The Literary Mafia

The Literary Mafia PDF Author: Josh Lambert
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300251424
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
An investigation into the transformation of publishing in the United States from a field in which Jews were systematically excluded to one in which they became ubiquitous "Readers with an interest in the industry will find plenty of insights."--Publishers Weekly "From the very first page, this book is funnier and more gripping than a book on publishing has any right to be. Anyone interested in America's intellectual or Jewish history must read this, and anyone looking for an engrossing story should."--Emily Tamkin, author of Bad Jews In the 1960s and 1970s, complaints about a "Jewish literary mafia" were everywhere. Although a conspiracy of Jews colluding to control publishing in the United States never actually existed, such accusations reflected a genuine transformation from an industry notorious for excluding Jews to one in which they arguably had become the most influential figures. Josh Lambert examines the dynamics between Jewish editors and Jewish writers; how Jewish women exposed the misogyny they faced from publishers; and how children of literary parents have struggled with and benefited from their inheritances. Drawing on interviews and tens of thousands of pages of letters and manuscripts, The Literary Mafia offers striking new discoveries about celebrated figures such as Lionel Trilling and Gordon Lish, and neglected fiction by writers including Ivan Gold, Ann Birstein, and Trudy Gertler. In the end, we learn how the success of one minority group has lessons for all who would like to see American literature become more equitable.

The Literary Mafia

The Literary Mafia PDF Author: Josh Lambert
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300251424
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Get Book Here

Book Description
An investigation into the transformation of publishing in the United States from a field in which Jews were systematically excluded to one in which they became ubiquitous "Readers with an interest in the industry will find plenty of insights."--Publishers Weekly "From the very first page, this book is funnier and more gripping than a book on publishing has any right to be. Anyone interested in America's intellectual or Jewish history must read this, and anyone looking for an engrossing story should."--Emily Tamkin, author of Bad Jews In the 1960s and 1970s, complaints about a "Jewish literary mafia" were everywhere. Although a conspiracy of Jews colluding to control publishing in the United States never actually existed, such accusations reflected a genuine transformation from an industry notorious for excluding Jews to one in which they arguably had become the most influential figures. Josh Lambert examines the dynamics between Jewish editors and Jewish writers; how Jewish women exposed the misogyny they faced from publishers; and how children of literary parents have struggled with and benefited from their inheritances. Drawing on interviews and tens of thousands of pages of letters and manuscripts, The Literary Mafia offers striking new discoveries about celebrated figures such as Lionel Trilling and Gordon Lish, and neglected fiction by writers including Ivan Gold, Ann Birstein, and Trudy Gertler. In the end, we learn how the success of one minority group has lessons for all who would like to see American literature become more equitable.

The Literary Mafia

The Literary Mafia PDF Author: Josh Lambert
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300265352
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Get Book Here

Book Description
An investigation into the transformation of publishing in the United States from a field in which Jews were systematically excluded to one in which they became ubiquitous “From the very first page, this book is funnier and more gripping than a book on publishing has any right to be. Anyone interested in America’s intellectual or Jewish history must read this, and anyone looking for an engrossing story should.”—Emily Tamkin, author of Bad Jews In the 1960s and 1970s, complaints about a “Jewish literary mafia” were everywhere. Although a conspiracy of Jews colluding to control publishing in the United States never actually existed, such accusations reflected a genuine transformation from an industry notorious for excluding Jews to one in which they arguably had become the most influential figures. Josh Lambert examines the dynamics between Jewish editors and Jewish writers; how Jewish women exposed the misogyny they faced from publishers; and how children of literary parents have struggled with and benefited from their inheritances. Drawing on interviews and tens of thousands of pages of letters and manuscripts, The Literary Mafia offers striking new discoveries about celebrated figures such as Lionel Trilling and Gordon Lish, and neglected fiction by writers including Ivan Gold, Ann Birstein, and Trudy Gertler. In the end, we learn how the success of one minority group has lessons for all who would like to see American literature become more equitable.

The Psychic Mafia

The Psychic Mafia PDF Author: M. Lamar Keene
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
"In this powerful and brutally honest book, Keene exposes the secrets of the séance room, including ghostly apparitions, floating trumpets, 'spirit sex, ' and other tricks used by mediums to exploit believers."--Cover.

Hollywood Godfather

Hollywood Godfather PDF Author: Gianni Russo
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250181410
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Hollywood Godfather is Gianni Russo's over-the-top memoir of a real-life mobster-turned-actor who helped make The Godfather a reality, and his story of life on the edge between danger and glamour. Gianni Russo was a handsome 25-year-old mobster with no acting experience when he walked onto the set of The Godfather and entered Hollywood history. He played Carlo Rizzi, the husband of Connie Corleone, who set her brother Sonny—played by James Caan—up for a hit. Russo didn't have to act—he knew the mob inside and out: from his childhood in Little Italy, where Mafia legend Frank Costello took him under his wing, to acting as a messenger for New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello during the Kennedy assassination, to having to go on the lam after shooting and killing a member of the Colombian drug cartel in his Vegas club. Along the way, Russo befriended Frank Sinatra, who became his son's godfather, and Marlon Brando, who mentored his career as an actor after trying to get Francis Ford Coppola to fire him from The Godfather. Russo had passionate affairs with Marilyn Monroe, Liza Minelli, and scores of other celebrities. He went on to become a producer and starred in The Godfather: Parts I and II, Seabiscuit, Any Given Sunday and Rush Hour 2, among many other films. Hollywood Godfather is a no-holds-barred account of a life filled with violence, glamour, sex—and fun.

The Mafia in Italian Lives and Literature

The Mafia in Italian Lives and Literature PDF Author: Robin Pickering-Iazzi
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442629088
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Pickering-Iazzi uses an array of cultural documents from 1990 to the present to examine the myths, values, codes of behaviour, and relationships produced by the Italian mafia through a wide cross-disciplinary lens.

Mafia Summer

Mafia Summer PDF Author: E. Duke Vincent
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1596919272
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
One a Sicilian Hell's Kitchen gang leader, the other a sickly but brilliant Orthodox Jewish boy who lives next door, Vinny Vesta and Sidney Butcher meet on a fire escape during the blistering New York City summer of 1950. Their friendship develops over the course of a summer that will change Vinny's fortunes forever, at a cost he could never have imagined. Based on a true story, Mafia Summer brilliantly captures a pivotal moment in Mafia history and in the lives of the teenagers caught up by the Mob. "Influenced more by Billy Bathgate than by The Godfather...Sweet, affectionate, and bloody: a glance backward to a well-spent youth."-Kirkus Reviews "E. Duke Vincent hits the target dead center with this first novel set on the bloody streets of Hell's Kitchen. A mini-epic, complete with a full-scale crime war, Mafia Summer remains a detailed tale of friendship and of the best kind of loyalty. A masterful performance."-Lorenzo Carcaterra, author of Sleepers and Paradise City "One of the best books on the mafia I have ever read. Right up there with The Godfather."-New York Times bestselling author Jack Higgins

Unclean Lips

Unclean Lips PDF Author: Josh Lambert
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479876437
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Sexual anti-Semitism and pornotopia: Theodore Dreiser, Ludwig Lewisohn, and the Harrad experiment -- The prestige of dirty words and pictures: Horace Liveright, Henry Roth, and the graphic novel -- Otherfuckers and motherfuckers: reproduction and allegory in Philip Roth and Adele Wiseman -- Seductive modesty: censorship vs. Yiddish and Orthodox tsnies -- Conclusion: Dirty Jews and the Christian right: Larry David and FCC v. Fox.

Gangsterismo

Gangsterismo PDF Author: Jack Colhoun
Publisher: OR Books
ISBN: 1935928902
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
Gangsterismo is an extraordinary accomplishment, the most comprehensive history yet of the clash of epic forces over several decades in Cuba. It is a chronicle that touches upon deep and ongoing themes in the history of the Americas, and more specifically of the United States government, Cuba before and after the revolution, and the criminal networks known as the Mafia. The result of 18 years’ research at national archives and presidential libraries in Kansas, Maryland, Texas, and Massachusetts, here is the story of the making and unmaking of a gangster state in Cuba. In the early 1930s, mobster Meyer Lansky sowed the seeds of gangsterismo when he won Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista’s support for a mutually beneficial arrangement: the North American Mafia were to share the profits from a future colony of casinos, hotels, and nightclubs with Batista, his inner circle, and senior Cuban Army and police officers. In return, Cuban authorities allowed the Mafia to operate its establishments without interference. Over the next twenty-five years, a gangster state took root in Cuba as Batista, other corrupt Cuban politicians, and senior Cuban army and police officers got rich. All was going swimmingly until a handful of revolutionaries upended the neat arrangement: and the CIA, Cuban counterrevolutionaries, and the Mafia joined forces to attempt the overthrow of Castro. Gangsterismo is unique in the literature on Cuba, and establishes for the first time the integral, extensive role of mobsters in the Cuban exile movement. The narrative unfolds against a broader historical backdrop of which it was a part: the confrontation between the United States and the Cuban revolution, which turned Cuba into one of the most perilous battlegrounds of the Cold War. ……………………………… “The anti-communist hysteria generated by the Cold War frequently unhinged the policy judgments of US government officials in many areas, but nowhere so completely as in our relations with Cuba. This conclusion is inescapable as Gangsterismo brilliantly unravels the bizarre tale of the Mafia army the Kennedy brothers recruited in their manic determination to rid Cuba of Castro, that vexing, seemingly indomitable Communist.” —Martin J. Sherwin, co-winner of the Pulitzer Prize (together with Kai Bird) for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer “What is shocking is not what is new, but how much that is old – already on the record in presidential and other archives, CIA and FBI files, memoirs and histories – in Jack Colhoun’s Gangsterismo. Drawing on the National Security Archives, papers and books, public and private, he damningly documents the pathetic, incompetent and sometimes comic, but always inappropriate and anti-democratic, attempts by the CIA and/or its confederates, working in tandem with members of the mob, to assassinate Castro and overthrow the Cuban revolution.” —Victor S. Navasky, publisher emeritus, The Nation; professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism “Gangsterismo is an invaluable addition to our background knowledge about that small island nation that has incurred so much devotion and ire from U.S. Americans. Books about Cuba abound, but this one lays bare an often forgotten pre-revolutionary history of U.S.-based organized crime, and subsequent hidden U.S. government covert action. Colhoun has done his homework. This is a must-read.” —Margaret Randall, author of To Change the World: My Years in Cuba “Few aspects of Cuba-U.S. relations have so doggedly resisted serious inquiry as the subject of organized crime in Cuba. Much of what we know has reached us by way of popular culture, principally through film and fiction, to which the subject of the underworld in the tropics so aptly lends itself. Colhoun represents a breakthrough: serious scholarship on a serious subject. He casts light upon one of the darkest recesses of a dark history, calling attention to the convergence of interests between the underworld of criminal activity and nether world of covert operations – and reveals in the process that film and fiction have actually only scratched the surface of a sordid story.” —Louis A. Pérez, Jr.editor, Cuba Journal; professor of history, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Bad Jews

Bad Jews PDF Author: Emily Tamkin
Publisher: Hurst Publishers
ISBN: 1787389804
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
You can be called a Bad Jew—by the community or even yourself—if you don’t keep kosher, don’t send your children to Hebrew school, or enjoy Christmas music; if your partner isn’t Jewish, or you don’t call your mother enough. But today, amid fears of rising antisemitism, what makes a Good or Bad Jew is a particularly fraught question. There is no answer, argues Emily Tamkin. Several million now identify as American Jews; but they don’t all identify with one another. American Jewish history, like all Jewish history, has been about transformation—and full of discussions, debates and hand-wringing over who is Jewish, how to be Jewish, and what it means to be Jewish. Bad Jews is a rich, absorbing reflection on 100 years of American Jewish identities and arguments. Tamkin’s fascinating, diverse interviews explore the complex story of American Jewishness, and its evolving, conflicting positions, from assimilation, race, and social justice; to politics, Zionism, and Israel. She pinpoints the one truth about Jewish identity: It’s always changing.

American Jewish Fiction

American Jewish Fiction PDF Author: Josh Lambert
Publisher: Jewish Publication Society
ISBN: 0827610025
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
This new volume in the JPS Guides series is a fiction reader?s dream: a guide to 125 remarkable works of fiction. The selection includes a wide range of classic American Jewish novels and story collections, from 1867 to the present, selected by the author in consultation with a panel of literary scholars and book industry professionals. Roth, Mailer, Kellerman, Chabon, Ozick, Heller, and dozens of other celebrated writers are here, with their most notable works. Each entry includes a book summary, with historical context and background on the author. Suggestions for further reading point to other books that match readers? interests and favorite writers. And the introduction is a fascinating exploration of the history of and important themes in American Jewish Fiction, illustrating how Jewish writing in the U.S. has been in constant dialogue with popular entertainment and intellectual life. Included in this guide are lists of book award winners; recommended anthologies; title, author, and subject indexes; and more.