 
|
||||
This Week's Selection From It Went Right To His Head
ACK LEMMON always loved Israeli
military headgear. When he appeared in Long Day’s Journey into Night in
Tel Aviv, he went out to plant a tree. He admired the young soldiers with
their distinctive berets. He asked his friend, attorney Leon Charney, to
get him a couple of berets to take home. Charney took Lemmon to see his
pals at the Ministry of defense. That night an officer arrived backstage
and presented the actor with seven berets, representing the various
military corps. The gift went right to Lemmon’s head. Back in Los Angeles, Lemmon wrote Charney: “I enjoyed our time together in Tel Aviv immensely, and I’m going to eat out for a month on our visit to the Ministry of Defense. Would you believe that terrific young man showed up at the theater that night with a brand new beret for every division of the army that there is, plus a couple of others that I think he made up. Have we got hats!” Buy It! |
||||
|
|
||||
NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS By TIM BOXER
ERMAN WOUK,
who accepted a Literary Achievement Award from Moshe Dworkin,
president of the Jewish Book Council, said he felt like Michelangelo. At age 89, the great artist
Michelangelo was told he had little more time to live. “Impossible!” he thundered.
“I’m just learning the ABCs of my craft!”
Wouk, a sprightly 85, was
conflicted about accepting this lifetime achievement recognition at the
50th annual National Jewish Book Awards at the 92nd
St. Y. “There’s a shadow of
tombstone about it,” he said. Although his latest book, The
Will to Live On, was just published by Cliff
Street/HarperCollins, he still has works of great importance on his desk
in Palm Springs, Calif., which he has yet to attend to. “Thank you for the award, but
hold the gold watch,” he cracked. Ever since he wrote The
Caine Mutiny, for which he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for
fiction in 1952, he was typecast as a non-Jewish writer. Perhaps that
was because, as he pointed out, most Jewish writers wrote about
alienation. “I had no sense of
alienation. I had a heritage. It was in my blood, in my heart. So I
wrote in an entirely different vein.” Calling that “a paradox of my
career,” he thanked the Jewish Book Council for recognizing the Jewish
flavor of his work. He once sailed on the Queen
Mary with his wife Sarah. On deck he met Sholom Asch. “You’re the author of The
Caine Mutiny!” Asch declared in astonishment. “I thought
you’d be a big blond goy!” At dinner that day, Wouk’s
table had the same food as the other guests, but kosher. Each item was
marked with a Star of David. Again Asch was surprised. “The author of The Caine Mutiny keeps kosher and Sholom Asch doesn’t!” he exclaimed. Buy It! |
||||
|
|
||||
Monumental
Work Dr. Norman Lamm,
president of Yeshiva University, was cited for The
Religious Thought of Hasidism (KTAV), which Publishers Weekly
acclaimed as “a monumental and magisterial history.” Chosen over 30 other books,
Lamm’s work provides an historical background of the early Hasidic
movement and charts its central ideas within the wider intellectual
context of Jewish religious and mystical thought. Lamm and Wouk are longtime
friends. He was a visiting professor of English at Yeshiva University
from 1952 to 1957. YU’s Abraham Wouk Family Chair in Classics and
Literature is named for Herman’s father. Upon accepting his award, Lamm
offered a book story or, rather, a no-book story. He noted that the Kotzker
Rebbe never wrote a book. That was indeed surprising given the fact
that many of the great rabbis put their thoughts on paper for succeeding
generations of scholars. “Why should I?” the rebbe
asked. “Who would read it? My Hasidim? They are hard working people
and have no time to read. On Shabbos afternoon, after the gefilte fish,
roast chicken, cholent and challah, they get drowsy and doze off. The
book would fall to the ground. For that I should write a book?” But that didn’t stop Lamm. He
writes, he said, for the same reason everybody writes – they strive
for immortality. “Maybe some day someone will read it and I’ll be remembered. I’ll have achieved an ephemeral immortality.” Buy It! |
||||
|
|
||||
Too
Much To Know Sandy Asher, a winner in
the children’s literature category with her book, With
All My Heart, With All My Mind (Simon & Schuster), told me
her thank-you speech will be quite short. She was mindful of the time she
attended a book festival where an after-dinner speaker droned on for an
hour and a half. Her husband said, “If you
ever get that famous, even I don’t want to know that much about
you.”
|
||||
|
|
||||
Joshua Greene, author of
the just published Witness: Voices from the Holocaust, told me he
has a friend whose daughter is seeing a therapist – on the Internet. “Why is she doing that,”
Greene asked. “She wants to improve her interpersonal relations,” the friend said.
|
||||
|
|
||||
|
[ Back to Top
]
|
