summer’s over; school’s about to begin

?Breakdowns? & The ?Maus? that roared (or Art Spiegelman through the looking glass)

Art Spiegelman, the cartoonist whose graphic memoir, “Maus,” won a Pulitzer Prize, was in town recently to promote a reissue of “Breakdowns,” a collection of his underground comics work first published in 1978. As Spiegelman pointed out to me, his name in German means “Mirror Man” (mine means “Pond-wood”) — and revisiting “Breakdowns,” now subtitled, “Portrait [...]

The Grammy Museum: The Culture We Keep

The Elgin Marbles, the Rosetta Stone, the Venus de Milo, Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” Pete Seeger’s banjo, the handwritten lyrics to Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message.” You might wonder what all these cultural artifacts have in common. But as of Dec. 6, they can all be seen in museums — the last two [...]

?Doc? The Life and Fictions of Harold Humes

Watching wasted genius, a life gone wrong, is compelling and poignant, but with “Doc” airing December 9, at 10PM on PBS’ Independent Lens (Check your local listings for actual times), we feel much more like guests doing a post-mortem on a private party where the drinks may have been dosed. “Doc” is a documentary by Immy [...]

Wild about Diamond

David Wild wants you to know that he is an unabashed Neil Diamond fan. So much so that he has written a book titled, “He Is … I Say: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Neil Diamond” (Da Capo Press) that is less biography, according to Wild, than “tribute album.” Being a Diamond [...]

Yoram Kaniuk: Israel?s Interior monologuist

Israeli novelist Yoram Kaniuk first grabbed my attention in 2006 when he wrote a series of diary entries about life in Tel Aviv during Israel’s war with Lebanon. Kaniuk, who will be appearing at American Jewish University on Sunday as part of the second annual Celebration of Jewish Books, painted a cranky portrait of himself as [...]

It?s SHOWTIME for this Cantor

At the dawn of Hollywood talkies, “The Jazz Singer” told the story of a young Jewish man’s conflict between a career in the entertainment industry and being a cantor. The sacred and the profane seemed two poles whose opposing magnetic draws tore the protagonist apart. But that was 1927. Today, more than 90 years later, I [...]

Steven Spielberg dreams anew

Over the last two weeks, lost amid Wall Street’s financial turmoil, came the announcement that Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks was leaving Paramount, having found financing from The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (”Reliance”), one of India’s largest private companies. What does the fact that no American studio or financier made a better offer say about Spielberg, his [...]

Defender of Faith

If the bestseller charts are any indication, it’s become popular to condemn religion. Books such as Sam Harris’ “Letter to a Christian Nation” and “The End of Faith,” Richard Dawson’s “The God Delusion,” Christopher Hitchens’ “God Is Not Great” and Bill Maher’s soon-to-be-released film, “Religulous,” would have us see faith as antiquated, illogical and dangerous. And let’s [...]

Santa Monica Rising (The Broad Stage)

Located at the intersection of 11th St. and Santa Monica Blvd., a striking modern building designed by Santa Monica architect Renzo Zecchetto sits on the site of a former elementary school playground and looks to have risen out of the ground sui generis, almost as if the Starship Enterprise had decided to dock in the middle of a residential city [...]

THE IMMORTAL MR. GOLD

August 12, 2008 Herb Gold, elder statesman of the Beat Generation, writes on By Tom Teicholz “Still Alive! (A Temporary Condition)” by Herbert Gold (Arcade, $25). Herbert Gold, who at 84 is among the elder statesmen of the Beat Generation, has a new book out, his 28th, a memoir titled “Still Alive! (A Temporary Condition).” It is not an autobiography [...]

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