More in ‘J.D. Salinger’

• The U.S. State Department asserted that Iran’s nuclear program is “anything but peaceful.” [Haaretz]
• Influential Chicago Rabbi Asher Lopatin (he has counted Rahm Emanuel as a congregant) is starting a community in Israel as part of an effort “to build a new type of religious Zionist.” [Chicago Tribune]
• Over 1500 cases of the mumps ...

Today in Tablet Magazine, Staff Writer Marissa Brostoff arguesthat J.D. Salinger’s Glass family stories are indelibly Jewish in a way that is nonetheless quite different from those by contemporaries Bellow, Mailer, and Roth: “Zooey has plenty of complaints, but Portnoy’s is not one of them.” As pork has become increasingly trendy in the foodie world, ...

A young man taking a long, languorous bath is paid a visit by his mother, who sits down (presumably on the toilet seat) to chat, and, despite her son’s half-hearted attempts to get rid of her, remains there for most of the next 48 pages. She’s come to talk about the young man’s college-aged sister, ...

• Diaspora Minister Yuli Edelstein reports from his travels that while the problem of pluralism and gender discrimination in Israel gets little attention among Israelis, it is very important to Diaspora Jews. [Haaretz]
• Some former Obama supporters among Orthodox Jews are feeling buyer’s remorse. [The Jewish Star/Failed Messiah]
• The Dubai police commissioner pledged to seek ...

Today in Tablet Magazine, New York Times Magazine columnist Virginia Heffernan remembers J.D. Salinger, who lived near the New Hampshire town in which she grew up, and discusses how men and women might consider his work differently. This week’s Vox Tablet podcast contains a slide show of remarkable photos taken throughout the Pale of Settlement ...

J.D. Salinger stood at the butcher’s counter. He was tall, handsome and quarrelsome. He was explaining that he wanted his turkey shaved—not just sliced in slimy slabs, like last time. Last time they had screwed it up, he wanted the butcher to know; he was bothered by the memory. I stood next to him with ...

The wires are reporting that J.D. Salinger died at 91. The ultra-reclusive author—a Jew who grew up in Manhattan—published only four books in his lifetime: one novel, The Catcher in the Rye; one story collection, Nine Stories; and two collections of two novellas each, Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters ...

The publishing industry may be hurting, but if there’s a corner of it that’s still alive and kicking it’s Jewish books. Indeed, the wealth of new material published every month is so vast that it’s tough to keep pace. Beginning this week, we offer some help. Every Monday, contributing editor Josh Lambert, author of recently-published ...

One of my mother’s most vivid early memories is of the Nazis trying to break down her door. She was five, and the door was the big, heavy front one on the house she was born in, a few yards from the Arno in Florence. It was 1944. As she tells it, the Nazis, who ...

Read Meg Wolitzer’s essay on Bruce Jay Friedman and Philip Roth.
There is a moment—much longed for—in the life of the occasional writer when a door seems to swing open. Darkness becomes sunlight. The writer feels anointed, ready to step forward and to claim a reward for what often felt like years of pointless effort.
A door ...