Elisa Albert—long-ago Jewcy editor!—is the acclaimed author of the The Book of Dahlia (a novel), How This Night is Different (a short story collection), and most recently After Birth, a novel of childbirth, motherhood, daughterhood, and friendship, which was aptly described by Merritt Tierce in the venerable New York Times as “a shriek of a carnival ride inside a spinning antigravity chamber, the ultimate trippy trip” — i.e. very, VERY good.

After Birth is literally searing in its descriptions of labor, delivery, and the early months of motherhood. It’s also very compelling, funny, and deliciously dark. Michael Orbach sat down with Albert for a light conversational repast of religion, adolescent suffering, the art of writing, the Holocaust, and C-sections.

You grew up somewhat observant, correct? When I read your book I couldn’t help thinking of that blessing Orthodox Jewish men say about thanking God for not making them women.

What’s your religious background and how do you look at it now?

I find the further away I get from observance, the more fondness I have for it. I find it quite lovely on a lot of levels, now that I’m pretty disentangled… I grew up pretty solidly Conservative; I went to day school and then Hebrew High from seventh grade on. Then I went to Brandeis. My mom belongs to both a Conservative and Orthodox shul and she goes back and forth as she sees fit; my stepfather is into Chabad. My mom came to observance pretty late in her life. She was Jewish but a hundred percent secular. Then she had this midlife crisis—call it what you will—and became very religious, almost punitively so. It wasn’t until I was much older and in the homes of very observant people who are comfortable in their observance that I noticed [religion] had a nicer energy. My mother was never relaxed about it. She was trying to inhabit it very hard.

What was the genesis of writing After Birth?

I feel fortunate that I had an established writing life before I became a mom, so all of the confusion and fascination that goes along with motherhood had this very natural outlet. Of course I’m going to write a novel about it: that’s what I do. I didn’t do much writing until my son was about a year old. I was pretty deep into early motherhood, and when I finally got my bearings and could carve out some space to write, there was no question that that was what I was going to engage. I’m not really the kind of writer who looks too far afield… This was what my mind was full of.

How close are you to Ari, the narrator of After Birth?

I would say she’s like a distillation of a really bad day; a haunted house mirror reflection of fears I have. She’s a rumination on a dark corner, blown up ten times. I really like what Susan Sontag said in her notebook: “To write, you have to allow yourself be the person you don’t want to be, of all the people you are.”  Like an id. [Ari] is someone so incredibly hopeless and in such a dire state of despondency. She has that tendency to hold on to really negative stuff and let it define her. That’s a danger in this whole being alive business.

There are lots of dangers in being alive.

That’s true.

Speaking of the not letting go, Ari can’t seem to forget her deceased mother throughout the book.

She’s a really nasty mother who even in death won’t let up; just that very broken maternal line and that incredible legacy of damage and darkness and secrets and unresolvable stuff that gets passed down as a matter of course if we’re not super conscious and careful. Ari’s struggle is to break that chain: can I be a mother and not hand down more of the same? Can I end that legacy? Can I not let my dark shit get on this [new] person?

It’s like that Philip Larkin poem, This be the Verse.

“They fuck you up your mum and dad,” I can recite it. And interestingly, it ends, “Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself.”

How did your mother take the portrayal of Ari’s mother in the book?

My mother’s an exceptional reader. She taught me to love books and it’s been a huge benefit and boon to our relationship. I learned from her how to love books and to go to books to find what I needed. My mother’s not one of those people who doesn’t understand what a novel is. She’s incredibly well read and that helps a lot. She makes jokes, like, “Well that character isn’t me, I’m not Israeli,” or “This time the mother’s dead!”  I think it might be harder than she lets on but she knows enough about books and fiction to stand back and I’m grateful for that. I have acquaintances whose parents are very threatening with ultimatums, like “If you ever write about us…” That’s pretty bad. I’m lucky. My parents just say, “Congratulations on being a writer.”

Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?

I did. I didn’t know if I was any good—I mean I think I knew I was kinda good—but it still seemed so far fetched as I made my way toward it.  I think I always wanted to be seen and heard. When I was little, I wanted to be an actress.  I always had parts in the school play. I always had a need to be seen because I felt unseen in general.

Why?

Complicated family stuff. Growing up not super attractive in L.A. From puberty on, things were kinda dark.

Aren’t they always?

Some people just sail through, seems like.

They don’t become novelists; they become housewives and bankers.

Writing comes out of that feeling of invisibility.  It’s incredibly valuable but you don’t realize it until later. Sometimes I feel like whispering into the ears of passing adolescents, “I know things seem really bad but if you stick with yourself and don’t try to change…”

“Or kill yourself.”

I’ve noticed that the book seems to go after the sacred cows—both motherhood and, with regard to Ari’s grandmother, the Holocaust. Especially how her grandmother survives by becoming a prostitute to the Nazis.

People tend to put motherhood on a pedestal but think nothing of denying women the right to decent birth. The Holocaust has to be spoken of vaguely, in hushed tones, leaving out the basest human elements. I feel like this character’s irreverence is actually showing respect for the real issues, the real suffering, not all the gift wrap and bunting.  It’s so common for us to talk around the difficult things; the job of a novelist is to talk about the difficult thing. Baby showers are irrelevant. Standing in line for two hours to take a picture of Anne Frank’s attic is Tragedy Disneyland. The way it is in our culture, the baby registry is super important but we are silent about what happens to women in birth. Reverse it: there is something sacred and important here, but it’s not what we’re used to talking about. There is something incredibly harrowing and hard to look straight at, here; let’s show respect by actually trying to talk about it, even though it makes us really uncomfortable. Let’s not have our cathartic easy little cry and call it a day.

I think the graphic description of Ari’s grandmother’s having sex with the Nazis is a good example of that.

Right. Nobody wants to think about that. That’s how this woman saves her own life. A lot of people had to do things that are just too horrible to speak about. Everybody loves Anne Frank, me included, because she’s an innocent who believed in the triumph of the human spirit. That’s really easy to admire and cry about. Let’s graduate to something not so easy to admire or cry about.

When you said parts of motherhood that people don’t talk about, what were you referring to?

A lot of women go into motherhood wanting to not know much about birth. They choose to outsource birth, be a passive participant, give over their will and trust in whatever institution or whatever kind of care provider they’ve chosen.

Just a question of clarification: Ari describes her C-section as a bit like a rape. As you mentioned, some readers seem to think you’re anti-C-section. I didn’t take that you were anti-C-section insomuch as opposed to the passive nature of other people taking control during the birthing process.

I would say that. I’m anti-ignorance, I’ll go out a limb and say that. [laughs] Who’s going to argue with that? I’m anti-ignorance and the willful ignorance around birth is a shame. It causes a lot of problems. The book is not anti-C section; C-sections save lives in 10-15 percent of cases, where they’re really medically necessary. Unfortunately, it’s the most commonly performed surgery in America today and it’s performed on a third of all women giving birth.  That’s obviously problematic. Ari didn’t need surgical birth. She was bullied and terrified into it and she didn’t know enough to say no.  No one is saying we should go back to the time when women died in childbirth. But one in ten is very different from one in three.

What I took from the book is it sort of contrasts between birth, this really visceral experience, and the rest of our lives that are super non-visceral.

That’s a huge part of the book. A bit of a push-back against the disembodiment of modern life. We live a lot between our eyeballs and screens. Birth is one reminder that we are mammals.  We are monkeys and we have bodies and our bodies matter. When we disown them, ignore them or try to distance ourselves from them, there are severe spiritual consequences.

Related: The Book of Dahlia: Good, or Just Jewish?

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“I was not looking for my dreams to interpret my life, but rather for my life to interpret my dreams.” – Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag is one of the most celebrated political, literary, and feminist icons of our time. An innate wordsmith and an intellectual iconoclast, Sontag examined the depths of the human experience as well as the most pertinent issues of her day. Sontag was a profound supporter of gay rights and sexual exploration, as well as a pioneer of documenting and interpreting war-ravished devastation throughout the world.

She was dark, mysterious, and most importantly, she questioned, relentlessly. Regarding Susan Sontag is an “intimate and nuanced investigation into the life of one of the most influential and and provocative thinkers of the 20th century.” The documentary, which premiers this week at the Tribeca Film Festival, is narrated by actress Patricia Clarkson, directed by Nancy Kates, and features dramatic interviews and never seen footage of Susan.

Watch the trailer here and look out for the documentary to hit theaters in the fall of 2014.

(Image: Getty)

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“I have finelly a grand son,” the Israeli writer Yoram Kaniuk wrote to me in an email three years ago. “wonderful at my age to be a new grabdfather. Life is shit but now I am awiming better then ever so there is hope
Yoram”

Over the course of the past several years, the notes I received from Kaniuk were often elliptical—lacking in standard punctuation and littered with misspellings. Part of me thinks those errors—and more than the mistakes, the “Life is shit” attitude—were intentional, to better allow him to project himself as a man possessed of an addled imagination and to wallow in the idea of the aggrieved writer, ignored by the Israeli (and worldwide) literary establishment in favor of younger, less controversial minds. I sometimes took it, perhaps unfairly and erroneously, as a pose designed to make me and others in similar relationships with Kaniuk write about him.

And there was so much to write about. Kaniuk was a member of the Palmach. He fought in the War of Independence. He helped shepherd Holocaust refugees away of Europe. He left Israel, lived in New York City and Paris, befriended the likes of Charlie Parker and Susan Sontag. He studied art and painted tiny pictures on matchboxes.

Having married a non-Jewish American, his daughters were not considered Jews in the country in which they were raised and so, more recently, he petitioned to change his legal status from Jew to no-religion, to match that of his grandson.

For the past several years, Kaniuk fought cancer, the illness that prevailed Saturday. And perhaps he had a point in his messages to me and others, that he did not receive quite the same recognition that peers like Aharon Appelfeld enjoyed. But it’s untrue to say he was unknown. His 32 books (including 17 novels) were translated into 25 languages and the Israeli establishment bestowed on him some if its greatest prizes. Messages for him on Facebook prove he was beloved by younger Israeli readers.

Kaniuk did not want platitudes—he did not want to be told “I liked your book”—an empty affirmation, to him. As he wrote me on another occasion, he was not “an American who stand before a painting and says: Ho, isn’t something! I really like it. and so on.”

I don’t claim a deep friendship with Kaniuk. I interviewed him once, and commissioned a few pieces of writing from him in 2006, when Israel seemed on the cusp of war with Lebanon. Those essays were—they are—like jazz, rhythmic with a feeling of impetuosity, filled with color and passion, invoking themes of aging and obsolescence and Israel’s precarious standing. They are balanced too by observations of occasional joy and whimsy. And there is nostalgia in them, as well.

When I last was in Israel, five years ago, I went to meet Kaniuk in his home in Tel Aviv. He was gracious and warm, as was his wife Miranda, and he offered to take me on my next visit to his favorite café. There, he’d introduce me to my future husband, he said. It was a suggestion rooted ever in hope.

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Capricorn (Dec. 21–Jan 20): Krich nit tsu hoich, vestu nit darfen falen: Don’t climb too high and you won’t have to fall.


Hebrews named Capricorn “the slain kid,” which refers to the blood of the lamb sacrificed during the Passover story, saving firstborns from slaughter. Capricorn was also known as Azazel, the scapegoat from Leviticus.



Capricorn, a cardinal earth sign, shows a great deal of initiative: you want to control your environment rather than have it control you. Although you are earth-bound, you are more concerned with your own state of mind—which is largely ambitious, but also idealistic to the point of neurotic—than with the outside world.  

While Capricornis generally thought of to be ruled by the goat, you are actually ruled by a goat-fish (a goat with a fish tail!). Although your goat side is always climbing toward the top of the mountain, you also take refuge in the waters of consciousness (this is associated with the Greek god Pan, who took refuge in a river by turning his lower half into a fish). Finding a balance between caution and passion allows you to flip the script on those who have you pinned one way or the other.  If you lean toward the goat-side, try to handle others—and yourself!—with kid gloves. 



There are three different levels of Capricorn:  practical, earthly and sensual, and confused by depth of desires—why you may often fail to express your true feelings, concealing them under your practicality and work ethic. Striving to be industrious and persevering, calm and diligent and determined, your concern with status makes you almost puritanical in your discipline. Largely conservative, you are the consummate professional—shveyr arbiter (hard worker)—not exposing your feelings, and patiently waiting for the results of your hard work and ambitions. 



The New Moon in your sign on January 11 gives an opportunity to put something in motion—perhaps one of your long-awaited ambitions will come to fruition if you put your nose to the grindstone. Mercury also shifts into your sign on December 31, where it will stay until January 18. You can really get into your pragmatic thinking and express your true self. With Mars in Aquarius starting December 25, take more initiative in a leadership role. Venus in Sagittarius, meanwhile, gives you a chance to really take a look at your love life, giving you more freedom to solidify your true self and what you want out of love.  


Famous Capricorn Jews: J.D. Salinger, Jason Segel, Bebe Neuwirth, Sandy Koufax, Hank Greenberg, Simon Wiesenthal, Howard Stern, Shari Lewis, Andy Kaufman, Helena Rubenstein, Heidi Fleiss, Phil Spector, Harry Shearer, Soupy Sales, Diane Von Furstenberg, Vidal Sassoon, Laura Schlessinger, Susan Sontag, Stan Lee, Isaac Asimov (unknown, but celebrated on Jan.2)



AQUARIUS (JANUARY 21-FEBRUARY 20): You may be dreaming of a better reality, but try to relax and let the fates do their thing. Vos vet zein, vet zein: what will be, will be! While you Aquarians tend to be emotionally detached, you can harness these cosmic energies to give yourself over to something greater than yourself.  

PISCES (FEBRUARY 21-MARCH 20): You’ve been selling yourself short for far too long, and your neshama may be a bit worse for wear. Forces are at work to get you the recognition you deserve, and perhaps a much-needed boost in your finances. Sweet Pisces often want to help others—but before you do that, you must help yourself. 
 
ARIES (MARCH 21-APRIL 20): With your ruling planet Mars in innovative and philanthropic Aquarius, you may find yourself spending time with new people and in situations that call for your special brand of bravado. If you can look at your life from the outside, you’ll see that you can deal with your ongoing issues while giving attention to the rest of the world.

TAURUS (APRIL 21- MAY 20): Life keeps teaching you the lesson that time can alter everything: di tseit ken alts ibermachen. As much as you’ve been burning both ends of the candle for what seems like ages, you must continue to assert yourself. Doing what’s right for you, rather than what others think is the right thing for you, gives you the courage of your convictions.

GEMINI (MAY 21- JUNE 20): Kolboynik (rascally know-it-all) Geminis have a knack for finding convenient excuses and explanations for everything. With your ruling planet moving into Capricorn around January 8, you may become more focused on money matters, favoring independence and practicality over flights of fancy.

CANCER (JUNE 21-JULY 20): With the full moon in your sign on December 28, you will be more inclined to pay attention to details that may have previously gone unnoticed. Because this particular full moon has some stressful energies attached to it, you may feel even more like secluding yourself in your shell. If you can find a way to make your home cozy while getting yourself out into the world, you may be in for a surprise or two.

LEO (JULY 21-AUGUST 20): Ven nit di shein, volt kain shoten nit geven: If not for the light, there would be no shadow. Leos have the potential to light up a room with your good vibes, and the upcoming full moon energy is perfect for empathizing with others. Understanding other people and what they’re all about can help you relate to yourself with more clarity of purpose.

VIRGO (AUGUST 21-SEPTEMBER 20): Be good to yourselves this month, dear Virgos. You may hold dear to your balobotishe (respectable, well-mannered) reputation, but embracing your creativity and individuality does not mean letting go of your cred. Your ruling planet Venus will be in Sagittarius for the first part of the new year, giving you the freedom to explore what makes you truly healthy, wealthy and wise.

LIBRA (SEPTEMBER 21-OCTOBER 20): Libras sometimes get a bad rap for being a Jack-of-all trades, master of none (Fil meloches, vainik broches). This month, you may be feeling insecure about your indecision, and tendency to flit from one interest to another. Deep feelings may be heading your way, and holding on to a something stable may help you to decide what is most important to you. 


SCORPIO (OCTOBER 21-NOVEMBER 20): To you secretive Scorpios, information is power, and power is maintained by keeping that information to yourself. Who do you think you’re fooling? Listening to your heart will give you a sense of what you really want out of life, love and career.  You can be true to yourself without giving the rest of us shpilkes. 


SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 21–Dec. 20): If you feel your confidence has been given a once over from all of the planets traveling through your sign in the past month, keep in mind that you fire signs have a lot your corner to ensure you remain true to your echt (authentic) self. You’ve got a lot of room to maneuver, and if anyone gives you a hard time for your freedom-urges, they probably weren’t worth having around to begin with.

What’s Your Sign?
Sagittarius, the Adventurous Archer (Nov. 21 – Dec. 20)
Stinging Scorpio (October 21-November 20)
Lovely, Lawful Libra (September 21-October 20)
Virgo, the Anxious Maiden (August 21-September 20)
Leo, King of the Jungle (July 21 – August 20)

(Art by Margarita Korol)

The post Jewcy Horoscopes: Capricorn, the Cardinal Earth Sign (Dec. 21–Jan 20) appeared first on Jewcy.

• Sandy Koufax…basketball star?

• Job, meet the New Yorker.

• There’s no such thing as free bar mitzvah fireworks. Especially if you’re a politician.

• Susan Sontag on love, illustrated.

• Shia Labeouf explains why he got naked in that strange Sigur Ros video.

• Fresh off his K. Stew heartbreak, Robert Pattinson will play Lawrence of Arabia in Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert. Until then, get your R. Pattz fix with his awkwardly tragic Daily Show appearance.

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• From Seville to Hasidic Williamsburg: the black hat-making industry.

• Artists take on the task of illustrating the great Jewish quotes, from Deuteronomy to Susan Sontag.

• The New Yorker cartoonist behind the New Yorker cartoon episode of Seinfeld.

• Music festival Lollapalooza is heading to Tel Aviv in 2013. Rock on.

• Lena Dunham’s hemp-wearing college kind-of-boyfriend, New Yorker style.

• Also, Lena Dunham wrote a movie and John Krasinski is starring in it.

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From its beginnings more than a century ago (the Oxford English Dictionary traces the term’s first use to 1909), camp has formed an important part of gay culture and, from the 1960s onwards, has helped to make gay culture more accepted by mainstream society. It is both a celebration of the frivolous, and, in its fashion, a subversive attack on the seriousness of the high modernism that it originally grew out of.

Sontag defined “the ultimate Camp statement” as “it’s good because it’s awful”—camp takes pride in failure, particularly in the garish or melodramatic. It’s a deeply visual sensibility, one that privileges extravagance and strives for the extraordinary.

Camp is sentimental, open, and “generous.” As a way of life, it represents “the theatricalization of experience.”

Since this is Camp Week at Jewcy, I thought I’d take a look at the campiness of camp. The two words aren’t just homonyms. In fact, there’s a great deal about Jewish summer camp that is camp. (To distinguish between the two, I’ll use the acronym JSC to refer to Jewish summer camp.)

One might even argue that camp is the defining aesthetic of JSC, at least at the liberal, reform Southern California JSC where I spent a few formative summers.

Life at my JSC was defined by skits, chants, cheesy songs, drama, pageantry, homoerotic humor, cabin cheers filled with elaborate innuendo—all things that are indelibly camp. Moreover, as your goyische friends may jealously testify to, JSC is a place of sexual curiosity, self-questioning, experimentation, even cross-dressing (often for the purposes of a skit or theatrical production).

During this period, it can seem like one’s sexual and gender attitudes are in a continual flux, and indeed, many campers are themselves androgynous, unformed; in Sontag’s view, “the androgyne is certainly one of the great images of Camp sensibility.”

JSC is suffused with an air of constant performance that is unmistakably camp. We cheer loudly for the smallest successes, we over-gel our hair and strut demonstratively for our camp crushes, we write and perform in knowingly silly skits and belt out parodies of the season’s hit pop songs. We invoke film quotes to show our pop culture savvy (The Big Lebowski was the sacred text during my stint at JSC), and we code sexual references and flirtations into our everyday speech.

We are always on, always performing. Sontag wrote that camp “is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater.” JSC, then, may be seen as one vast proscenium, where the inherent drama of adolescence is amplified to the nth degree, making dandies of us all.

In “Notes on Camp,” Sontag claimed that “Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in contemporary urban culture. Creative, that is, in the truest sense: they are creators of sensibilities. The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony.” These two forces collide at JSC, where we pray daily and learn how to be custodians of Jewish history while also cajoling a friend to steal and try on a girl’s bra, because it seems strange and daring.

JSC is both Wet Hot American Summer (itself an example and document of camp) and “The Conversion of the Jews.” At Camp Hess Kramer, which I attended, this collision is emblematized by the camp’s six-foot tall Menorah—an object at once intrinsically holy and, because of its exaggerated size, unintentionally absurd. (Sontag would label it an example of “naive camp.”)

Sontag was never wholly in favor of camp. In her original essay, as well as later in her career, she worried that camp’s lack of aesthetic seriousness could also be accompanied by a lack of moral seriousness. Yet that is what makes this sensibility so well suited to JSC. For campers, it is a time to be unserious, free, to loose the shackling anxieties of adolescence, even—or especially—if that means risking embarrassment or failure.

“Camp discloses innocence,” Sontag tells us, “but also, when it can, corrupts it.” This can be interpreted as a comment on camp’s ethics, but I think it’s something less pointed—a description of a tendency, a habit of being. At Jewish summer camp, whether our parents know it or not, we come to shed our innocence, to be complicit in our own corruption and adolescent awakening. And we do it—whether we know it or not—by way of camp, the camp of camp.

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• Fred Armisen dresses up like Larry King to interview him.

• A Jewish Lebanese-born collector shows off his goods in Amsterdam.

• Two Jewish looking puppets get engaged.

• Susan Sontag and Joann Sfar get the documentary treatment.

• Aaron Dessner and his band, The National, have had a pretty great year.  They talk about it at Pitchfork.

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