Following WWII and well into the 80s and 90s – when films like Rambo and Top Gun were blockbusters – America was deeply invested in masculine images. Many of its fantasies were framed in terms of weak and strong. But following 9/11 all of that seemed to change. America became more vulnerable and fluid. And […]
It was with great sadness that I learned this morning of the passing of Aharon Appelfeld. He is one of my favorite Israeli novelists and some of his novels have, literally, changed the way I think about the novel and its relationship to history. It also changed the way I looked at the schlemiel character. […]
The events of last week with Harvey Weinstein have prompted many powerful articles (good, in terms of prompting awareness of violent sexual actions that were an “open secret” in Hollywood, and really bad, in terms of prompting anti-Semitic remarks and insane conspiracy theories). After reading Mark Oppenheimer’s controversial Op-Ed piece for Tablet, entitled “The […]
I. Psychoanalysis has taught us that comedy—in particular, the joke—is a discourse through which serious issues can be articulated in a manner that can be tolerated by an intended recipient. It has not (to my knowledge) said anything about the relationship between comedy and sadness—in particular, mourning. Aristotle tells us that tragedy allows for a […]
Throughout his novel by the same name, Saul Bellow’s Moses Herzog writes countless letters. But he never sends them. The letters show us what he really feels but cannot act on or things he would like to do or dreams about doing but never does. His schlemiel character comes through in his reflections on his wife’s […]
As a term, the word “schlemiel” (“der schlemihl”) had both negative and positive valances in the 19th, and 20th centuries depending on whether one was in Central or in Eastern Europe and on the intent of the author. While many Zionists and Jewish Enlighteners (Maskilim) in Germany and other German speaking countries often used the […]
When I first came across Robert Crumb’s depiction of Jewish grandparents in the first issue of his Snoid Comics project, I was surprised by the juxtaposition he posed between the big grand-daughter and the small Jewish grand-parents. It didn’t seem possible that such a big Jewish American woman could come from such small grand parents. […]
Nietzsche was obsessed with the relationship of the body to thought. And whenever he articulated his reading of the body, he always made sure to put it forth in what Peter Sloterdijk (winking at Diogenes) called a “cheeky” manner. He looked to offend and this gesture, for Nietzsche, was healthy. In the beginning of his […]
Kafka was fascinated with the meaning of innocence and guilt. His characters are often portrayed as both innocent and guilty. But the confluence of the two appeals not so much to a theological theme so much as to the reader’s relationship with Kafka’s characters. It seems as if Kafka created a situation where […]
On November 18, 1917 Franz Kafka wrote in one of his Octavio Notebooks the following meditation on good and evil: “Evil knows the Good, but Good does not know of Evil.” What Kafka was getting at is quite profound. If there is in fact something Good or someone Good, he,she, or it cannot know evil. […]
Schlemiel Theory 