In the Soviet Union in 1922, men who had been counts under the Tzar were either dead or in exile, with one exception. Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, who had returned to Russia from exile to participate in the 1918 revolution, was brought before a tribunal, and when his answers were found wanting, he was confined […]
Bearing witness to the struggle; a review of Bill Kennedy’s Chenango’s Beads and Two-Toned Shoes
I’m reposting columns from a no-longer existing blog. Here’s my review posted Dec. 16, 2011 of Bill Kennedy’s novel, Chenango’s Beads and Two-Toned Shoes: If you’re not convinced that journalists are romantics, you will be after reading William Kennedy’s latest novel, Chango’s Beads and Two-Toned Shoes. Daniel Quinn, a native of mid-century Albany New York, […]
Writing What Your Don’t Know
Here’s a reprint of a post I published on another site in 2011. It’s aimed at my writer friends, but readers should appreciate it as well. When I ordered David Jauss’ “On Writing Fiction” (Writers Digest Books, 2011) I wasn’t confident I’d find much worthwhile. I have a basic distrust of how-to books. The last […]
One of Socialism’s Biggest Failures: Israel
Unless you’re an Israel scholar, you may not know that most of the founders of the modern state of Israel were secular Jews and socialists. The system they put in place in 1948 was based on socialist principles, reflecting both the experience many had growing up on kibbutzim or activism in socialist organizations in Europe. […]
Hope: The Underlying Message of Ben Winter’s Underground Airlines
Ben Winters wrote Underground Airlines (Mullholland Books, 2016) ostensibly to bring attention to the lingering pernicious affects of slavery in America, but his inventive story can also be read to show far we have come from the days when slavery was legal. In Underground Airlines, an escaped slave––whose true name we never learn––has been coerced […]