When we swing, we swing for the fences.

Perhaps more than any other sport, Jews have been drawn to baseball, both on and off the field, and in so doing, have established a kind of tradition, passing on stories from generation to generation. Hank Greenberg blasting two homers on Rosh Hashanah before sitting out on Yom Kippur, Sandy Koufax taking the bench for the first game of the 1965 World Series, even the latest jaw-dropping run by Team Israel in the World Baseball Classic—these Samsonian strongmen represent something bigger than themselves, and their success and failures have become a liturgy for the emerging Jewish baseball fan. Following suit on the page, authors—some members of the tribe, others playing for different ball clubs—have used blended Jewish ideas with baseball to create a new mythology.

The first stab at stitching Jews and baseball together on the literary field comes as early as the Roaring Twenties, although the scouting report is ill-favored for the home team. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has survived perhaps rightfully as a commentary on the tarnishing of the American Dream, but perhaps wrongly for how it veers from crediting the affairs of apathetic WASPs to blaming a caricature of the Jew as a loyalty-less grubber: Meyer Wolfsheim. Wolfsheim appears as one of Gatsby’s shadier connections—to really drive the point home, Fitzgerald dresses him in human-tooth cufflinks—but the true source of his corruption is revealed later by Gatsby:

“Meyer Wolfsheim? No, he’s a gambler.” Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: “He’s the man who fixed the World’s Series back in 1919.”

“How did he happen to do that?” I asked after a minute.

“He just saw the opportunity.”

Wolfsheim, as it turns out, is a barely disguised Arnold Rothstein, often attributed with doing just what Gatsby accuses—fixing the World Series and getting away with it. It is clear from Gatsby’s distaste that he sees something perverse in a Jew bleeding the sacred cow that is baseball for a couple coin, and in doing so he establishes the first of many strains of myth-making in baseball literature. Baseball’s original sin stretches so long that W.P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe (more popularly known in movie form as Field of Dreams) is still trying to atone.

Not the most auspicious start for a lasting relationship, though the irony is that Jewish authors and Jewish themes have long elevated the game in prose. Although not Jewish himself, Pete Hamill’s Snow in August transplants the golem from Prague to mid-century Brooklyn, where it is brought to life by a Holocaust survivor and his young Irish Catholic friend. The book uses baseball as a canvas for its themes of intolerance, and though not implicitly drawn, the true golem of the story is Jackie Robinson, beginning his history-making turn in the majors, who echoes the golem’s traditional purpose as a symbol for the oppressed. James Sturm takes the opposite approach in his graphic novel, The Golem’s Mighty Swing, which demystifies the image of the golem in a story of a barnstorming Jewish baseball team during the Great Depression and exposes the limits of how far baseball can truly take the American Dream when it seems rotten at its core.

With a more cosmic perspective, however, comes Michael Chabon’s YA novel, Summerland, a blender of Native American and Norse mythologies, all centered around a belief that baseball is a tool of champions. Chabon provides a typical hero’s journey, but with a twist: the battleground? A baseball diamond. The stakes? The end of the world. The hero? A kid who only needs to catch one good game.

In this sense, all roads lead back to the quintessential baseball novel and the man who married Americana and Arthurian legend to build a new motley mythos: Bernard Malamud’s The Natural. It tells the story of a man named Roy Hobbs, returned to the game after being shot in his prime years before, and how he tries to rescue a slumping team with his Excalibur-like bat “Wonderboy” while battling his own tendencies to succumb to temptation. Nothing about the novel is essentially Jewish, except perhaps its ending. Whereas the movie adaptation provides a true Hollywood moment when cornfed Robert Redfield shatters the lights with his pennant-winning homer, the book ends, in true Arthurian taste, with Hobbs striking out, accused of throwing the game, and erased from its history. Maybe King Arthur learned pessimism from the Jews.

There can be miracles, however, if you believe. In Mindy Avra Portnoy’s timeless children’s classic Matzah Ball, a young fan feels ashamed schlepping to the ballpark with his Passover-approved lunch—and even more awkward when his friends eat his lunch instead of their own, leaving him in the lurch. In this dark hour, an old man appears and regales the kid with tales of boyhood games in Ebbets Field and gifts him a very special piece of matzah before disappearing. You know how it goes now—the kid catches a home run using his matzah as a glove, and we learn that while there may not be angels in the outfield, at least Elijah has a seat in the bleachers.

Photo of Sandy Koufax via Flickr

The post Jews and Baseball… and Books appeared first on Jewcy.

“My friends Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon live in a shingled Berkeley Craftsman bungalow that reminds me of my days as the child of local radicals.”

Thus begins Remodelista‘s paean to the literary super-couple’s gorgeous Berkeley home. This piece is something else, you guys. It’s book porn meets real estate porn meets writer porn; all enhanced by Waldman’s anecdotes. Here’s one about their office, which was once a doctor’s consulting room: “‘Someone in the historical society told us he did abortions. I have this image of this warm and lovely guy doing a public service for the women of Berkeley.’ The gilded body cast on the wall is of Ayelet during one of her pregnancies.”

The house is very beautiful indeed: book filled (as you’d expect), faithfully restored, and charmingly appointed with sentimental family tchotchkes—here a candlestick smuggled out of Minsk by Waldman’s grandmother, there are photo of her grandfather’s furrier union in New York City. Art inspired by The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, is found in the living room and study. There’s also a velvet-covered window seat (drool), and a cute havdalah spice box.

But not for nothing does Gawker describe Waldman as a “lifestyle controversialist“: apparently, the photograph of books just scattered about la-di-da at the bottom of the stairs was not staged. What a way to live.

See it for yourself here.

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With a September and October that the New York Times has dubbed “one of the most crowded literary traffic jams in recent memory,” even the most voracious of readers may need a Guide for the Perplexed to navigate the abundance of Friday night reading options.

Yesterday alone saw the publication of three major new releases, including the latest from Jewish Literary Superhero Michael Chabon, that are bound to be on people’s minds this High Holiday season. Don’t have time to read all three before Rosh Hashanah? Here’s a handy guide:

The End of Men: And the Rise of Women, by Hanna Rosin:

From a wildly popular 2010 article in the Atlantic titled “The End of Men,” to last week’s attention-grabbing excerpt in the New York Times Magazine, Hanna Rosin’s new book, The End of Men: And the Rise of Women, is finally here.

The book explores what Rosin argues is an unprecedented gender role reversal in America. Women, it turns out, have pulled ahead of men in many categories—the two most interesting of which are work and sex. Drop some knowledge at Rosh Hashanah dinner with this Vox Tablet podcast that asks whether the same is also true in Jewish communal life.

The People of Forever Are Not Afraid, by Shani Boianjiu:

In a debut novel that Vogue called “searing,” Shani Boianjiu writes about three Israeli women who are conscripted to their national service in the Israeli Defense Forces. Boianjiu, an Israeli of Romanian and Iraqi descent, grew up in a town near the Lebanese border. She wrote movingly about her own experience in the Israeli army in Sunday’s New York Times.

While you’re at it, here are three Israeli writers she recommends you check out: Sara Shilo, Eli Amir, and Galila Ron-Feder Amit.

Telegraph Avenue, by Michael Chabon

Chabon’s new work of fiction includes a variety of eccentric characters all struggling with love, friendship, and money. Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, described it as a “rich, comic new novel” by an author who has “made a career of routing big, ambitious projects … with superlative results.” Adam Kirsch called it “typically stylish, but overwritten.”

Read an excerpt, or just listen to one:

Happy reading!

(Image via Shutterstock)

The post Three Books Published Yesterday That You Should Read (Or Read About) appeared first on Jewcy.

• We’re not really surprised: Rachel Shukert is the mastermind behind the hilarious new website, ‘Yiddish Curses for Republican Jews.’

• Groundbreaking radical feminist Shulamith Firestone was found dead in her East Village apartment.

• More sad news: Art Heyman, legendary Duke basketball player (and Long Island native), died at 71.

• An excerpt from Michael Chabon’s forthcoming book, Telegraph Avenue.

• Schmidt’s favorite New Girl episode, revealed.

The post Daily Jewce: The Mastermind Behind ‘Yiddish Curses for Republican Jews’ appeared first on Jewcy.

I guess the best way to start off this Weekly Yiderati is to make mention of the Larry David humor piece in this weeks New Yorker.  Can we get more of this?

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While I am as excited as anybody about the possibility of a Darren Aronofsky/Micahel Chabon and Ayelet Waldman team up, I have to approach the whole thing with a teeny bit of trepidation.  HBO has announced that they’re working with several other top notch authors, including Jennifer Egan and Sam Lipsyte, but all of these shows are only “in development.”  I don’t want to be the rain cloud on this parade, but that status doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Remember that whole Coen brothers/Michael Chabon thing that was supposed to happen?  That dream seems dead.

I’m not getting my hopes up too much, but hypothetically even if two out of three of the shows do get picked up, it would solidify the fact that we are living in a renaissance era for well-written television, so I’m rooting for it to happen.

Either way, The Millions took a little time, and talked to Ayelet Waldman about the future of the show she’s working on, and other topics.

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Who would have thought Adam Mansbach’s Go the Fuck to Sleep would get this many people talking (and saying so many stupid things)?

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And finally, Alina Bronsky talks to Largehearted Boy about music that helped inspire her fantastic novel, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine.

The post The Weekly Yiderati: Larry David, HBO Shows, And People Talking About Adam Mansbach appeared first on Jewcy.

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.

• Former Israeli President Moshe Katsav was convicted of rape and sexual assault in a Tel Aviv court today.

• What do you say to rabbis who oppose organ transplants?

• Michael Chabon talks about his “wrecked” novel, Fountain City.

• Is Black Swan a great work of camp?

The post Daily Jewce: Katsav Guilty, Chabon’s “Wrecked” Novel, Camp Films And More appeared first on Jewcy.

Not to sound like a goonish fanboy, but I’m more excited to read 4 chapters of work which Michael Chabon deemed unworthy of publication in 1992, than I am to read just about anything else coming out in the next few months.

Galley Cat reports that excerpts of Fountain City will be included in the next issue of McSweeney’s — in a 275-cubic-inch box that will also containing writings from debut novelist Adam Levin, actor Jesse Eisenberg, and author Colm Toibin.

Chabon described the 1,500-page trashed manuscript as “a poetically sad young man who apprenticed himself to a visionary, postmodern architect,”  but made no mention if he ever planed to publish the entire thing.

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