Robert and Aline these days. Still cool and still weird.

One of my favourite couples ever (Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky). Talented weirdos.

bbook:

Explore the Relationship Between Sam Shepard & His Best Friend Johnny Dark in ‘Shepard & Dark’

I am a puddle.

Aww… BFFs

buzzfeed:

We’ll see you at the movies, Roger.

nprfreshair:

John Powers on the PBS documentary Philip Roth: Unmasked that premieres next week:

Here’s a writer who specializes in anger, sarcasm, iconoclasm, dirtiness, atheism, comedy and sexual attitudes that smack of misogyny.

While Philip Roth Unmasked doesn’t completely ignore his dark ferocity, it tiptoes around it. We learn little about his personal life, which was messy enough to prompt his ex-wife, actress Claire Bloom, to spend 150 pages of a book excoriating his manipulative narcissism. Nor do we get much insight into what’s obvious from Roth’s work — his ambition, his princely sense of entitlement, his use of fury as fuel, his tendency toward political sanctimony, his way of seeing women as one big perk of fame.

Image courtesy of PBS

I still want to watch it. He is a curious fellow, and I was shocked when he announced he was retiring from writing.

theatlantic:

Seventy-two years ago today, Virginia Woolf drowned herself.

Woolf was one of the most significant, influential writers of the twentieth century. The Atlantic had the privilege of publishing her work, as you can see below.

• “Equality of Opportunity and Pay” (May/June 1938): As war brewed in Europe, Woolf responded to a letter urging “daughters of educated men” to join in opposition to the conflict. Her surprising retort called for fair wages for women—not just to advance equality, but to hasten the fighting’s end.

[Images: Wikimedia Commons]

fuckyeahbeardmusic:

david berman of the silver jews
(“living waters”)

One of my contemporary poet heroes.

bbook:

Sam Shepard, The Art of Theater No. 12

It was definitely an interesting play, and I had a blast being Eddie for a scene in my Acting class.

sovietjewry:

sovietjewry:

(via Stephanie Comfort)

Russian-Jewish writer Sholem Aleichem

Today in Yiddishkayt… March 2
Birthday of Sholem Aleichem

Solomon (Sholem) Rabinowitz (שלום ראַבינאָװיץ or Соломон Наумович Рабинович) was born on March 2, 1859 not far from Kiev in the town of Pereyaslav and grew up in the nearby shtetl of Voronkov (today: Вороньків, Ukraine). Sholem Aleichem is among the few Yiddish writers recognized and loved by international audiences, during his life and still today. The Broadway musical and film version of “Fiddler on the Roof” is based on his serialized tales of Tevye the Dairyman (Tevye der milkhiger). Sholem Aleichem worked tirelessly—and successfully—to promote Yiddish literature and culture at a time when the language was still largely thought to be just “jargon.”

At first, Rabinowitz wrote in Russian and Hebrew. When he began writing more frequently in Yiddish, he adopted the pseudonym Sholem Aleichem—a common greeting in Yiddish—as a guise to conceal his identity from his relatives. His famed first venture into writing was an alphabetic glossary of his stepmother’s curses. From 1883 on, he produced over 40 volumes in Yiddish and became a central figure in Yiddish literature. Between 1883 and 1889, Sholem Aleichem wrote many light-hearted fiction sequences, often in the form of letters. It was through this satirical writing, much of it originally published in serial form in newspapers, that he quickly became an intimate household name in Yiddish families who would look forward to reading the latest installments of his work. Rabinowitz also wrote plays and works for children.

In 1914, the family moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan where he was received as a celebrity and dubbed the “Jewish Mark Twain.” (via Yiddishkayt)

more on Sholem Aleichem

bbook:

Happy 51st birthday to the ground breaking author Chuck Palahniuk!

If you agreed with everything the character was doing, there would be no reason to stay engaged.
It’s amazing how much we’re drawn to things we already know that make us write about things that we already believe in. That’s kind of the problem with the internet: people are more likely to get fed what they already like and gravitate towards the news they already agree with and are less likely to shown a spectrum of things they do or don’t agree with.

It’s so easy to be comfortable and not have to venture outside your realm of knowledge and that can be pretty detrimental.
Everyone finds their little niche, and that’s where it kind of stops. Unless you’re dating. Dating is another way that you bring people into your life and see more view points, but boy, there’s not a lot of them beyond a certain point.

-Chuck

Is it weird that one of my first thoughts was that I aspire to have his sideburns in the last picture? Anyway…Happy Birthday, Chuck!

etund:

Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden.

The two moved to Berlin in 1928. Auden left after nine months, Isherwood stayed until 1933.

Here they are en route to China, 1938.

sovietjewry:

16thstreet:

At the Café
by Anna Margolin

1

Alone in the café now,
as voices hush and fade,
as lamps give off a pearly glow
and float out of the café
and over the street—
like luminous swans.

—Waiter, black coffee—demitasse!

Alone in the café now,
with moments rustling like silk,
I raise my dusky fragrant wine
to the street, to the distance.
And like a song is the thought
I give off into the gloom,
a white light.

2

All the faces in smoke, like masks.
A joke, a shrug, a bleak glance,
and false words flaring, making you blanch.
Have I offended you, my dear?
Here, all of us wear cold, contemptuous masks.
We disguise the fever with clever irony
and a thousand smiles, shouts and grimaces.
Have I offended you, my dear?

3

In the frosty gleam of the lamps
in the glances, in the voices
my silence floats towards you—
a bright and secret sign.
Wafts like a summer breeze around you,
speaks haltingly to you
about you and me.
Oh, quiet, quiet words
about you and me.
And becomes silent
lulls you with yearning hands.
Takes you with white and quivering hands. 

-

Translated from the Yiddish by Shirley Kumove. Drunk From the Bitter Truth: The Poems of Anna Margolin can be found in the YIVO Library here at the Center.

From the Jewish Women’s Archive: “Rosa Lebensboim, better known by her pen name of Anna Margolin, is regarded by literary critics as one of the finest early twentieth-century Yiddish poets in America. Her poetry, translated by Adrienne Rich, Kathryn Hellerstein, and Marcia Falk, among others, appears in many Yiddish poetry anthologies in English. Captivating, temperamental, and intellectually gifted, Anna Margolin influenced the work of several major writers and thinkers of her time.” Click here to read more.

Submitted by Sarah Ponichtera, Center for Jewish History. 
Special thanks to David P. Rosenberg for assistance in the library. 

Today in Yiddishkayt… January 21
Birthday of Anna Margolin, Yiddish Poet

The great Yiddish poet Anna Margolin, penname of Rosa Lebensboym, was born on January 21st 1887 in what is today Brest (Yiddish: Brisk), Belarus. Though Margolin published just one book of poetry in her life, her poetry and work as a journalist and editor were critically acclaimed and deeply influential for Yiddish literature. When she began publishing poetry in the Yiddish press under the pseudonym of Anna Margolin in the 1920s, critics argued that the author must certainly be a man, because no woman could write poetry of such quality. Margolin’s friend and lifelong companion Reuven Ayzland described to her in letters how the Yiddish intelligentsia would argue about who the unknown author of her poems could be, and how “the general opinion is that it must certainly be a man…these poems are written by an experienced hand. And a woman can’t write like that.” (via Yiddishkayt)

This is stunning.

sovietjewry:

Today in Yiddishkayt… January 21 
Birthday of Anna Margolin, Yiddish Poet

Margolin’s poetry deals with the alienation of women in society, with women’s sexuality, and with themes of anxiety and loneliness. Upon her request, her poem “Epitaph” (1932) is engraved on her tombstone. She is buried in Brooklyn, New York.

“Epitaph”

She squandered her life
on rubbish, on nothing.

Perhaps she wanted it so, perhaps she desired
this misery, these seven knives of anguish
to spill this holy living wine
on rubbish, on nothing.

Now she lies with shattered face.
Her ravaged spirit has abandoned its cage.
Passerby, have pity, be silent–
Say nothing.

(translation by Shirley Kumove)

(via Yiddishkayt)

more on Anna Margolin

Wow.