Literature

Poem by celebrated Victorian feminist sold at auction

Jennifer Lipman — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:32:10 +0100

One of the final writings of a Victorian Jew who Oscar Wilde praised as a "girl of genius" has been auctioned for £3,500.

The poem by Amy Levy, At Dawn, was sold at Bonhams on Wednesday for £500 more than anticipated.

Written around 1889, shortly before Levy's suicide, it is the first time any of her work had been made for sale.

A feminist who had a relationship with the novelist Vernon Lee, Levy defied the expectations of her middle-class Jewish upbringing, becoming Newnham College Cambridge's first Jewish woman student.

Despite her premature death at 27, she was a prolific writer, publishing books and essays and attracting praise from Wilde.

"When you think of the prejudices women of the time faced, and for her to face them as a Jew, then [her story] is even more extraordinary," said Roy Davids, who sold the poem.

Dickens’s Jew — from evil to delightful

Charles Drazin — Fri, 03 May 2013 09:40:29 +0100

When David Lean directed Oliver Twist 65 years ago, the character of Fagin had already been long established as a popular villain. There was the serialisation and subsequent editions of Charles Dickens's novel, while the celebrated actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree played the part in a successful stage version in 1905. And there had been many film adaptations. Lon Chaney was Fagin in one of several silent versions; Irving Pichel took on the role in a 1933 sound version.The George Cruikshank drawings, which accompanied the original serialisation, provided a model that made Fagin, with his long beard, hat and notorious, beaked nose, as instantly recognisable a villain as Captain Hook or Dracula.

The crude, racist stereotyping went back to the original conception of the character. When Fagin makes his first appearance, he is described as "a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair". He is then referred to invariably as "the Jew" as though that were the key to his behaviour.

Dickens came to regret this, explaining that, at the time, the kind of criminal he was describing invariably was a Jew, but he was so uncomfortable that he removed many of the references from a later edition. In practice, however, it was no more than a gesture, offering little practical mitigation of the racial slur. A richly dramatic caricature, Fagin lived on into the 20th century as a negative but often revived archetype of Jewishness.

Lean's 1948 adaptation presents Fagin faithfully as the duplicitous criminal of "evil conscience" that Dickens had created. It does not add racist colour that was not already there, yet at the same time gives full weight to a portrait of rare nastiness. Beneath a surface warmth lies utter viciousness. Fagin grooms his young orphans to steal. He seems to offer them sanctuary but in reality condemns them to ruin. In their joint criminal enterprise, even his accomplice Bill Sikes is the victim of Fagin's superior intellect. Sikes steals, Fagin fences; Sikes provides the brawn, Fagin the brains. Although Sikes kills Nancy, it is Fagin who puts him up to it.

In a chilling sequence in the Lean film, which culminates with Nancy's murder, Fagin asks Sikes what he would do if he discovered that the Artful Dodger had "peached" on him. "I'd smash his head in," he says.

Fagin asks what if it were one or other of the boys.

"No matter who, I would do the same." It is only then that he tells Sikes that his girlfriend Nancy has turned informer. The effect is that of unleashing a savage dog.

Lean distilled Dickens's work into brilliantly cinematic images but it was the fidelity of those images to the original racist conception of Fagin that made them especially shocking in the context of the 1940s. The immediate aftermath of the Holocaust might have seemed the time to avoid such a negative stereotype, yet Lean carried on regardless of the consequences.

It wasn't that he hadn't been warned. In May 1947, the Production Code Administration, Hollywood's self-regulatory censorship body, said: "We assume, of course, that you will bear in mind the advisability of omitting from the portrayal of Fagin any elements or inference that would be offensive to any specific racial group or religion. Otherwise, of course, your picture might meet with very definite audience resistance in this country."

Not long after, make-up artist Stuart Freeborn began turning Alec Guinness into Fagin. He recalled that Lean requested two looks: one that followed the Cruikshank drawings, and another toned-down version. In the latter, Fagin "looked like Jesus Christ," remembered Freeborn. "David said: 'Forget that. It's not what we want at all'."

If Lean's instinct overrode a wider awareness, the ivory tower he occupied served only to encourage a blinkered outlook. Around that time, he explained the astonishingly favourable conditions under which the Rank Organisation financed its top producers to make whatever they wanted, how they wanted: "We can cast whatever actors we choose, and we have no interference at all in the way the film is made. No one sees the films until they are finished, and no cuts are made without the consent of the director or producer."

But surviving correspondence from the company's US distributor, Eagle-Lion, reveals that, behind the scenes, Rank was already regretting this set-up. In November 1947, Rank's publicity chief, Jock Lawrence, wrote to the head of Eagle-Lion, Robert Benjamin: "There are such problems… the Jewish one on Oliver Twist is a very serious one. It is something that I will have to show you here, rather than write them in a letter." He must have known that Lean had disregarded the Production Code Administration's advice concerning Fagin.

What made this seem all the more foolhardy was the crisis in Palestine. Lean's Oliver Twist opened in Britain a month after Israel's declaration of independence. Rarely could a première have been so badly timed.

Lawrence derived some comfort from the finished picture, which he saw only days before the première. "I was very happily surprised by the Fagin character," he wrote to Benjamin. "The film itself is so very good that the character of Fagin sinks somewhat into insignificance as compared to the whole. The fidelity of characterisation is such that I believe we have strong grounds for fighting any attacks… There is no doubt in my opinion, however, that the 'lunatic fringe' will attack the film on the basis of Fagin. But… it would not at all be justified except for the unusual length of the character's nose. However, we have it that way, and it is a truly great picture that I believe should overcome any such objections."

Lawrence believed that attacks would be inevitable when the film opened in the US. He suggested that Eagle-Lion delay the release to allow time for the Palestine situation to be settled, so that the film "might not be used by the Zionist groups for propaganda". He suggested, too, that Eagle-Lion's publicity stress the fidelity of the character to the original story. And it seemed to him "doubly important now" to organise a US visit of the child star of the film. "We can, in that way, stress the title Oliver Twist, through the character himself, taking away any attention possible from the Fagin character."

The Rank Organisation settled on a US release of September 1948. Following Lawrence's advice, it arranged a private advance screening for Jewish campaign groups. The reaction was not favourable. The Anti-Defamation League considered the characterisation to be an offensive stereotype that would be harmful in the light of existing tensions. The New York Board of Rabbis went even further, declaring it a "vehicle of blatant antisemitism" that "would play into the hands of un-American elements". It wrote to the president of the Motion Picture Producers Association of America asking that the film be banned. Rather than risk further protests that might jeopardise the company's other prestige releases, Rank postponed the release until a more opportune time.

The film's notoriety made it a magnet for further trouble. When, in February 1949, it opened in the British sector of Occupied Berlin, protesters picketed the theatre. They were mostly Jewish displaced persons, but their anger was shared by many in a city that was trying to recover from the poison of an all-too-recent-past. Berlin's mayor was one of several prominent gentiles to sign a petition that warned of the danger of "arousing antisemitism in Germany", and urged that the film be withdrawn. When the British authorities refused to intervene, the crowds were back the next evening and there were riots in which several were badly hurt. The British military government still stuck to its line that it would not impose a ban but must have been very relieved when Rank decided to withdraw the film.

The question of banning Oliver Twist was an issue that divided even its Jewish critics. The ADL stressed that at no time had it called for a ban, even though it believed events had borne out its warnings about the film's inflammatory nature. The American Council for Judaism condemned outright such calls, arguing that "opinions formed or opposition voiced after the event constituted the proper exercise of public opinion".

The film finally opened in the US in May 1951 after the Production Code Administration granted its seal of approval on the basis of cuts intended "to eliminate wherever possible the photography of the character of Fagin". The New York Times welcomed a sensible compromise: "Except in so far as the appearance of Fagin in point of time has been reduced, his motivating influence and his impact upon the story have been preserved. And that is both just to the purpose of the producers and considerate of those who might take reasonable exception to an excessive portrayal of a stereotyped Jew."

The lesson was that Fagin had to be rehabilitated. When Lionel Bart wrote his musical in 1960, he gave him the heart that was absent in both Lean's film and the novel. Reviewing the situation, Fagin finds it hard "to be really as black as they paint…" With irresistible tunes, the musical provides a lyrical redemption that makes him lovable. It rescues Fagin from the gallows that awaited him in the novel so that, memorably in the 1968 adaptation, he can dance towards a new dawn with the Artful Dodger, Jewish, exotic, other, but delightful.

Polanski's 2005 adaptation did not duck the retribution that faced Fagin but still offered a revisionist version. The novel describes Oliver's new guardian taking him to visit Fagin in prison, to show how he has received his due punishment. Polanski switches the agency for the visit from the adult to the child, who wants to express his gratitude to a man who gave him shelter.

"Fagin, you were kind to me," says Oliver. They hug and Fagin offers a final gesture when he tells him where to find his box of treasures. "It's yours, Oliver, it's yours."

What would Dickens have made of this? Essentially humanist and progressive, I think he would have understood why. But nonetheless he would have regretted the loss of a complex articulation of evil. Such was the price of too easy an acceptance of a racial stereotype.

The tragic poet Oscar Wilde called a genius

Jennifer Lipman — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:00:00 +0100

A handwritten poem written by one of Victorian Jewry's most highly-regarded writers and feminist thinkers shortly before her suicide is expected to fetch up to £3,000 when it is auctioned next month.

Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Clapham, south London, in 1861, Amy Levy defied expectations of both her gender, religion and her class to become only the second Jewish woman student at Cambridge, and the first to study at Newnham College.

A novelist and poet, she was first published at the age of 14 and mixed in intellectual circles, with her close acquaintances including Karl Marx's daughter Eleanor, the social reformer Beatrice Webb and playwright George Bernard Shaw.

Described by Oscar Wilde as a "girl of genius" and in her Jewish Chronicle obituary as possessing "a keen insight into human affairs, and exhibiting a strength of mind far beyond her physical strength".

One of her final works, a poem called At Dawn, that was allegedly inspired by her love for the feminist novelist Vernon Lee, will go on sale at Bonhams on May 8.

It is thought to have been written in 1889, only months before Ms Levy killed herself by inhaling carbon monoxide. She was just 27 years old.

The auction of the poem is unusual, - none of her archive has ever been made for sale before. "I'm almost certain it's the text she sent to the publisher," said Roy Davids, the current owner. Acknowledging that the poet is not a household name, he said that he hoped the sale would draw attention to her impressive career.

"She was extraordinary," he said. "When you think of the prejudices women of the time faced, and for her to face them as a Jew, then it's even more extraordinary."

Although she moved away from her religious upbringing as an adult, she always viewed herself as Jewish, writing a series of essays for this paper and also publishing in Wilde's Women's World magazine a story called Cohen of Trinity about a Jewish student grappling with his own sense of difference.

One of her novels, Reuben Sachs, set in the Anglo-Jewish community of Bayswater, in west London, offered a satirical look at her co-religionists and questions of identity.

"She is incredibly underrated," said Mr Davids. "It's a great shame and it's nothing to do with the quality of
her work."

Book gives crash course on glatt sex for Orthodox

Nathan Jeffay — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 07:00:34 +0100

In 1999, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach wrote Kosher Sex. Now, there’s glatt sex.

For what is believed to be the first time, from next month, Charedim will be able to buy a Hebrew-language sex guide written especially for them.

Published in Israel, The Newlywed’s Guide to Physical Intimacy caters especially for strictly Orthodox standards, limiting itself to sexual acts that are permitted by Jewish law and even respecting the most modest of readers by making diagrams an optional extra — they arrive in an envelope at the back of the book which readers can choose to discard or open.

Using precise language and avoiding the euphemisms so common in Charedi society, it gives a crash course in the male and female anatomies and how to have sex.

“There is so much material available on sex, but for an audience that hasn’t read about it before, our challenge was to be clear and not to overwhelm,” said co-author David Ribner.

It is a year since Dr Ribner, sex therapist and Orthodox rabbi, and researcher Jennie Rosenfeld, released their book in English. Surprisingly, no Charedi leaders have tried to ban it.

“A number of rabbis have told me informally that they’re pleased with it and happy to recommend it,” he said.

However, it is unclear whether Hebrew-speaking rabbis, who tend to be stricter on modesty matters than their English-speaking counterparts, will be as welcoming. “The culture and norms in this country are very different to in the Anglo-Saxon world,” he admitted.

One setback in writing a sex guide for a community that does not publicly discuss sex is the impossibility of promoting your book.

Charedi rabbis ban accessing mainstream media, yet Charedi media will not cover the book’s release, review it, or place adverts. What is more, Orthodox bookstores refuse to stock it, meaning that the book is reliant on word of mouth for sales — which take place outside Charedi neighbourhoods.

Review: Children of the sun

John Nathan — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 10:41:53 +0100

Unlike his contemporary Chekhov, it’s not only Russia’s pre-revolutionary privileged class who populate Maxim Gorky’s plays but a hostile and starving proletariat. This work, which the political dramatist and activist wrote from his St Petersburg prison during Russia’s aborted 1905 revolution, gives a sense of them circling the home of scientist Protasov.

In this new version by Andrew Upton, Protasov’s sister Liza describes their home as an oasis in a black, hostile forest, although in Howard Davies’s wonderful production it’s more of a high-walled fortress.

Oblivious to the condition of his fellow man, Protasov conducts chemistry experiments to advance mankind.

Meanwhile, his neglected wife Yelena flirts with the artist Vageen, the lonely Melaniya dotes on Protasov, her melancholy brother, the vet Boris, expresses undying love for Liza. She is the only one who can see the coming storm — until, that is, the peasants are no longer a menacing, largely unseen presence and breach the walls.

Davies’s gripping production rather brilliantly emphasises that barrier between the privilege within and the poverty without by giving his audience a peasant’s perspective of Protasov’s home – a high dirty wall. In a moment of exquisitely staged transition, the whole edifice sinks into the Lyttelton’s stage, giving the impression that we, the audience, are rising above it until it is possible to see over the parapet and into Bunny Christie’s design of the cavernous, chic-shabby interior.

Upton’s open, unfussy translation has a lightness of touch that serves well the ideas and arguments about art and science with which Protasov and his circle are obsessed. But there are moments when Upton’s obsession with accessibility gets the better of his script. Exchanges such ‘What’s your problem?” followed by “How long have you got?” and lines such as “In yer dreams” feel not only colloquial (which is fine) but like an oddly British strain of sarcasm (which is not).

But this is a small gripe in a superbly performed production that is destined to be one of the finest of the year. The charge of politics would count for little if the relationships here were not so beautifully observed.

Justine Mitchell, as Protasov’s ignored wife, moves from a distracted self-indulgence with her artist fancy man (Gerald Kyd) in tow, to a steely observer of her sexless marriage. Geoffrey Streatfeild, as her brilliant husband, transmits a kind of emotional autism in response to her needs that makes you want to slap him.

And there is terrific work, too, from Paul Higgins as Boris and Lucy Black as Melaniya, who are each in love with their hosts — Boris with Liza, Melaniya with Protasov. Meanwhile, the town is racked with cholera and the revolution cannot be far away. The effect is something akin to a party on the sinking Titanic.

Herzog play for London

Jennifer Lipman — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:30:15 +0100

The play that put a Jewish-American writer in the running for a Pulitzer Prize, will be staged in London next month.

Amy Herzog was named as a finalist for the most prestigious award in American culture this week, for 4000 Miles, her drama about the reunion between a communist grandmother and her 21-year-old grandson.

The play is currently being staged at the Theatre Royal Bath, before coming to the Print Room in Notting Hill next month.

Nathan Englander, a New York-based writer who has lived in Israel, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his Jewish-themed collection of short stories, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank.

The prize was awarded after a two-year gap — in 2012, the judges felt that no book was good enough to win it

Last woman standing as four fail to make shortlist

Jennifer Lipman — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:20:15 +0100

With five Jewish writers nominated for the annual Women’s Prize for Fiction, sheer probability alone would have meant at least one would make the shortlist.

In the event, only A M Homes remains a contender for the £30,000 award— formerly called the Orange Prize — after Francesca Segal, Shani Boianjiu, Deborah Copaken Kogan and Sheila Heti failed to make the cut this week.

Ms Homes, in contention for her novel May We Be Forgiven, faces stiff competition from multi-award winner Hilary Mantel and other nominees. She will find out if she has won at a Royal Festival Hall ceremony on June 5.

The American writer, who has seven novels to her name, was adopted by a Jewish family. Unusually for her work, May We Be Forgiven, has an explicitly Jewish subject matter, including a Jewish protagonist, who faces questions of religion. Ms Homes has compared it to the Coen Brothers film A Serious Man, which was in part inspired by the biblical story of Job.

In a recent interview, she revealed that she has been considering “the notion of faith or the belief or need for some kind of spiritual or communal life” for several years.

“In this book, there is a Jewish theme that I hadn’t ever risked exploring before. In some ways I was afraid to do it because I thought this will be my Jewish book and people will be upset by that. But the truth, is that I’m incredibly happy about it.”

My Granta moment made mum proud

Clive Sinclair — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:10:15 +0100

Back when I was young, lists seemed like fences on the open range. But secretly I was pleased to be corralled among other literary thoroughbreds. Did being on Granta’s first-ever list 30 years ago make a difference to anything other than my ego? You bet. The street-cred it established helped me get the job of literary editor at the JC, and probably persuaded the BBC that I was a suitable candidate for their BBC2 show, Bookmark.

As it happened, the novel at the heart of the documentary they made — Blood Libels —- was set in the offices of a paper called the Jewish Voice, for which the old JC building in Furnival Street stood in.

But by far the greatest benefit came as a result of the group photograph, taken by Lord Snowdon no less. After the session, I approached the Queen’s brother-in-law with a copy of his autobiography and asked him to sign it for my mother. “To Betty,” he wrote, “with best wishes for your birthday, from Snowdon”. I took care to deliver it when the neighbours were present, and for once managed to be the source of naches squared.

Every decade, the photograph resurfaces, when a new generation is chosen, and there we stand unaged, no older than this year’s crop, full of books as yet untranslated from thought. I was the only Jew among them in 1983, but in a sense we were all Jews, chosen people, prophets with honour. We knew it was arbitrary, but being anointed sure did help.

Revealed: the UK’s best young writers

Jennifer Lipman — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:29:47 +0100

A rabbi's son and the author of a book about a rabbi's daughter have been named as two of the most promising novelists in the country.

And in a sign that Britain's Jewish literary scene now rivals that of the United States, a quarter of the 20 men and women featured on Granta magazine's prestigious, once-a-decade list of young writers are Jewish - more than on any of its three previous lists.

"It's an exciting time," said Adam Foulds, the author of four books, including The Truth About These Strange Times, who was selected alongside Naomi Alderman, Benjamin Markovits, Ned Beauman and Adam Thirlwell. "I guess there are a few of us out there."

Mr Foulds, the son of New Essex Masorti rabbi Michael Foulds, said he was inspired by the work of Jewish American novelists such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. "There is now a very rich tradition to draw on of fiction by diaspora Jewish writers - literature of a high standard that comes out of their experience or the experience of their grandparents' generation.

Several of the Jewish novelists listed by Granta - which highlights writers aged under 40 - have drawn on their religious heritage in their work. Ms Alderman, daughter of JC columnist Geoffrey Alderman, is the author of three novels, including Disobedience, a discussion of sexuality in the north-west London Orthodox community.

She said: "It's always good to have an accolade like this - it helps to get the voices of past critics out of my head."

Mr Beauman, whose second novel was longlisted for the 2013 Man Booker prize, had a largely secular upbringing, although his mother, Perspehone books founder Nicola Beauman, is Jewish.

"I went to my first seder this year," he said. "You have to get through a lot before you're allowed to eat."

Nevertheless, his debut novel Boxer, Beetle was set against the backdrop of Hitler's rise and told the story of a gay Jewish boxer and a Nazi sympathizer.

"It was interesting to explore that knowing that, as my mum always says, if id been born 100 years earlier id have been a rabbi."

At 28 Mr Beauman is one of the younger members of a list that features only writers under the age of 40, although older than Mr Thirlwell was when he first appeared on it in 2003.

Now 34 and working on his third full-length novel, the former Haberdashers Aske pupil said he is delighted to have made a second appearance. "In retrospect it feels like a huge relief – not being on it would have looked like I'd declined."

"It's a great thing," added Mr Thirlwell, who also cites Roth and Bellow as his literary heroes. "It gave me confidence in my career, and confidence to do more crazy things with writing. And in a practical way, getting attention to books is difficult."

"Because there are 20 of us, you get some sort of economies of scale," said Benjamin Markovits, the author of a celebrated trilogy about Lord Byron. "So you don't have to jump up on your own, and you get international publicity, which is much harder to do on your own or without the backing of something like Granta.

"Will this boost my career? Ask me in 10 years."

Women's Prize for Fiction: AM Homes on shortlist

Jennifer Lipman — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:47:16 +0100

Jewish novelist AM Homes remains in the running for the annual Women's Prize for Fiction following the shortlist announcement this morning.

The author is shortlisted for the £30,000 prize – formerly the Orange Prize – for her novel May We Be Forgiven, of which JC critic Madeleine Kingsley wrote: "I would not lose a word of her whip-sharp wit or unerring dialogue".

Although five Jewish writers, including Francesca Segal for her north west London-set tale The Innocents, were longlisted for the award, only Ms Homes made the cut.

The American writer, who has seven fiction novels to her name, was adopted by a Jewish family

May We Be Forgiven tells the story of two brothers who loathe each other, one an academic and the other a pompous television executive. Unusually for her work, the main character – Harry – Jewish and deals at times with questions of religion.

The author has compared it to the film A serious Man, made by the Coen Brothers, which was in part inspired by the biblical story of Job.

In an interview about the book, she revealed that she has been considering "the notion of faith or the belief or need for some kind of spiritual or communal life" for several years. "In this book, there is a Jewish theme that I hadn't ever risked exploring before. In some ways I was afraid to do it because I thought this will be my Jewish book and people will be upset by that. But the secret, or the truth, is that I'm incredibly happy about it."