By letting us not only understand but inhabit its characters, does a novel reveal the commonality of human experience or demonstrate our differences? Both, of course, but Jonathan Safran Foer is particularly sympathetic to the former. In the first of a two-part episode recorded at JCC Manhattan, we discuss the joys of intimacy and …
Iceland is a paradise for writers, with its highly literate population, generous government grants and total absence of cockroaches. Unfortunately there are only 330,000 Icelanders, so even if they all buy your book your horizons are limited. Fortunately that’s why the novelist (and print-maker, and translator and more) Hallgrímur Helgason visited America. A conversation at the …
We’re on hiatus through August. Live shows resume right after Labor Day. Watch this spot. Not constantly, just now and then. Continue reading »
For 33 years, he was David Letterman’s music director and comic sideman, a career that began in Canada with the Toronto production of Godspell, as did those of Gilda Radner, Martin Short, and Andrea Martin. Some production! Some careers! And now what? What do you do when your job ends after three decades? Savvy … Continue reading »
If you want to write about the Arctic, must you visit the Arctic? The splendid writers Jim Shepard and Joshua Ferris think not. Are they asserting: write about what you don’t know? It’s complicated. And delightfully so. A conversation about actual landscapes and landscapes of the imagination, at the Center for Fiction, with music … Continue reading »
As a New Yorker, you “spend a very significant amount of time in public,” notes Justin Davidson, architecture and music critic for New York magazine, “encountering other people who behave and dress and think differently from you.” I say that this makes us morally superior to the car-bound denizens of Houston. He demurs: “I don’t … Continue reading »
Diane Arbus’s old contact sheets include images she never meant us to see, so would perusing them violate her rights as an artist? Photographer Benjamin Swett says he’d look at them with pleasure, and he makes a persuasive case that he’s not going to hell. Plus, the invention of the circular saw and celibacy reconsidered: surprisingly … Continue reading »
Nachshon was the first Israelite into the Red Sea – before God parted the waters. So, commited activist or blind follower? Much has been said about leaders, less about what we value in the rank and file. Ruth Messenger has thought about both, as a city council member, as Manhattan borough president, in her … Continue reading »
DJ Alan Freed, who might have coined the term “rock’n’roll,” was destroyed in the payola scandals of the fifties, but he was no more corrupt than his colleagues, says Kenny Vance. And Freed staged some of the first integrated rock shows. Does this mitigate his conduct? Sharp ideas about radio, rock, and the invention … Continue reading »
Some people who’ve profoundly affected our cultural life are esteemed by their colleagues but little known to us civilians. Actor Michael Urie, admired by both groups, reflects on one such person, James Houghton, founder of the Signature Theater. Plus transit tips and gift advice. With music from Patrick Farrell. A conversation in conjunction with the … Continue reading »
Much admired for her novels, essays, and poems, she currently lectures in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. During our conversation at the Brooklyn Historical Society, she spoke about “the Invisible College,” the mind-body problem, and her love of Virginia Woolf, despite Woolf’s lamentable ignorance of 17th century science. With music from Niall Connolly. … Continue reading »
Rabbi Ellen Lippmann and Muslim activist Debbie Almontaser are united by their work for social justice and their affection for Kahlil Gibran. “You can’t really tell if he’s writing from a Christian perspective, a Muslim perspective, a Jewish perspective,” says Debbie. “It’s just so universal.” A conversation about common ground and the difference between … Continue reading »
“Even when they won, they somehow inexplicably managed to lose,” he says of an outfit he’s supported all his life. Not the Democratic Party, the Boston Red Sox. Losing can teach relience and effort, he asserts, lessons he applies as head of the Anti-Defamation League. A conversation at JCC Manhattan about pursuing social justice in challenging … Continue reading »
Are some religions more upbeat than others? Zarin Hainsworth works for the rights of women around the world as did her mother, a true optimist. “Of course she was, because she was a Baha’i.” says Zarin, who also attributes her own optimism to her Baha’i beliefs. I find her outlook baffling but her accomplishments … Continue reading »