Bride of the Golem Update

I suppose it's time for an update on the status of the anthology.

I am presently soliciting stories from a group of superstars of Jewish comedy and literature to enhance the book's appeal to publishers and the reading public. I sent out a small group of invitations last month, and both Etgar Keret and Aimee Bender have agreed to submit stories to the project. Today, I am sending a much larger group of invitations to luminaries of literature, some Hollywood and New York giants of comedy, and a comedy-mystery writing Jewish cowboy in Central Texas who wears a big hat, sings country music and smokes good cigars.

Diana Spechler's Skinny

I recently read Diana Spechler's Skinny and recommend it. It is a story of a daughter grieving her father who wishes to escape her life of binge eating and guilt by working at a weight loss camp.

There are many things I liked about this novel. The characters are vividly and realistically depicted. Spechler's teenagers talk and act like teens, and here she bucks a trend to make teenagers extraordinarily precocious and unnaturally mature. The protagonist's struggle with her weight and constant hunger feels very familiar to me. It is refreshing that a fiction writer of Spechler's caliber addresses our problematic relationship with food. Her prose is in an accessible register of the language, reflecting the thinking patterns of the narrator and those around her, occasionally seasoned with sharp wit. Spechler also resists the tendency to make her protagonist/narrator completely sympathetic. Gray Lachmann is no shallow two-dimensional goody-two-shoes. Rather, she is self-absorbed and treats her boyfriend abominably. The storyline is compelling, with plenty of drama and occasional humor, and you will not want to put the book down until you finish it.

I have a couple of very minor criticisms, but who writes anything perfectly, really? Even translators and adapters of Shakespeare's works claimed to have improved them. The description of the eating binges in the early chapters is difficult to slog through, a bit horrific and unappetizing but this attests to Spechler's power of depiction. Further, even though Gray Lachmann also fasts and runs after her binges to reduce their effect, it seems an odd choice for Spechler that her protagonist only gains fifteen unwanted pounds, rather than two or three times that amount, though it makes her near-anorexia by the end of the summer more plausible. Towards the end, as the reader expects a dramatic revelation of a secret, something completely random occurs, and I question if it is necessary, though the plot would have taken a markedly different route without this deus ex machina event in act four. Nonetheless, these small issues do not overshadow my appreciation of the rest of the book, which, on the whole was a very satisfying read--as satisfying as a good meal with moderate portions.

Of Liars,Paul Linkletter and Erinna Mettler's Starlings

This evening I did one of my favorite things--attended a Liars League event at the Phoenix Pub at Cavendish Square. This group brings in actors to give animated readings of short stories. A great idea. This evening, among the stories, an actress read a lovely story by Erinna Mettler, "Underneath." During the intermission, they held a literary quiz. The question was, according to Noel Coward, these go out in the noonday sun. The answer is "Mad Dogs and Englishmen." I got it and won Mettler's new novel "Starlings." I knew the answer because a few years ago I'd seen Paul Linkletter, a friend, lovely person, and talented tenor perform the song with the F.R.E.D. Chamber Players in New York.

So thanks to Paul Linkletter. And Erinna Mettler. I look forward to reading the book soon.

More Good Reads

Last week I attended an event at Joe's Pub in New York City, featuring Nathan Englander, Jennifer Egan and Karen Russell. I really wasn't familiar with Karen Russell's work but found her amusing and entertaining at the event, so I decided to pick up Swamplandia! her critically acclaimed novel, and I'm enjoying it so far. It's a quirky tale of a precocious preteen growing up in a family who runs an alligator theme park on an island near Florida.

I've also been enjoying the stories in Etgar Keret's פתאום דפיקה בדלת of late, when I feel like reading Hebrew. And I was delighted to learn that none other than Nathan Englander himself is translating it. Look for "Suddenly a Knock at the Door" some time next year.

I found Jennifer Egan to be refreshingly humble about her writing. Especially for a Pulitzer winner. She seems like a genuinely nice and likeable person. My wife enjoyed "The Keep" which I look forward to reading in the near future.

My story "Once an Undine" appears in Scarlet Literary Magazine

Scarlet Literary Magazine's second issue includes one of my short pieces "Once an Undine", inspired by a story written by Ingeborg Bachmann. You can read it at the following:

http://scarletzine.wordpress.com/gus-ginsburg/

This story is of a different character than my usual dark humor.

Synopses for Bride of the Golem Stories

Following are abstracts of stories accepted for publication in Bride of the Golem.

Barry Rosenberg “Gershom’s Golem”. World-weary kabbalist Gershom makes a golem to do his yardwork but ends up with a kvetcher.

Norman Rubin “Aunt Bessie and the ‘It’”. A fierce ghostly presence fails to scare a yiddishe bubbie.

Sharon Diane King’s “Feast of the Laughing Cow” is a deliciously anachronistic Rabelaisian romp set in the ancient land of Israel.

Jim Meirose “Deni-al”. Golem Noir. A kabbalist makes a golem. A mobster wants to buy him. A rabbi gets in the way.

Melissa Yuan-Innes “WWWJD”. A satirical story of Joseph Cartaphilus, Wandering Jew.

Liz Coley “Till Death Does His Part”. Death comes for Ms. Edelstein, but she won’t be carted away so easily.

Aaron Simon “My Dog the Dybbuk”. A young man finds his beloved dog taken over by a dybbuk, the spirit of a Yiddish-obscenity-spouting cranky old man

Adina Rosenthal “Succubus-in-law”. A woman’s Passover seder with her new mother-in-law becomes her last supper.

E. Mitchell “I Was a Teenage Yeshiva Boy Werewolf”. A delightful spoof of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy” with werewolves.

Yehuda Yussel “Pig”. A reimagining of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, a young and unobservant Greg wakes up one Shabbat morning as a pig.

David Hendrickson “Floater”. Elderly Hiram Silverman is afflicted by a most unusual floater in one of his eyes.

Tonia Brown “Zombie Golem”. A man accidentally kills his girlfriend during a bout of consensual rough sex, then consults a kabbalist to reanimate her.

Mike DiChristina “Mr. Met”. Lenny, a man with a gambling habit and a mystical autocad scanner kills his wife for money, then in a fit of remorse, brings her back, to his misfortune.

Ken Liu “The MSG Golem”. During a space voyage, a Chinese girl descended from the Jews of Kaifeng receives a message from God to make a golem from MSG to save a planet.

David Naimon “Member”. A revised reprint (with permission of Zyzzyva Magazine) of a story of a young man’s dread facing his bar mitzvah.

Anna Taborska “Dirty Dybbuk”. A proper orthodox woman from Golder’s Green, London, is inhabited by the spirit of a deceased nymphomaniac.

A.B.S. Dudevant “The Gingerbread Golem”. A richly-written story of an Ethiopian Jewess who creates a Golem to get rid of her husband.

Gio Clairval & Daniel Pasetti “Toytfogl”. Humorous with an antiquated Lovecraft/Steampunk vibe, the story of two fin-de-siecle professors who unleash an unnaturally evil beast.

Gus Ginsburg “By Way of Explanation”. A newly vampiric Hassid decides to become a mohel to get his blood, while his wife is convinced he’s become homosexual.

G. Miki Hayden “The Cantor and the Ghost”. The ghost of newly deceased Rabbi Wild haunts and bedevils a congregant he dislikes. The Cantor tries to mediate.

Diane Williams' Romancer Erector

Oftentimes, my literary tastes overlap with those of my spouse. We both love Douglas Adams, as well as David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, and Gary Shteyngart's Supersad True Love Story, Miranda July's short stories, to name a few.

However, on the matter of Diane Williams' stories in Romancer Erector we are polar opposites. In my opinion the stories are brilliant. They break all the rules of the craft, fracture the protagonist's ego into a disparate and schizophrenic chorus. She uses multiple distancing effects to prevent the reader from situating the characters into a world. In a word, revolutionary. My wife, however, thinks the stories are creepy and repulsive.

Do you have an opinion on Dianne Williams? Let us know, is she creepy or brilliant?

Strangeness on a Train

A few days ago I was riding a Central Line train out to Ealing for a real estate appointment. Across from me sat a youngish Indian-Briton in jeans and a purple hoodie. I was reading Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Heartily amused by a passage in the book, I looked up smiling. The man opposite me apparently mistook my smile for an inviting gesture. He moved across to my side of the train, two seats down from me and proceded to look at me. He wrote something on a slip of paper and placed it between us. I didn't pick it up, rather I focused on the events of Shandy, Book V. After a minute, with big sweeping dramatic movements, he picked up the piece of paper and ripped it to shreds in front of me, throwing the fragments on the floor and moved down the train car. It's for the best, really. In addition to the insurmountable obstacle of our differing orientations (un-sir-mountable, one could jest), I very strongly dislike litterbugs.

Bride of the Golem Update

Following is a list of the stories I've accepted so far. I am awaiting rewrites from two people, which may or may not be included. When a publisher has picked up the project, we will solicit stories from a few other authors as well. In the meantime, Bride of the Golem will include these works:

Barry Rosenberg "Gershom's Golem"
Norman Rubin "Aunt Bessie and the It"
Sharon Diane King "Feast of the Laughing Cow"
Jim Meirose "Deni-al"
Melissa Yuan-Innes "WWWJD"
Liz Coley "Till Death Does His Part"
Aaron Simon "My Dog the Dybbuk"
Adina Rosenthal "Succubus-in-Law"
E. Mitchell "I Was a Teenage Yeshiva Boy Werewolf"
Eric Joel Bresin "Pig"
David Hendrickson "Floater"
Tonia Brown "Zombie Golem"
Mike DiChristina "Mr. Met"
Ken Liu "The MSG Golem"
David Naimon "Member"
Anna Taborska "Dirty Dybbuk"
A.B.S. Dudevant "The Gingerbread Golem"
Gio Clairval & Daniel Pasetti "Toytfogl"
Gus Ginsburg "By Way of Explanation"
G. Miki Hayden "The Cantor and the Ghost"

I received 211 submissions, of which about 35 were pretty good stories, in my opinion. Thanks to all who sent me their work.

Bride of the Golem submissions are now closed

The Bride of the Golem submissions deadline of April 4 has passed, and though I haven't finished making my way through the mountain of stories I've recently received, I definitely have enough good and publishable stories to fill the anthology. So if you're thinking of submitting, please don't--unless you're one of the four people I asked to revise and resubmit.

I hope to make my decisions on the stories I've received in the next few weeks, and to post a list of included stories by the end of the month.

If you missed the deadline, don't despair. If this project sells as well as I hope, there will be a Return of the Bride of the Golem project in the near future.

Thanks to all who submitted.

Cheers,
Gus Ginsburg