It seems like just yesterday that Jonathan Safran Foer was selling his Brooklyn home for millions of dollars. Well, it was 2013, which essentially is yesterday in homeowner years, but it’s time for the acclaimed author (who has since published Here I Am) to move on. And so, he has put his townhouse on the market for the asking price of $10.495 million. As in, $10 million is somewhat lower than what he wants for the place. Still, this is Brooklyn, so that’s about the right price for a middle class family looking to buy.

Obvious jokes about overpriced New York real estate aside, the place is huge— as in, five stories huge. And JSF apparently remodeled the kitchen (he bought it for a bit over $5 million back in 2014). Here are a few other amazing details:

• We are talking 8,000 square feet
• It includes an entire extra apartment within its walls, with its own private courtyard garden
• Depending on the separate suite, it has roughly six bedrooms
• It was built in the late 19th century
• 5 FULL bathrooms, plus 2 more half-baths
• The master bathroom is 22 entire feet long

In case you’re considering being the next resident of the mansion, or in case you need pictures for your novel-writing motivational vision board, here are some photos of the Boerum Hill (374 Pacific Street) house in question.

Images from Pinterest.

The post You Can Buy Jonathan Safran Foer’s House… Again appeared first on Jewcy.

Imagine this: you’re at Chipotle, chowing down on your liberal, guilt-free, ethically-sourced burrito, when—horror of horrors—you realize you have nothing to read. Your smartphone’s out of juice, you left your kindle at home, and you don’t have a paperback in your back pocket (because, hello, 2014, death of the novel, etc). What do you do? Eat without distraction for ten blissful, quiet minutes? GOD FORBID. This is America, not France.

Such a fate befell Jonathan Safran Foer recently, and he wanted to “die with frustration.” That is a real quote, you guys. But from deprivation comes innovation! Vanity Fair breaks the news that as of today, you’ll be able to read flash fiction and mini-essays by Foer, Malcolm Gladwell, Toni Morrison, George Saunders, and Michael Lewis on Chipotle’s bags and cups.

What happened was this: frustrated Foer emailed Steve Ells, Chipotle’s CEO, and suggested putting words on their food packaging. He told VF, “I said, ‘I bet a shitload of people go into your restaurants every day, and I bet some of them have very similar experiences, and even if they didn’t have that negative experience, they could have a positive experience if they had access to some kind of interesting text… So I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to just put some interesting stuff on it? Get really high-quality writers of different kinds, creating texts of different kinds that you just give to your customers as a service.'”

The union between Chipotle and Foer is a curious one. In 2009, Foer penned Eating Animals, a searing critique of America’s meat industry, and consequently became a vegetarian. Chipotle serves meat, albeit “naturally-raised” meat, procured from farms and slaughterhouses that allow their animals to roam free (or free-ish). But dead animals are still dead animals, and when asked how he felt about working with a company that serves meat to a lot of people, Foer replied: “I wouldn’t have done it if it was for another company like a McDonald’s, but what interested me is 800,000 Americans of extremely diverse backgrounds having access to good writing. A lot of those people don’t have access to libraries, or bookstores. Something felt very democratic and good about this.”

You can read Foer’s contribution, ‘Two-Minute Personality Test,’ here. He posits some interesting questions, like “Are you in any way angry at your phone?” and “Is it any way cruel to give a dog a name?”

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Today in “a girl can dream” and “feeling inadequate” news, Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss are selling, for a measly $14.5 million, their luxurious brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I know what you’re thinking—“let’s pool our salaries and turn that place into a classy post-collegiate fun house.” I’m with you guys. But, unfortunately, I already spent my $14.5 mil on an antique Russian fighter jet from Housing Works.

Though their books have been successful, profitable, and often cinematic, it seems like the power literary couple are making quite a chunk of change from their real estate ventures, the New York Daily News reports.

Foer, who famously doesn’t eat meat, certainly knows how to go for the jugular in real estate: The couple bought the 7,670-square-foot place for $5.75 million in 2005 — a record at the time — and now want to flip it for more than two-and-a-half times that price.

‘Eat’ this, Park Slope: Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss put their Second St. mansion on the market for $14.5M [NYDN]

(Image from Sotheby’s)

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The Brooklyn literary community muttered a collective “what a dick” this morning when New York Magazine reported some comments that were made by Jonathan Lethem to the LA Times.  Lethem who was born in Boreum Hill and whose most successful novel name drops Brooklyn in its title, said, “Brooklyn is repulsive with novelists, it’s cancerous with novelists.”

This is not only wrong on so many levels, but a bit hyperbolic.  Just because a place has lots of something, doesn’t mean that it’s cancerous with it.  Is Brooklyn cancerous with Pizza?  Is it cancerous with models? (Wait, don’t answer that…)

What about Brooklyn rich literary tradition?  Lethem’s comments go on to state that more or less that Brooklyn is not a good place to be a writer.  This is like saying that Belgium is a bad place to make waffles.  The worst part of it all, Lethem is now a California resident.  So while he lives out his Californication fantasies, flirts with Scientology and transitions to screenplay writing, we’ll be enjoying our cancerous pizza at Roberta’s and going to better readings.  Maybe while in Pomona, Lethem will write a great novel to back up his statements.  Considering that Lethem lived in Brooklyn while writing, You Don’t Love Me Yet there might be truth to his statement after all.

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Jews have done a pretty good job holding up our end of the “People of the Book” deal, especially over the last hundred years.  Jewish writers from all over the globe have contributed fiction in a number of different languages, influencing the form in ways immeasurable, in turn helping to document the Jewish experience better than most history books.

Our criteria for this list was any work that could be considered “Jewish fiction”: written by a Jewish author or dealing heavily with Jewish topics and themes, all written in the last 100 years.   Short story collections, plays, graphic novels and novellas were all taken into consideration.  All publication dates reflect the American publication.

Think we missed something?  Think something deserved a higher ranking than it got?  We’re open to comments below.

1. The Metamorphosis (1915) by Franz Kafka

It’s really impossible to rate anything– especially the ultimate “Kafkaesque” work—any higher.  The Prague-born writer’s ultimate work about poor Gregor Samsa is one of the most seminal works of Jewish fiction in the last century.

2. In Search of Lost Time (1913) by Marcel Proust

Jews are naturally nostalgic folks, so simply replace the Madeleine with a rugelach and you might have one of the most Jewish works in literature.  And yes, Proust was a Jew.

3. Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) by Philip Roth

Trying to pick one book as the ultimate Philip Roth work isn’t as hard as you think.  Portnoy is the book you see every new title compared to, even to this day.  Goodbye, Columbus made him famous, but Portnoy made him a creepy god.

4. Death of a Salesman (1949) by Arthur Miller

Miller’s play tells the tale of Willy Loman, but also works as the perfect parable of the death of the American Dream.

5. The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J.D. Salinger

No list dealing with best fiction of the last century would be complete without Salinger’s ode to teenage angst, and the limited knowledge we have of the late writer tells us that this book was indeed the product of Jewish neurosis.

6. The Trial (1925) by Franz Kafka

We recognize that we should have just said “Everything Kafka did” at the #1 position, but that wouldn’t have been fair, now would it?

7. Herzog (1964) by Saul Bellow

It’s hard to pick Bellow’s masterwork, but we really have to go with the book that made  mid-life crisis into an art form.

8. The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories (1971) by Cynthia Ozick

Same as the Herzog: It’s nearly impossible to pick the greatest work from the Ozick canon, but for the sake of argument, we’re going to pick The Pagan Rabbi as the must read collection by this brilliant writer.

9. A Contract With God (1978) by Will Eisner

Some call it the first graphic novel.  Others dispute that.  Nobody denies this work’s greatness.  Eisner’s semi-autobiographical short stories of Jewish life in The Bronx was called “something momentous,” by the LA Times.

10. Call it Sleep (1934) by Henry Roth

This is the quintessential Jewish experience of the ghetto known Lower East Side of the early 20^th Century.  They should issue it to students in Hebrew school.

11. Angels in America (1991) by Tony Kushner

It’s almost scary how lacking the 1990s were of “generation defining” art by Jews.  Thankfully, Kushner’s tour de force play made up for that by being one of the greatest artistic works in the entire Western Canon, both literally and according to Harold Bloom.

12. The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer (1982) by Isaac Bashevis Singer

We aren’t going to play around with the Nobel-winning writer.  His short stories are the first place you need to go to experience his true greatness.

13. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000) by Michael Chabon

The story of how Jews created the modern superhero might not be the most interesting idea for a story, but leave it in the hands of one of modern fiction’s greatest writers, and it’s an epic.

14. American Pastoral (1997) by Philip Roth

15. Are You There God?  It’s Me, Margaret (1970) by Judy Blume

A story about a girl growing up in an interfaith family, getting her first period, buying her first bra, and all the other fun issues that go along with being a teenager.

16.  The Odessa Tales (1931) by Isaac Babel

If there is any justice in this world, Babel’s work would be mentioned along with Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gogol and any other great Russian writer you can think of.  Until then, it’s undisputed that he’s certainly the greatest Jewish writer the country ever produced.  These, his stories of Ukrainian tough guys in the waning days of Russian Empire, are his best.

17. The Assistant (1957) by Bernard Malamud

18. Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller

In terms of the greatest dark humor anti-war novels, we’d pick Heller’s book over other Slaughterhouse Five or anything else you could think of.

19. The Brothers Ashkenazi (1936) by Israel Joshua Singer

We’ve stated on this website that Isaac Bashevis Singer was the most famous member of his family, but I.J. Singer was definitely the better writer.  Here, with The Brothers Ashkenazi, he gave us one of the greatest snapshots of pre-World War 2 Jewish life in Eastern Europe.

20. Where the Wild Things Are (1963) by Maurice Sendak

Essential?  Isn’t every child issued a copy of this when they’re born

21. The Day of the Locust (1939) by Nathanael West

West (born Nathan von Wallenstein Weinstein) gave us the great Hollywood novel through the eyes of unforgettable characters.  The influence of this novel on writers from John Fante to Joan Didion is undeniable.

22.   Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (1986) by Art Spiegelman

The only comic book to ever win the Pulitzer Prize.  Art Spiegelman’s biography of his father’s life before, during and after the Holocaust, brought the medium to a whole new level.

23.  Goodbye, Columbus (1959) by Philip Roth

24. The New York Trilogy (1987) by Paul Auster

If anybody is looking for the post-modern mystery book of the last thirty years, look no further.

25. The History of Love (2005) by Nicole Krauss

Krauss’ second novel that launched her into the literary spotlight, is the story of a very old man and a very young woman, and how their lives are joined by one very special book. (Check out our interview with Krauss)

26. The Pawnbroker by Edward Lewis Wallant

The story of a holocaust survivor attempting to live with his demons will haunt you long after you’ve read it.

27. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) by Mordecai Richler

Henry Roth had the Lower East Side, Philip Roth New Jersey and Saul Bellow ruled over Chicago; but Richler wrote the greatest books about Jews in Montreal, and Duddy is his finest work.

28. Everything is Illuminated (2002) by Jonathan Safran Foer

Upon this book’s release, some called it “genius,” others said it was “overrated.”   We’d like to say that it is one of the finest works of “Post-Holocaust Fiction.”  Everything is Illuminated is a book for people who want to try and make some sense of the senseless.

29. Absurdistan: A Novel (2006) by Gary Shteyngart

As of the writing of this list, Mr. Shteyngart is  3for 3 in terms of great novels, but the story of the very rich and very rotund Misha Vainberg, is his masterpiece.

30.The Nimrod Flipout (2006) by Etgar Keret

31.  The Man With the Golden Arm (1949) by Nelson Algren

32. The Street of Crocodiles (1936) by Bruno Schulz

Considered by many to be the greatest Polish writer of the 20^th Century, Schulz’s masterwork is starting to peek back onto the cultural radar in the last ten years.

33. The Lazarus Project (2008) by Aleksander Hemon

The Bosnian-born Hemon might not be Jewish, but his novel juxtaposes a very autobiographical sounding protagonist with an immigrant Jew murdered in early 20th Century Chicago.  The Lazarus Project is impeccably researched, and written so well, that you’d think Hemon had been speaking English his entire life.

34.     Mind-Body Problem (1993) by Rebecca Goldstein

35.      The Tenants of Moonbloom (1963) by Edward Lewis Wallant

We’d suggest reading Dave Eggers’ essay on the book to better understand.

36. Motherless Brooklyn (1999) by Jonathan Lethem

Is it fair for us to say that Lethem’s 1999 novel set the stage for the current literary renaissance going on in the borough of Brooklyn to this day?  It certainly made the “Neuronovel” a trendy thing.

37. The Instructions (2010) by Adam Levin

If you’re going to make a big splash, write a 1000+ page book about a Jewish boy from the Chicago suburbs who might or might not be the Messiah.  That’s what Levin did with his debut, and that’s why it was our favorite work of fiction in 2010.

38. The Trial of God (1995) by Elie Wiesel

39. Bech, a Book (1970) by John Updike

The king of the W.A.S.Ps parodies his Jewish contemporaries, and gives the world the greatest work of “Jew envy.”

40. The Best of Everything (1958) by Rona Jaffe

It could be argued that this was the Sex and the City of its time.  But we think it’s so much more than that.

41. What Makes Sammy Run? (1941) by Budd Schulberg

Schulberg would go on to greater fame as a screewriter, but his story of Sammy Glick’s rise calls to mind The Day of the Locust, Dickens and Citizen Kane, and is a must read.

42. Comedy in a Minor Key (2010) by Hans Keilson

It took about 100 years, but Hans Keilson was finally recognized as one of the world’s greatest writers.  This book about a young Dutch couple that takes in a sick Jewish man during World War 2–only to find themselves trying to figure out how to cover up his death–isn’t the sort of dark comedy that leaves you chuckling.  It’s the sort that makes you exclaim, “that’s brilliant.”

43. Landscape in Concrete (1966) by Jakov Lind

A story written by a Jew who survived World War 2 by posing as a Dutch citizen writes a story about a Nazi soldier’s quixotic journey to rejoin the war after being declared mentally unstable to serve.  Possibly the most absurd novel on this list.

44. Homeland (2004) by Sam Lipsyte

If you check back with us in ten years, Sam Lipsyte will have replaced Philip Roth as the writer that everybody copies – whether they know it or not.   Bookslut described Lipsyte’s third book as “disturbing and comforting,” and summed up his style quite well.

45. The Finkler Question (2010) by Howard Jacobson

Salon said the underdog Man Booker winner in 2010 would “probably distress you on its way to disarming you.  Can we pay the novel any greater compliment?”  We don’t think so.

46.   Seize the Day (1956) by Saul Bellow

47. The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisneberg (2010) by Deborah Eisenberg

Eisenberg is one of the greatest living short story writers.  Do yourself a favor and read everything.

48.  For the Relief of Unbearable Urges (1999) by Nathan Englander

49. Witz (2010) by Joshua Cohen

The Jewish Ulysses?  Some have said that’s the case.

50. The Extra Man (1998) by Jonathan Ames

The post The 50 Most Essential Works Of Jewish Fiction Of The Last 100 Years appeared first on Jewcy.

This year was a kind one to three great Jewish writers; two of which seemed to never get the respect they deserve, and another who has unjustly fallen into the honorable mention category of the great writers of the 20th Century.  Saul Bellow, I.J. Singer, and Bruno Schulz have all had some of their works re-released or reassessed in 2010.

Saul Bellow is a victim of the underrated/highly rated trap.  He’s a big name–even the sound of it has resonance and power–but I wonder sometimes if anyone is really even reading him anymore.  Heck, Harper’s just asked that this month.  He has two books to be released this year, so hopefully the answer will once again be, “yes.”

A lot of fanfare has been made in anticipation of the release of Saul Bellow: Letters, and for good reason: Bellow was a great correspondent who wrote to cache of literary lions from Philip Roth to Bernard Malamud.  In Letters, Bellow writes inspiring notes to younger writers, who no doubt looked up to him, as well as admonishing fellow Nobel laureat, William Faulkner, for being anti-communist, and for supporting the anti-Semitic poet, Ezra Pound.  You get the full spectrum of the man, from the testier moments to his lighter side.  His sincerity and goodness is best illustrated by a letter to Isaac Bashevis Singer, congratulating –in Yiddish, no less– the writer on a Nobel award that Bellow himself had won two years prior.  A letter in September of 1966 to colleague Richard Stern, sees Bellow make mention of a memoir of D. Schwartz — that book would not come out until 1975 Pulitzer Prize winning (fictonal) novel, Humboldt’s Gift.

Humboldt’s Gift is included in Bellow: Novels, 1970-1983.  Whether you want to buy three novels in one, or simply want to adorn your bookshelves with another Library of America title, these three late-period novels are all worth your attention.

Bellow himself was an admirer of Isaac Bashevis Singer.  Bellow first translated Singer’s story of the simple old country dweller, Gimpel The Fool, in 1953.  But Bellow was also in on the secret of Isaac’s older brother, Israel Joshua Singer.  Bellow’s name adorns the cover of the newest reissue of I.J. Singer’s, The Brothers Ashkenazi, calling it “a wonderful novel.” With all due respect, Mr. Bellow, that is something of an understatement.

After reading The Brothers Ashkenazi, it’s clear that I.J. Singer was the stronger writer of the two brothers; as the book moves beyond the shtetl tales of magic and evil that his brother would become famous for.  It’s a picture of greed, tradition and family; losing faith and longing for the past, as well as providing a fine sketch of shtetl life in the early days of the 20th Century.  While Isaac had the flair of a master storyteller, Israel was the better writer.  I thought of Tolstoy, or even Dickens, throughout so much of this The Brothers, but all the while, I.J. Singer is nostalgic in a way even Proust would have admired.  This is not a book just for fans of Jewish books, but for readers of all kinds of great literature.

Finally, here is to hoping that 2010 will be remembered as the year that Bruno Schulz, one of the greatest Polish Jewish writers of the 20th century, finally gets an audience worthy of his work.

While the tragic story of Schulz’s death during WWII is just one of millions, his works need to be celebrated as masterpieces by an audience wider than than fellow writers John Updike and Philip Roth — or as inspirations for the Brothers Quay stop motion animation films.

In the last year, Jonathan Safran Foer has became the latest writer to champion Schulz; going as far as to using the late writer’s book, The Street of Crocodiles, as the starting point for his own own book/art project, Tree of Codes.  Schulz’s work has flirted with capturing the attention of a larger audience in the past, soliciting nods from Cynthia Ozick and David Grossman.  Unfortunately, neither of them had the crossover appeal of Safran Foer, who might finally bring the man (who should be considered Poland’s Kafka) to the audience he’s deserved all these years.

The post Saul Bellow, I.J. Singer and Bruno Schulz: Revisited appeared first on Jewcy.

• Study for your bar mitzvah while looking at eBay/reading The Awl/whatever you do on the internet.

• A suspected Nazi death camp guard dies before trial.

• We always just figured George W. Bush’s favorite book was The Bible and God wrote that, but guess not.  It was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest adviser who did that.

• Regina Spektor on the big screen and the small one.

• New York Magazine talks to Jonathan Safran Foer about his new book, Tree of Codes.

• The late Norman Mailer’s wife, Norris Church Mailer, has passed away.

The post Morning Jewce: Bar Mitzvahs On The World Wide Web, A Nazi Gets Off Easy, Bush’s Favorite Book, Regina Spektor On The Screen And More appeared first on Jewcy.

James Wolcott talks about Cynthia Ozick at Vanity Fair.  Titles the article “The Kvetcher in the Rye.”  Even though I think he’s bashing Ozick (who I love), I still have to give him points for cleverness.

The Daily Beast interviews Ms. Ozick.

Making sense of Aleksandar Hemon’s “Jumbo Lexicon.”

Saul Bellow had a girlfriend named Yetta, and other interesting things I never knew until reading this review.

Talking about the weirdness that is Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes.

The post Weekly Yiderati: Cynthia Ozick Gets Dissed And Interviewed, Saul Bellow’s Girlfriend Yetta, Jumbo Lexicons And More appeared first on Jewcy.

• Israeli is risking chaos.  What else is new?

• Hillary Clinton is in an Israeli-Palestinian cocoon.  That doesn’t sound too cozy.

• Not sure if you want to read or simply admire Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book, Tree of Codes.  Maybe this interview with him will help you decide.

• Pee-Wee Herman on NPR’S Fresh Air.  Your childhood just met your adulthood in a very weird way.

The post Daily Jewce: Israel “Risking Chaos,” Jonathan Safran Foer’s New Book, Pee-Wee Herman And More appeared first on Jewcy.