David L. Ulin on "the atheistic Jewishness of Deborah Eisenberg’s short stories"

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

From David L. Ulin’s Tablet article on the work of short story writer Deborah Eisenberg, whose Collected Stories volume is just out from Picador–and on my tbr list:

“It seems strange to discuss Eisenberg as a Jewish writer since, grandparents aside, she almost never writes about Jewish themes. Of the pieces in The Collected Stories, only two, ‘All Around Atlantis’ and ‘Twilight of the Superheroes,’ deal with Jewishness in any overt sense; the rest focus on what their author calls an American sensibility, having to do with what it means to be from the United States. ‘It’s a complicated issue,’ she says, ‘but I define myself as an American, primarily.’ And yet, in a way, this is representative of a kind of Jewish cosmopolitanism. When we think about American Jewish literature, the writers who come to mind—Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Tillie Olsen—wear their heritage on their sleeves. There is, however, a contrapuntal lineage, going back to Nathanael West and encompassing E. L. Doctorow, Grace Paley, even (inasmuch as we can frame him as a writer) Bob Dylan, for whom the experience of being Jewish is less text than subtext, part of an elastic point of view.”

Read the full piece here.

Friday Find: 10 Questions to Ask an Agent Before You Sign

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

As Guide to Literary Agents blog contributor Felice Prager astutely notes, “Authors are often so excited about finding representation that they sign an agreement without knowing if the agent is an ideal match. In addition to agreement-specific issues regarding money and terms, there are other questions you should ask before you sign anything.” Here are Prager’s 10 such questions. I sure wish that I’d seen them before I signed with my first agent, a perfectly nice person but, as it turned out, “not quite right” for me.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend. See you back here on Monday!

Chicago Event on Israeli Fiction: Tues., April 27

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

“Two of Israeli literature’s luminaries – Dalya Bilu and Eshkol Nevo – will be in Chicago to discuss the explosion in Israeli fiction writing later this month. Their conversation, free and open to the public, is set for 5 p.m. Tuesday, April 27, at the Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St., Chicago. The program is sponsored by the Petach Tikvah Sister City Committee.” Click here for details.

Thursday’s Pre-Publication Post: Meet My Grandparents (and the Rabbi Who Married Them)

by Erika Dreifus on
4

As I’ve mentioned before, the animating spirits behind my forthcoming story collection, Quiet Americans, are my paternal grandparents, Jews who left Germany in the late 1930s. What seems to surprise some people is that rather than having immigrated to the United States together, my grandparents met and married here in New York. This photograph was taken at their wedding in January 1941. The bridal couple is toward the right side of the photo: Grandma is wearing a corsage and Grandpa is touching her shoulders.

I’m not sure when I started to imagine some of the emotions of that wedding day. Given the engagements and weddings I’ve seen in my lifetime, and given our own family’s closeness, it was, and remains, very hard for me to envision a wedding where not only are no parents of the bridal couple present, but none have even met or spoken with their child’s spouse.

But that was my grandparents’ situation. My grandmother had left her parents behind in Germany; they were eventually able to immigrate to South America and join her brother there. My grandfather’s biological parents were both long dead by the time my grandfather reached adulthood, and the woman he called mother was trapped in Europe (soon after this photo was taken, however, she did manage to get to New York, where she moved in with the newlyweds).

Not all of this has made its way into the book (some of it, frankly, seems more apparent in my abandoned novel). But now that you are sharing this pre-publication journey with me, I wanted to introduce you a little more fully to two of the “real” people behind Quiet Americans.

P.S. On the far left side of the photo you will see Rabbi Herbert Parzen, who officiated at the wedding (he also performed my parents’ wedding ceremony 25 years later). Rabbi Parzen was himself married to one of my grandmother’s American-born cousins–Sylvia–who was instrumental in helping to arrange my grandmother’s immigration. Part of “Uncle Herbert”‘s rabbinic life was dedicated to serving as a chaplain for Jewish prisoners in New York. Which may be why this call for Judaica items from Jewish Prisoner Services International, which I discovered via the Association of Jewish Libraries just last week, has resonated with me. My family and I will be checking our own collections to see what we can donate. Perhaps some of you can, too.

Some More History Behind My Book

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

As I’ve mentioned before, the animating spirits behind my forthcoming story collection, Quiet Americans, are my paternal grandparents, Jews who left Germany in the late 1930s. What seems to surprise some people is that rather than having immigrated to the United States together, my grandparents met and married here in New York. This photograph was taken at their wedding in January 1941. The bridal couple is toward the right side of the photo: Grandma is wearing a corsage and Grandpa is touching her shoulders.

I’m not sure when I started to imagine some of the emotions of that wedding day. Given the engagements and weddings I’ve seen in my lifetime, and given our own family’s closeness, it was, and remains, very hard for me to envision a wedding where not only are no parents of the bridal couple present, but none have even met or spoken with their child’s spouse.

But that was my grandparents’ situation. My grandmother had left her parents behind in Germany; they were eventually able to immigrate to South America and join her brother there. My grandfather’s biological parents were both long dead by the time my grandfather reached adulthood, and the woman he called mother was trapped in Europe (soon after this photo was taken, however, she did manage to get to New York, where she moved in with the newlyweds).

Not all of this has made its way into the book (some of it, frankly, seems more apparent in my abandoned novel). But now that you are sharing this pre-publication journey with me, I wanted to introduce you a little more fully to two of the “real” people behind Quiet Americans.

P.S. On the far left side of the photo you will see Rabbi Herbert Parzen, who officiated at the wedding (he also performed my parents’ wedding ceremony 25 years later). Rabbi Parzen was himself married to one of my grandmother’s American-born cousins–Sylvia–who was instrumental in helping to arrange my grandmother’s immigration. Part of “Uncle Herbert”‘s rabbinic life was dedicated to serving as a chaplain for Jewish prisoners in New York. Which may be why this call for Judaica items from Jewish Prisoner Services International, which I discovered via the Association of Jewish Libraries just last week, has resonated with me. My family and I will be checking our own collections to see what we can donate. Perhaps some of you can, too.