tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588Sat, 11 Jul 2009 22:35:40 +0000There is no stop, there is no interval between dreaming and waking. In this sense, it is possible to say: never, dreamer, can you awake . . . -- Maurice Blanchothttp://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Monica)Blogger155125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-600251495246295941Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:29:00 +00002009-07-06T18:12:32.906-05:00 I'm about 50 pages into a new novel, and so far two passages continue to run circles in my mind."Simulation is the perfect disguise. The replica, which is meant to commemorate, achieves the opposite effect: it allows the original to be forgotten," writes Anne Michaels, in her new novel The Winter Vault.This is Michaels' second novel. Her first was Fugitive Pieces, which may be one of the most http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-much-of-earth-is-flesh.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-833395052909250339Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:46:00 +00002009-06-29T01:02:10.243-05:00I often find treasures in the middle of night, when everything is opened up and illuminated by darkness. Here, silence is not golden, but it is razor sharp.I'm in Toronto for the North American Levinas Society conference. I have a presentation tomorrow on Levinas's essay "Reality and its Shadows," in which he questions the nature of art and criticism. I'm going to use this essay to offer a http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/06/multiplicity-and-secret-of-text.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-731823642127338596Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:30:00 +00002009-06-23T05:49:46.929-05:00A few months ago I saw Ilan Stavans give a talk at UCLA. Today there's a piece over at Jewcy that he's written about Jorge Luis Borges' connection to the Jewish world. Stavans writes:"'Yo, judío,' [Borges'] brave and unapologetic response to Crisol, pointed out, in the measured prose that was to become his trademark, a deep desire to find the missing link in his ancestry--the Jew in the mirror."http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/06/yo-judio-borges-looks-for-jew-in-mirror.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-7183731829540040228Mon, 15 Jun 2009 07:31:00 +00002009-06-15T04:22:15.828-05:00 "In the night one can die; we reach oblivion. But this other night is the death no one dies, the forgetfulness which gets forgotten. In the heart of oblivion it is memory without rest," writes Maurice Blanchot in the context of his discussion on the various forms of night: night, the first night, and the other night.For Blanchot, when everything disappears in the night, it is in reality the http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/06/love-affair-continues.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-6358300174547887716Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:41:00 +00002009-06-12T04:07:59.318-05:00 I can't sleep. And it's probably because I keep thinking of the creepy sign that these even creepier young people are holding. Last weekend we walked down to the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica to have lunch. There are always any number of street performers and soap box preachers to be found at the Promenade, but this was the craziest experience I've ever had there.I had never heard of http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/06/dynamic-duo-hitler-and-obama.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-5195937585980369889Fri, 12 Jun 2009 01:44:00 +00002009-06-11T20:50:59.080-05:00I've been reading a bit of Spinoza as I finish an article on Levinas and Dara Horn's novel In the Image. In the novel, there is a character who develops an obsession with Spinoza in the context of some much larger questions about the nature of God and commandment in a post-Holocaust world.In a review of Rebecca Goldstein's Betraying Spinoza, Harold Bloom writes:"As in Epicurus and Lucretius, http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/06/spinoza-transfusion.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-1090517282920875614Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:33:00 +00002009-06-10T17:48:52.512-05:00My night terrors are becoming so much more ethnically diverse. Usually--at least two nights each week--I awake from a deep nighttime sleep to see a creepy white man standing either in the corner of my room or directly above me. He's always about to kill me, of course, because nobody hallucinates about people who are there to hang out and have an intellectual discussion unless there are quaaludes http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/06/diversity-of-night-terrors.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-399619572161000148Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:12:00 +00002009-06-04T17:19:52.661-05:00In an essay from her newest book For the Love of God (which I reviewed for Shofar a while back), Alicia Suskin Ostriker writes:Open disclosure: I write as a Jew, a woman, a wife and mother, a third-generation lefty, a feminist, a poet. And I write as a reader, for whom words are primary—even sacred—realities. The Hebrew Bible marks, for me, the point in Western culture where human life, human http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/06/god-looks-for-wrestling-match.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-4966234658443272368Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:54:00 +00002009-06-02T16:02:01.683-05:00I'm excited about this one--our next North American Levinas Society conference will be in France, and we'll be teaming up with another organization (SIREL). Below is the Call for Papers.Société internationale de recherches Emmanuel Levinas (SIREL, Paris)North American Levinas Society (NALS, USA)International Conference: "Readings of Difficult Freedom"July 5-9, 2010: Toulouse, FranceCALL FOR http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/06/levinas-in-france.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-231280967564723781Fri, 29 May 2009 19:52:00 +00002009-05-29T14:53:25.257-05:00And the discussion continues over at Perverse Egalitarianism...http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/05/levinas-and-midrash.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-7059715401826142412Mon, 18 May 2009 02:10:00 +00002009-05-17T21:18:49.925-05:00My UCLA talk ("Literature, the Holocaust, and the Midrashic Impulse") can now be heard online. You can even hear my post-illness smoker's voice. There were lots of lovers and haters in the audience, which is evident in the question/answer session. I never really thought of my work as being so provocative until this talk, but I realize now that typically, people either love or hate what I'm http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/05/my-ucla-talk.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-2196777700216195470Thu, 14 May 2009 20:09:00 +00002009-05-14T16:46:27.261-05:00I was recently introduced to the writer S.Y. Agnon by Rabbi Daniel Bouskila, who also gave a talk last night, which I attended. Agnon has been on my "need to read" list for a few years now, but I kept pushing him back onto the shelves. I've only read a couple of his stories so far, but I'm hooked--he's compelling on so many different levels.As Rabbi Bouskila suggested, while Agnon's work utilizeshttp://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/05/discovering-agnon-and-his-doubters-and.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-8509681851636425244Thu, 30 Apr 2009 05:28:00 +00002009-04-30T00:35:26.913-05:00In an essay in The Forward, Jay Michaelson writes about the Jesus issue in the Jewish community:"One wonders when, if ever, we Jews will be able to heal from the trauma of Christian oppression and actually learn from, while still differentiating ourselves from, Christian teaching and tradition. Along my own spiritual path, I’ve been amazed at how much I learn from the teachings of other http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/04/jews-and-jesus-problem.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-2713416414489233903Wed, 15 Apr 2009 09:40:00 +00002009-04-15T05:04:12.367-05:00This week I've been reading a recent collection of Jewish fiction called Lost Tribe: Jewish Fiction From the Edge. I've read most of the authors in the book, but some were new to me. Aimee Bender, Ellen Umansky, and Rachel Kadish are three writers who I'll likely return to--good stuff. In Kadish's "The Argument,"a man named Kreutzer is sent to a nursing home to see if he can get the old http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/04/thou-shalt-argue-with-g-d.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-3983283192820837095Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:56:00 +00002009-04-09T04:14:42.837-05:00Today was a long day, and not just because I have been sick for the past two weeks. The other day, I was invited to a seder (for tonight, the first night of Pesach) at the home of an Orthodox Jewish friend of mine. I was asked to bring the charoset, kosher wine, and some kind of kosher for Passover entree. No big deal, I thought to myself. This is Los Angeles, and I can wait until the last minutehttp://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/04/kosher-adventures.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-5599561252099951292Sun, 22 Mar 2009 03:13:00 +00002009-03-21T22:14:27.642-05:00Are you kidding me? I am speechless.http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/03/fake-holocaust-memoir-contest.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-8044899153883572167Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:24:00 +00002009-03-18T03:06:28.116-05:00I just watched The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. It's set during WWII and is about an 8-year-old boy, the son of an SS soldier in charge of one of the camps, who befriends a boy his age on the other side of the fence. Near the end of the film, the German boy actually dons a prisoner's attire and sneaks into the camp, with dire consequences. I suppose it puts a new spin on the idea of artists going http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/03/holocaust-films-and-second-generation.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-4005620354541362471Sun, 08 Mar 2009 00:37:00 +00002009-03-07T19:40:19.002-05:00I don't usually write directly about my main project, but I'll be blogging every now and then over at a friend's blog, and I've just written a post on what I call the "midrashic impulse." The challenge was to write a brief summary of what I'm working on for an audience of educated people who are not in my field. Little do they know, it's often hard enough to explain my project to people who are http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/03/midrashic-impulse.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-2934790260184416714Mon, 23 Feb 2009 06:43:00 +00002009-02-23T22:20:13.801-05:00 Yesterday I heard a talk given by Eyal Sivan at UCLA as part of a conference on Leo Hurwitz's filming of the Eichmann trial. Sivan is the filmmaker responsible for The Specialist, a film inspired by Hannah Arendt's book Eichmann in Jerusalem (and by her argument regarding the banality of evil). The film, however, is not without its fair share of controversy, and after listening to Sivan today, Ihttp://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/02/redeeming-perpetrators-voice.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-2040897657739130849Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:01:00 +00002009-02-17T17:04:50.282-05:00I'm on the executive committee for the Modern Language Association's Jewish American Lit group. For some reason our CFP for this year's panel at the MLA conference in Philadelphia did not get circulated, so I thought I'd post it here.Modern Language Association Conference: Philadelphia, PA December 27-29 2009Panel: "Jewish Wry"--Humor in Jewish American LiteratureThis panel is a tribute to the http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/02/cfp-humor-in-jewish-american-literature.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-3894995628495192420Sat, 07 Feb 2009 07:31:00 +00002009-02-11T00:31:37.313-05:00 So it looks like Samira Ahmed Jassim, a 51-year-old Iraqi woman who confessed to recruiting and sending more than 80 female suicide bombers off to their pointless deaths, has been arrested in Iraq.Sure, we all have causes we believe in. And I think we can agree that suicide bombing is bad for all involved, and is needless to say the epitome of what it means to take something too far. But this http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/02/women-victimizing-women.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-2053457012551996365Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:24:00 +00002009-02-02T16:25:43.170-05:00 On Thursday I had my class read Giorgio Agamben's Remnants of Auschwitz. Instead of stumbling through my own lecture on the material, I asked someone who knows Agamben's work well to come and teach it for me. The lecture and discussion were great, even if my guest lecturer and I disagreed on some minor points. In fact, I'm more excited about Agamben now, particularly because what he's doing is http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/01/agamben-and-camps.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-5305262628203016098Mon, 19 Jan 2009 23:55:00 +00002009-01-19T19:02:38.921-05:00Tonight I was planning to see The Reader, just one of the many Holocaust films that are out right now. But after reading Jeffrey Goldberg's interview with Ed Zwick, the director of Defiance, I think I will see this one instead (yes, I plan to see them all, but one film at a time). Interestingly, A.O. Scott suggests that Defiance only re-affirms historical stereotypes, while Goldberg sees it as anhttp://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/01/deifying-holocaust.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-6734352589605611407Sat, 03 Jan 2009 05:36:00 +00002009-01-04T16:27:52.470-05:00 I have three days to organize the class I'm teaching this winter--"The Limits of Representation: Ethics and the Holocaust." I'm going to be teaching things like Giorgio Agamben (Remnants of Auschwitz), Primo Levi (The Drowned and the Saved), and Emmanuel Levinas ("Useless Suffering"); as well as fiction like David Grossman's See Under: Love, Aryeh Lev Stollman's The Far Euphrates, Anne Michaels'http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2009/01/jews-non-jews-and-holocaust-memory.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-4753878879924719375Sat, 20 Dec 2008 06:53:00 +00002008-12-20T01:59:06.385-05:00Chanukah begins this weekend, but instead of lighting candles, I will be driving from Texas to California, helping someone move to Los Angeles. These are happy times, and they are only getting happier...despite the prospect of spending 22 hours on the road. I had hoped to post my virtual menorah again, but I couldn't get it to work this year for some reason. Then again, I suppose it's not really http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2008/12/chanukah-sameach_20.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)0