Steven J. Zipperstein
From Pogroms to Philip Roth
Stanford professor Steven J. Zipperstein and JRB editor Abraham Socher discuss Philip Roth’s life and work, the recent controversy over his authorized biography, and the biography of Roth he is working on now.
At Home in America
Just beneath the surface of this Holocaust memoir is, in fact, an altogether different tale: a paean to the good life in America.
“He Called Me Jim”
In his autobiography, James Atlas explores how and why he spent his professional life living with and overshadowed by complex, overweening literary giants.
Fateless: The Beilis Trial a Century Later
The fame of Mendel Beilis—falsely accused of murdering a Christian boy in Russia 100 years ago—was lavish, if bitter and short-lived.
Letters From Chicago
One of the many pleasures of the recently published Saul Bellow: Letters is how it reacquaints us with Bellow's wry, poignant, infectiously erudite voice. This is all the more surprising because he wasn't, or at least so he insisted, a natural-born letter writer. As in his literature, Bellow's language is so stunning that one wonders whether he was writing to both his correspondents, and to readers like us.
Underground Man: The Curious Case of Mark Zborowski and the Writing of a Modern Jewish Classic
Life is with People is perhaps the most well-known work of shtetl nostalgia. But how should it be read in light of its author's bloody career as one of Stalin's best spies?