at the Old Firehouse
Michael Hoberman, a Professor at Fitchburg State University, will read from & discuss his new book New Israel/New England: Jews and Puritans in Early America. (UMass Press, Oct. 2011)
This reading will take place on Sunday, January, 22, 2012 at 2:00 PM at the Old Firehouse (7 Sugarloaf St.) in South Deerfield Center.
It is co-sponsored by the Jewish Historical Society of Western Massachusetts & Schoen Books.
Press Release:
Interview with Ken Schoen in the New Vilna Review…
A mysterious adventure unfolds behind the bay doors of the 1930s WPA former firehouse. Those with a vivid imagination may bump into Franz Kafka reading an insurance text, Theodor Herzl reading a pamphlet on Palestine, Sigmund Freud pondering a sphinx, Gershom Scholem scribbling marginalia on mysticism, Uriel Weinreich deciphering Yiddishisms, and Bruno Schulz sketching under the sign of the crocodiles.
The organization Yedidei Hasefer and its newsletter was created in 1980 by book historian Leila Avrin (z”l), paper conservator Nellie Stavisky, and book binder Jane Trigere (my wife), who was then known as Hanna Besserman.
The first exhibit of Yedidei Hasefer was in April 1981 to coincide with the Jerusalem International Book Fair. The exhibit was in honor of Dr. Moshe (Moritz) Spitzer’s 80th birthday and mounted at the Jewish National Library. Many of the books he designed during his long career were displayed, including the ‘Tarshish’ editions.
Here are the Hebrew and English front pages with Spitzer remembrance by Gideon Stern.
–Ken Schoen
Tuesday, November 30th at 7:30 pm
at Schoen Books in the Old Firehouse at 7 Sugarloaf in South Deerfield
Free and open to the public
Schoen Books is proud to be presenting a celebration of Emily Toder’s translation of The Life and Memoirs of Doctor Pi by Argentine author, Edgar Bayley, out now from Northampton’s Clockroot Books and Nick Rattner and Mart del Pozo’s translation of Yván Yauri’s Fire Wind, forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse.
Edgar Bayley is a legendary Argentine concrete poet and fabulist. This is his first appearance in English. Doctor Pi is a sleuth without a crime. A flâneur on official business. Organizer of unknowable expeditions, lover of brunettes. Doctor Pi, with his frock coat, top hat, and uncommon blend of elation and discretion, is difficult to describe and impossible not to pursue. We follow him through a familiar and impossible world, whose logic equal parts comedy, poetry, and absurdity is a puzzle only Doctor Pi can solve. Emily Toder is the author of Brushes With (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2010). She will also be reading from her translations of Bayley’s poetry.
Nick Rattner and Marta del Pozo, fellow translators. will be reading from two contemporary Peruvian authors: Yván Yauri’s Viento de fuego / Fire Wind, which will be published by Ugly Duckling Presse in February and a selection from Czar Gutierrez’s novel 80M83RD3R0.
THIS SUNDAY, MAY 16th at 7 p.m.
there will be a READING of
NEW FICTION at THE OLD FIREHOUSE by JOSHUA COHEN &
JUSTIN TAYLOR
Joshua Cohen is the author of the novels WITZ (Dalkey Archive Press, 2010: see full description below), A Heaven of Others (Starcherone Books, #14 on The Believer short list reader survey Best Books of 2008), Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto (Fugue State Press, 2007) as well as Bridge & Tunnel (& Tunnel & Bridge) (The Cupboard, 2010), Aleph-Bet: An Alphabet for the Perplexed(with art by Michael Hafftka, 2007), The Quorum(Prague: Twisted Spoon, 2005), and Two Tribal Stories (Small Anchor Press, 2007), among others.
Justin Taylor’s debut collection of stories, EVERYTHING HERE IS THE BEST THING EVER (Harper Perennial, 2010), was an Editor’s Choice at the New York Times Book Review, which touted Taylor as “a new voice that readers–and writers, too–might be seeking out for decades to come.” Taylor is the author of a book of poems, More Perfect Depictions of Noise. He is the editor of The Apocalypse Reader, an anthology of new and selected fiction about the end of the world; and Come Back, Donald Barthelme (McSweeney’s) a tribute to the author’s life and work. With the poet Jeremy Schmall he co-edits The Agriculture Reader, a handmade arts annual.
On Joshua Cohen’s WITZ:
On Christmas Eve 1999, all the Jews in the world die in a strange, millennial plague, with the exception of the firstborn males, who are soon adopted by a cabal of powerful people in the American government. By the following Passover, however, only one is still alive: Benjamin Israelien; a kindly, innocent, ignorant man-child. As he finds himself transformed into an international superstar, Jewishness becomes all the rage: matzo-ball soup is in every bowl, sidelocks are hip; and the only truly Jewish Jew left is increasingly stigmatized for not being religious. Since his very existence exposes the illegitimacy of the newly converted, Israelien becomes the object of a worldwide hunt…
Meanwhile, in the not-too-distant future of our own, “real” world, another last Jew-the last living Holocaust survivor-sits alone in a snowbound Manhattan, providing a final melancholy witness to his experiences in the form of the punch lines to half-remembered jokes.