pure Chicago [...]
Review of American Radical, documentary about Norman Finkelstein
I reviewed American Radical for the Forward here .
He’s a figure that gets people heated, and for good reason.
Deli news and a Seymour Krim hangout
The Times today covered the changing territory of the Jewish deli, which in too many cases has devolved into joints where tourists marvel at ridiculously large sandwiches that discourage actual eating (for shame, Carnegie Deli, for shame).
I’m all for the innovations and can tell you that the house-made sodas at Saul’s in Berkeley are terrific.
But [...]
Ellison’s Invisible Man and my kind of politics
Just finished reading Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and it ends with one of those great affirmations that has always been my kind of politics. It’s the politics of ecstasy, I guess.
Very near the end of the novel the Invisible Man says,
“Until some gang succeeds in putting the world in a strait jacket, its definition is [...]
Bookforum review again
Didn’t notice before that Missing a Beat is the featured Daily Review at Bookforum today.
continue reading >>Vivian Gornick reviews Missing a Beat for Bookforum
Heavyweight critic and great essayist Vivian Gornick reviews Missing a Beat in the April/May issue of Bookforum, and her hardheaded take on Seymour Krim includes this assessment,
Krim developed an essay-writing persona—neurotic, ambitious, angry, and self-mocking—through which he made an identity out of his breakdowns, his hungers, his envy of those who had achieved worldly success: [...]
Great high school newspapers
Big web guy and mensch Dave Winer wins my heart by being a Queens kid who never let his love for New York die, despite decades in the Bay Area (the un-New York).
A few days ago he posted about his high school newspaper, Bronx Science’s Daily Planet, and the photo (left) on the cover set [...]
