The Canadian Jewish News, Friday, December 30,1977 - Page 9
Artg
10 works of fiction
Jewish literature ^for the perplexed
In a recent article in The Canadian Jewish News, I recommended 18 books for a Jewish home library. The selections were all works of non-fiction. In response to a number of
book review
By BERNARD BASiON
requests I should like to suggest additional titles that might be subsumed under the heading of belles lettres. Several Canadian books have also been indicated. All the titles are
available in paperbound form.
1. As a Driven Leaf by
Milton Steinberg. This se-. minal novel based on the life of the heretical Tal-mudic sage Bisha ben Abuya is a brilliant attempt to describe the perennial conflict between faith and reason.
2. Night by Elie Wiesel. All of Wiesel is worth reading and pondering. This autobiographical short novel of a teenager's experiences in Auschwitz adumbrates all of the major themes explored by the author in his subse-
quent work.
3. Great Jewish Stories.
Edited by Saul Bellow. There are a number of similar anthologies. This one offers the bonus of a long and splendid introduction by the author.
4. Treasory of Yiddish Stories. Edited by Irving Howe and Eleazar Green-berg. This compendium, and its companion volume Treasury of Yiddish Poetry, by the same editors, bring to life the entire gamut of Yiddish literature. Here is the world of our forebears with all of its hopes and fears, yearn-
ings, dreams and ambi-. tioits.
5. The Malamid Reader. Edited by PhUip Rahv. This volume presents a generous sampling from the writings of one of the most talented and distinctive Jewish authors of our time. Included are the complex text of The Assistant and 10 shon stories from assorted works.
6. The SUve by LB. Singer. One could just as well have chosen many other books by this bom storyteller such as Short Friday, Satan hi Goray and
The Family Mosiut. Singer probably writes too much and he has. to some degree, sensationalized the darker or occult side of the Jewish tradition. However, once started, his books are difficult to put down. The reader is edified by his spiritual, if sometimes bizarre and eccentric, outlook on life. 7. The CoDected Poems of A.M. Klehi. Edited by Miriam Waddington. Klein is Canada's outstanding Jewish poet and one of Canada's best. He is profoundly knowledgeable about all aspects of
CBC leaves Canadian Jews out in the cold, charges culture booster Ben Nobleman
ByRICKKARDONNE
"The CBC is run by a WASP establishment. There is not a single Jew in the upper echelon of the CBC. B'nai B'rith and the Canadian Jewish Congress should make a public protest to Prime Minister Trudeau about this."
So says Ben Nobleman, who. besides being the long-time alderman of Ward 1 in York, is the president of the Society for the Recognition of Canadian Talent, which has been staging a long struggle, supported by impressive documented evidence, to give Canadian performers the prime opportunities to freely work in their own countr>-. As well, they wish to enable Canadian performers to work in the United States with the same ease as can American performers work in Canada.
"Most Canadians who make it in Hollywood have been Jewish — and have gotten nowhere in the CBC. The president of the CBC should have been Sydney Newman (the former National Film Board chief who is internationally recognized as having created the modem British TV industry)." But he believes that Newman's - Jewishness was a key reason for his never being seriously considered for this post to which he is most qualified.
Nobleman believes that whatever few Jews there are at the CBC bend over backwards. Examples he gives of this tendency are Larry ZolFs interview with German neo-Nazi Adolf von Thadden and Barbara Frum's more recent interview of an Arab pro-PLO Ramallah sympathizer on Erev Rosh Hashana 5738. But the militantly
self-affirmative Jews such as the veteran broadcaster Percy Saltzman have been unable to get work at the CBC. Only in the serious music department of the CBC is this attitude less apparent.
A secondary reason why Newman and others like him have never been considered for CBC executive posts, according to Nobleman, is simply that they are creative-minded. After all. the CBC is a civil service bureaucracy. It is not made up of creative people; and thus it promotes mediocrity. "Most CBC producers couldn't last a month in private enterprise," he says. This explains why Lister Sinclair, the only creative person ever to achieve 'a top CBC post, resigned after six months.
Nobleman says that the annual CBC budget is S500 million, more than
Ben Nobleman
that of the three American networks combined. Yet all it has done with these massive public funds has been to maintain for the past 25 years ia closed shop run by a small clique and their friends. Not only have Canadian Jews been left out of their fair shakes, Canadians jas a whole have been left out in the cold.
She satirizes male chauvinism in Obie award-winning musical
theatre
ByJENIVABERGER
You get the direct approach from author Eve Merriam; an energetic thrust of the hand and a big hello."Where did you want to go to talk? In the office? The theatre? Out for coffee? Anywhere's fine."
It's the kind of open, no-nonsense friendliness you'd expect - from the author of The Chib. Eve Merriam, up from New York, where she lives and works, to assist with the changes in Toronto Wbrkr shop Production's version of her Obie Award-winning musical about male chauvinism at the turn of the century, looks very much like the working woman's feminist; blue jeans stuck in knee-high boots, a plain dark sweater, and a shock of short dark hair streaked with grey framing an im-made up and shining, but vibrant face. Ms. Merriam insists, however, that though much of her prodigious output — she's written over 30 books — is feminist encrusted "It's not my whole life," she declares.
"I'm a poet first and" foremost,'* says the onetime recipient of the Yale
Younger Poets Award, "and indeed if many of her books and plays are not. comprised of her own poetry, such as Tlie Club, which uses songs from the 1890's, many of them are.
For example, A Woman Alive: Converstition Against Death is a one-woman opera for which Merriam wrote the libretto.
Ms. Merriam also loves writing for children, being introdiiced to it when she was pregnant with her first son (mother and grown son are now collaborating on a new collection of poems for the very young) and ah editor friend urged her to write a biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt. "How bipgra-phieshave changed," she muses.; "At that time, they said, 'Let's not stress Roosevelt's polio or his smoking.' This was when they were doing sanitized biographies and all the women were supposed to be like Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale!"
She went on to write the Roosevelt biography, remembering the advice offered that when vmting for children, 'Keep your verbs active'.
The book was an enormous success and the next effort is one she holds dear to her heart. Ibe Voice of Liberty was based on the life of the-fainous American Jewish poetess, Emma Lazarus, who penned the verse on the statue of^ liberty.
"Lazarus came from a
rich Sephardic family, but she felt a kinship with the underprivileged and changed her lifestyle completely. The thing that was so tragic was that after her sister converted to Cathol-ocism, she burned Era-ma's diaries. She Was ashamed," Ms. Merriam did her research for the book at the Jewish Theological Seminary and thrpugh the years, it has occupied a special niche in the Jewish Publication Society.
Tlie Cliib wasn't the first play she has been involved in, although it has been her most successful and^ is still going strong after 18 months at the Cir-cle-in-the-Square. Ms. Merriam laughs. "I have a joke about my plays. I moved from Broadway to Off-Broadway, to Off-Off-Broadway." Her debut on Broadway was with the musical Inner Qty, directed by Tom O'Horgan and
based on her own book. The Inner City Mother Goose.
A later adaptation was Out Of Her Father's House, based on her novel. Growing Up Female hi America, and her newest play. Viva Reviva which moves to Off-Broadway sometime this spring is about four women who come back from the netherworld and, well — look at things differently. Joan of Arc for instance, refuses to burn.
Does she think that the Toronto Workshop Production of The Qob emphasizes class prejudice rather than discrimination against woman as noted in a Toronto newspaper? She shakes her head vehemently. "The dub is a send-up of male chauvinism. However, class and race go together. Scratch an anti-Semite and you'll find *ahti' any group."
"Americans get the big money while the Canadians get the peanuts."
An example of this absurdity is when a New York playwright was hired by the CBC to adapt Morley Torgov's A Good Place to Come From, which is about growing up Jewish in Sault Ste. Marie. Since it is now exceedingly difficult for Canadian performers, save the ver>' few superstars, to get work permits south of the border. Nobleman believes that until there, is reciprocity, the same stringent regulations should apply to Canada vis-a-vis American performers.
Particularly objectionable is the fact that the CBC does not hold open auditions — the irreplaceable key to the most reliable discovery of new talent. According to Nobleman, once a week, the J<Anny Carson show holds open auditions for anyone off the street. Bob Goulet got his start in Camelo<-thrbugh open auditions. But not the play-it-safe CBC. "American producers will gamble on talent. Canadians won't. And the CBC is the worst offender."
He revealed that before Ed Sullivan hired Wa>-ne and Shuster, the CBC dropped their option. After their appearance on the Sullivan show, only then did the CBC rehire them at four times their original salary.
He believes that a royal commission must be formed to investigate the CBC, and he thinks Aat former Canadian Radio-Television Commission chairman Harry Boyle should head it. He would like to see 90% of the CBC budget allocated towards Canadian programing, which he believes should much more represent Can-
ada's true ethnic mosaic. Until then, all public grants to the CBC should end.
In the meantime, as far as Canadian Jewry goes. Nobleman believes that the YM-YWHA should be much more utilized as being the natural home-ground for Canadian Jewish professional creative and performing talent."I commend the leadership of the 'Y* for the fine facilities. But they should put on original Canadian Jewish plays by Canadian Jewish authors. Why doesn't the *Y' do an adaptation of a Morley Torgov novel instead of "Woodv Allen's Don't Drinli the Water? " He also strongly feels that 'Y' theatre productions should be professional, serving as the home turf for such fine home talents as Ben Lennick. Marilyn Lightstone. Moe Margo-lies. and countless others.
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8.. Son of a SnuOer Hero
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10. The Source by James A. Michener. Written by a non-Jew, this is undoubtedly the most influential novel that has ever ap-pearedabout Jewish history. Although the author is sometimes a bit cavalier with his facts, this remarkable, massive, sweeping exploration of the multi-layered tel of Jewish history, both teaches and inspires.
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