Jerusalem Calling
A feature on Israel vs. Utopia was published on Friday, in The Jerusalem Post. The article also discusses my first book, Jerusalem Calling, and what ties the two titles together.
Archived entries for Books
Hipster Multiculturalism
What they’re reading. Neighborhood radical chic retailer (out of view: designer skate decks, commissioned Melvins flyers), Friedrichshain.
The Zeek landing page image, Wednesday, April 7th.
Focus Group
This was a nice surprise to wake up to today. I’m equally thrilled to be sandwiched between both books. Listing courtesy of Bookforum.
Invoking the Fetish Object
The most in-depth review of Israel vs. Utopia to date was published in The Forward yesterday. Combined with reviews of brand new books by Yitzhak Laor and James Horrox (the title I edited for AK Press), its an honor to keep such company.
Enclosed at the end of the article is an audio interview with yours truly, about IvU, conducted by arts and culture editor Dan Friedman. We recorded it in New York at the end of November, just before I got on my return flight to Milan.
Italy for Jews
The death of Claude Lévi-Strauss last month came as a shock. I thought he’d live forever. I was equally surprised by the ambivalence with which his passing was observed.
So much so, that, seeing this display of his works last night, in the brightly lit basement of our local Feltrinelli store, I felt strangely relieved to be away from America.
“There’s no ambiguity here,” I thought to myself, as I repeatedly snapped pictures of this display, hoping to get the perfect shot.
Tour Spiel
Elliot Bay Book Co, 6;45 PM on Saturday. Twenty minutes before the first reading of my US tour gets underway.
Check out the review of the event posted this morning by Seattle’s Unlikely Outsider. Its a really thoughtful piece.
National Public Radio affiliate KUOW recorded the gig. I’ll post the date when I hear its scheduled for broadcast.
Home Schooling
San Francisco’s best used bookstore is fifteen minutes away. In the kitchen, July 23rd.
Product Placement
I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve done a mediocre job of keeping track of my clips. Though I’ve kept copies of nearly all of the magazine articles I’ve written, most of the book reviews and all of the travel pieces I wrote for the San Francisco Bay Guardian between 2000 and 2004 vaporized when SFBG revamped it’s website.
In the midst of putting the finishing touches on a brand new personal site (including a Word Press replacement for this blog) I came across a PDF version of this collection of micro-reviews, Sikkum: Tikkun Recommends, that I wrote for the September/October edition in 2005.
Traditionally the domain of the magazine’s publisher, I ended up writing most of these interior back page book reviews my last year and a half as Tikkun’s managing editor. I’ll be posting a couple of more of these, including the color version we debuted with the magazine’s re-design in 2006, shortly.
Click on the image for greater detail.
The Song Remains the Same
The best stocked section (aside from the Health and Diet shelf) in San Francisco’s Green Apple Books bargain media annex.
Perhaps the single most frequently asked question posed by my interns at Tikkun was why we continued to receive so many books about Nazism and the Holocaust to review.
Indeed, every day, new books about the Shoah would inevitably outnumber arriving titles on Israel and Judaism. "It’s one of the occupational hazards of being a Jewish magazine," was my stock reply.
Dubbing with de Gaulle
The cover of a January 1969 edition of the French weekly news periodical L’Express, featuring the face of former President Charles de Gaulle set inside a Star of David. Surrounded by an English translation of a letter de Gaulle wrote to David Ben Gurion in 1967, it’s figured prominently in revisions to my book, whose 2nd draft I’m furiously working on finishing right now with my editor.
A scanned page from European Union official Francois Massoulie‘s idiosyncratic volume, Middle East Conflicts, the image is bordered on either side by the end of one of my own book’s chapters, an open Real Audio browser loaded with a BBC page, and my most recent playlist, featuring the brilliant Sledgehammer Dub LP by the consistently overlooked roots producer, Niney the Observer.