That little jingle from the Patty Duke show dates me, but I found it irresistible after reading how researchers determined that Jews around the world are virtually cousins and genetically more like each other than they are like their non-Jewish neighbors. Jews thousands of miles apart share genetic markers commonly seen among distant relatives, such [...]
continue reading >>After I read Chabon’s chosen people article I was still hungry
The major real estate devoted to Michael Chabon’s “chosen people” piece in the New York Times reminded me that, like myself, many Jews stumble into Jews. As historian Michael Meyer said, for today’s Jews being Jewish is only a part of their total identity. But Jews are often more aware of this aspect of themselves than any [...]
continue reading >>Krim gets whacked, not made (He’s gone. Whaddya mean? Well, you know what I mean. He’s gone.)
The premise of my Missing a Beat collection was, first, that the Beats dumped Seymour Krim. It’s like that scene in Goodfellas when DeNiro gets the news that Joe Pesci, instead of being made, got whacked.
“He’s gone.”
“Whaddya mean? asks DeNiro.
“Well, you know what I mean. He’s gone.”
Well, I just got news like that about Krim. [...]
Seymour Krim does the Flat Foot Floogie
About a million years ago SUNY Buffalo flew me up to the campus to entice me into its English PhD program, and they arranged for me to meet Prof. Mark Shechner, then already a noted critic who went on to become a star on the Jewish American lit scene that was also my beat.
I didn’t [...]
My Moses Herzog moment
The uncontrollable urge to express himself on every issue of the day was a clear sign that Saul Bellow’s Moses Herzog was losing it. So I have always treated the temptation to comment on blogs or internet magazines as an evil impulse to be resisted.
But today I caved. I really let loose with a doozy [...]
Jewish Book World offers shrewd appreciation of Seymour Krim
The Summer 2010 issue of Jewish Book World includes a succinct and sharp-eyed review of Missing a Beat. This sentence is about a good a summary of the book as any,
“This volume brings together several highly individualistic documents of an era that is all too easily caricatured and dismissed, showing the surprising range of views that were possible (if [...]
Krim getting enough attention to make him uncomfortable
Vol. 1 Brooklyn this morning took notice of the ripples that Krim has lately made and wonders if he might finally be getting his due among a new generation of Jewish writers.
That would be nice. But it wouldn’t please Krim. If he was here the very possibility would fill him with enough conflicted sensations to [...]
Canonize this Jew: A bid to get Krim past the literary gate-keepers
The Chronicle of Higher Education has published my argument that Seymour Krim be added to reading lists, anthologies, and departments of Jewish literature and cultural studies.
What got me going on the Seymour Krim kick that led to Missing a Beat was his omission from every Beat anthology since the 1992 Portable Beat Reader. That led me [...]
Seymour Krim review in Los Angeles Times
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 [...]
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. [...]
