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Friday, July 31, 2015
How Jack the Ripper's murders were motivated by love gone wrong
Part Four: Haunted by his heinous crimes, Francis Craig took his own life 15 years after the murders - slitting his own throat exactly as he had slaughtered his own victims
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Francis Craig: Was Jack the Ripper a 51-year-old reporter?
A mild-mannered reporter living in the East End of London is unmasked as Jack the Ripper in a new book - and his close link to the killer's final victim could be proved once and for all with DNA evidence
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Did Francis Craig write the famous Jack the Ripper letters?
Part Three: The new suspect is the perfect candidate to have written a series of letters long thought to have been penned by the serial killer, dubbed the 'Dear Boss' letters
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A Harem of Translators: Isaac Bashevis Singer at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
A couple of months ago, I remembered a movie I enjoyed very much when it came out, in 1989, and hadn't seen since. So I Netflixed Enemies, A Love Story, based on the 1972 novel by the marvelous Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer and directed by Paul Mazursky. It stars Ron Silver as a Polish immigrant in post-World War II New York whose love life--he has a young wife (Malgorzata Zajaczkowska) and a lusty mistress (Lena Olin)--becomes far more complicated when the wife he'd presumed lost in the Holocaust (Anjelica Huston) suddenly pops up in his world. Oy.
Now that I've seen one of the films in this year's San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, I understand how Singer came up with the story. The 72-minute documentary is called The Muses of Isaac Bashevis Singer, but it could just as easily and more aptly been titled A Harem Full of Translators. That line comes from Singer himself, who, we learn at the beginning of this unusual film, dreamed of having a harem of women, specifically noting that "a harem full of translators would be heaven on earth."
Singer left his wife and five-year-old son in Poland in 1935 for the opportunities afforded in America, not least to have his stories published in English. His first translator was Saul Bellow, no less, whose parents were Yiddish-speaking Russian Jews. Bellow's translation of Singer's story "Gimpel the Fool" appeared in a 1953 issue of Partisan Review and quickly established Singer in the English-speaking world. Bellow's fame certainly helped, but Singer wanted a translator who wouldn't share the spotlight, and thus began his employment over the years of some 40 unknown women, a few of whom didn't even speak Yiddish.
Israeli directors Shaul Betser and Asaf Galay tracked down nine of these women and some wonderful footage--not just of Singer's interviews over the years (in one of which, with Dick Cavett in 1979, he takes exception to the commandment against adultery) but of Singer at work with his translators. How wonderful that someone thought to film these working sessions. For some three decades, Singer first published his short stories and serialized novels in the Jewish Daily Forward, a well-known Yiddish newspaper in New York. In several scenes, we see him reading aloud, in English, from a story cut from the newspaper, one or another woman typing away and occasionally helping him with a word or a phrase.
Singer demanded that all his foreign publishers work from these sometimes softened English translations, the better to make his work palatable to the non-Jewish audience. All this behind-the-scenes creative stuff is so interesting, it may distract from the fact that, then as now, the famous take advantage of those who feel honored just to be next to them. All of the women were bright and well educated; some wanted to be writers themselves. While his translators usually received a credit, they were not well paid, and Singer did not exactly have a firm notion of boundaries.
That part doesn't seem to have upset any of those interviewed. All seem to have expected a pass at the very least; one, a lively blonde who says she had a 30-year affair with the author, must be the prototype for the Lena Olin character in Enemies. And in Miami in his last years, perhaps in an effort to rev up a flagging imagination, Singer asked his last translator to tell him stories, and corrected her so often--"Your characters are wooden"; "that's not a story"--she finally learned to do it. That, she says, is how she became a writer.
The Muses of Isaac Bashevis Singer will most interest those who want to know more about the author, fiction writing, and/or the art of translation. Singer, who died in 1991, published some 18 novels, more than a dozen story collections, 14 children's books, plus memoirs and essays; he shared the 1974 National Book Award with Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow) for A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978.
It would be nice to think that Enemies, the movie, and Yentl, a 1983 film directed by and starring Barbra Streisand inspired by the story "Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy," sent viewers on to Singer's writing, and that this new documentary will do the same. You can start with Enemies, A Love Story and Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories, Volume One, which includes both "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy" and "Gimpel the Fool." If you can't catch the documentary during the SF Jewish Film Festival, there'll always be Netflix.
Aug. 1, California Theatre, 2113 Kittredge St., Berkeley; Aug. 2, Castro Theatre, 429 Castro St., S.F.; Aug. 9, Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael, San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, 415.621.0523, sfjff.org.
Now that I've seen one of the films in this year's San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, I understand how Singer came up with the story. The 72-minute documentary is called The Muses of Isaac Bashevis Singer, but it could just as easily and more aptly been titled A Harem Full of Translators. That line comes from Singer himself, who, we learn at the beginning of this unusual film, dreamed of having a harem of women, specifically noting that "a harem full of translators would be heaven on earth."
Singer left his wife and five-year-old son in Poland in 1935 for the opportunities afforded in America, not least to have his stories published in English. His first translator was Saul Bellow, no less, whose parents were Yiddish-speaking Russian Jews. Bellow's translation of Singer's story "Gimpel the Fool" appeared in a 1953 issue of Partisan Review and quickly established Singer in the English-speaking world. Bellow's fame certainly helped, but Singer wanted a translator who wouldn't share the spotlight, and thus began his employment over the years of some 40 unknown women, a few of whom didn't even speak Yiddish.
Israeli directors Shaul Betser and Asaf Galay tracked down nine of these women and some wonderful footage--not just of Singer's interviews over the years (in one of which, with Dick Cavett in 1979, he takes exception to the commandment against adultery) but of Singer at work with his translators. How wonderful that someone thought to film these working sessions. For some three decades, Singer first published his short stories and serialized novels in the Jewish Daily Forward, a well-known Yiddish newspaper in New York. In several scenes, we see him reading aloud, in English, from a story cut from the newspaper, one or another woman typing away and occasionally helping him with a word or a phrase.
Singer demanded that all his foreign publishers work from these sometimes softened English translations, the better to make his work palatable to the non-Jewish audience. All this behind-the-scenes creative stuff is so interesting, it may distract from the fact that, then as now, the famous take advantage of those who feel honored just to be next to them. All of the women were bright and well educated; some wanted to be writers themselves. While his translators usually received a credit, they were not well paid, and Singer did not exactly have a firm notion of boundaries.
That part doesn't seem to have upset any of those interviewed. All seem to have expected a pass at the very least; one, a lively blonde who says she had a 30-year affair with the author, must be the prototype for the Lena Olin character in Enemies. And in Miami in his last years, perhaps in an effort to rev up a flagging imagination, Singer asked his last translator to tell him stories, and corrected her so often--"Your characters are wooden"; "that's not a story"--she finally learned to do it. That, she says, is how she became a writer.
The Muses of Isaac Bashevis Singer will most interest those who want to know more about the author, fiction writing, and/or the art of translation. Singer, who died in 1991, published some 18 novels, more than a dozen story collections, 14 children's books, plus memoirs and essays; he shared the 1974 National Book Award with Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow) for A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978.
It would be nice to think that Enemies, the movie, and Yentl, a 1983 film directed by and starring Barbra Streisand inspired by the story "Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy," sent viewers on to Singer's writing, and that this new documentary will do the same. You can start with Enemies, A Love Story and Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories, Volume One, which includes both "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy" and "Gimpel the Fool." If you can't catch the documentary during the SF Jewish Film Festival, there'll always be Netflix.
Aug. 1, California Theatre, 2113 Kittredge St., Berkeley; Aug. 2, Castro Theatre, 429 Castro St., S.F.; Aug. 9, Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael, San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, 415.621.0523, sfjff.org.
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The Down and Dirty on Being "Gay"
Time to clear up all the confusion surrounding the word "gay."
"Gay" is a multi-faceted word. Apart from its primary definition of "bright" or "lively," its meaning as "sexually loose" and "dissipated" has been its most popular and enduring definition.
Being "in the gay life" once put you in the fast lane. "Feeling gay" left you amorous. The "gaying instrument" (19thC) was the male member, without which it wouldn't be possible to "gay it."
The "gay woman" was a major literary figure from Chaucer to Shakespeare, right on through the nineteenth century. She was "gay in the arse," "groins," or "legs" and spent much of her time in a "gay house." Even today, in England, we have the "gay girl," a hardworking flat-backer trying to turn an honest shilling (or is it a euro?).
"I ain't gay," said she astonished.
"Yes you are."
"No I ain't."
"You let men (make love to you), don't you?"
"Yes, but I ain't gay."
"What do you call gay?"
"Why the gals who come out regular at night,
dressed up, they get their livings by it," she said.
--Anon., My Secret Life, 1888
Although there exists much controversy among scholars, the word most likely derives from the Old English gal for "lewd" and"lascivious" (which also gave us quite a "gal," a nineteenth-century British term for a prostitute) rather than the more obvious gai, from Provence in southeastern France, a word which earlier referred to courtly love and its literature.
Gay did not become associated with "simulsex" (early 20th C) until the early part of the twentieth century, as underground jargon. It went public with this meaning around 1903, with the" gay boy" in Australia, and in 1935 in the United States in the film "Bringing Up Baby," in which Cary Grant donned a dress and commented how he had "gone gay."
Between 1955 and 1960 the word captured everyone's fancy, culminating in the joyous outburst of the seventies.
And what a wide range of personalities emerged! Some were "gay as pink ink" (mid 1950s), or "overtly, obviously homosexual."Others were more restrained. They included the high achievers or "guppies," "gay upwardly mobile professionals," the morally upright gay Christians; and the "gaybies," "young gay males with a cute face, stylish clothes, and a warm personality"--the kind you'd bring home to mother.
Not everyone, however, loved the word. Christopher Isherwood called it "Damned silly...A term which made us into frivolous Idiots--sort of bliss-ninnies."
It also led to rather silly usage. such as, "THOUSANDS MOURN AT GAY FUNERAL," a headline in San Francisco newspaper, cited in Detroit Free Press on August 27,1979.
Today, "gay," or some word close to it, is used in more than a dozen countries in the same sense as in English. We have gay bars, gay boutiques, and gay publications. It's become all so respectable--a far cry from the days when proprietors handed out "gayola" (gay + payola, c.1960): "blackmail or extortion paid to police to protect a homosexual establishment."
Madison Avenue has at last awakened to the word's full commercial potential, and wordsmiths have begun to retool the language. It's probably only a matter of time before "the gay old dog"becomes an aged homo and "the gay blade," a means of removing unwanted body hair.
Toujours gai! Mes amis.
but there s nothing i really regret
wotthehell wotthehell
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai
the things that i had not ought to
i do because i ve gotto
wotthehell wotthehell
and i end with my favorite motto
toujours gai toujours gai
boss sometimes i think
that our friend mehitabel
is a trifle too gay
--- From The Song Of Mehitabel from Archy and Mehitabel
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The Bestselling Memoir from Trailblazing Ballerina Misty Copeland
By Megan Reid | Off the Shelf
As an associate editor at Emily Bestler Books, I have a wonderful list of authors, all of whom I adore. They're moms, and former military, and screenwriters, and Australians, and stay-at-home dads. They live in cities and in the country; they are male and female; they're tall and short and in-between.
But only one of those authors is my personal hero.
I've been a fan of ballerina Misty Copeland since I first discovered the world of New York ballet. I was sixteen, and it was the first summer I was interning in New York City. My wonderful godmother, Marty, was kind enough to take me to the ballet nearly every week. I'd danced a little as a child, but now my eyes were opened to the magnificence of this art form. I was enthralled with it all. I studied the choreography. I returned to ballet class. I developed the kind of strong opinions about principal dancers that most people reserve for the Yankees' starting lineup. I idolized the men and women who brought ballet to life for me. But there's no denying that ballet is a largely white world. When I sat in the audience at Lincoln Center, there were few faces that looked like mine, whether onstage or off. There were no brown girls.
Until I discovered Misty.
Until recently, Misty Copeland was a long-serving soloist at American Ballet Theatre and the highest-ranking African-American woman to dance on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House. The first time I saw her dance, my heart soared. Here was a woman who looked like me, like my sisters, like my friends. She was artistic, graceful, strong. It's hard for me to articulate all of the things she meant to me, but suffice it to say that in that moment I felt like I belonged: like I deserved ballet, and like it deserved me.
Flash forward seven years from that summer. I was an editorial assistant at Touchstone Books, in my first year in my first job, when I emailed Misty to ask her if she might be interested in writing a book about her life. I honestly never imagined she'd write back! I remember how nervous I was the first time we met, but she was so gracious and kind--everything I had hoped she'd be--that I was immediately put at ease. Working with her and her cowriter, Charisse Jones, was a dream come true.
It was amazing to hear her talk about her unconventional entrée into the ballet world through the Boys and Girls Club, and the hardships and blessings she encountered. Her path to finding her art was rocky, as she came to ballet at the late age of thirteen from an impoverished background, and then experienced heartbreaking family struggles that nearly caused her to quit dancing.
I'll never forget a particular visit she made to the office to work on Life In Motion. We were working together in a conference room, and I asked her what she meant by a certain ballet term. She stood up at the table and immediately began demonstrating her port de bras and tendu routine. Oh my God, I thought. I'm getting a private performance by Misty Copeland.
When I think about the things I'm most proud of, helping to bring Misty's life story to thousands of readers is one of the achievements that tops the list. I know I'm her editor and it sounds cliché, but her example of continually defying expectations, going after what she deserves, remaining devoted to her passions, and dedication to passing along what she's learned is a daily inspiration.
On June 30, 2015, Misty made history by becoming the very first African-American female principal dancer in the American Ballet Theatre's seventy-five-year history. It's amazing to think it took us this long to get here, but I'm so glad to be living in a time when the most famous face of American ballet is a young black woman--a black woman, like me. And I might be biased, but I think there's no better person to fill those shoes than Misty.
More Recommendations from Off the Shelf:
Beat the Heat With These Summer Book Club Picks
10 Compelling Graphic Memoirs that Will Make You a Devoted Fan of the Genre
Get Off the Shelf Delivered Daily to Your Inbox
As an associate editor at Emily Bestler Books, I have a wonderful list of authors, all of whom I adore. They're moms, and former military, and screenwriters, and Australians, and stay-at-home dads. They live in cities and in the country; they are male and female; they're tall and short and in-between.
But only one of those authors is my personal hero.
I've been a fan of ballerina Misty Copeland since I first discovered the world of New York ballet. I was sixteen, and it was the first summer I was interning in New York City. My wonderful godmother, Marty, was kind enough to take me to the ballet nearly every week. I'd danced a little as a child, but now my eyes were opened to the magnificence of this art form. I was enthralled with it all. I studied the choreography. I returned to ballet class. I developed the kind of strong opinions about principal dancers that most people reserve for the Yankees' starting lineup. I idolized the men and women who brought ballet to life for me. But there's no denying that ballet is a largely white world. When I sat in the audience at Lincoln Center, there were few faces that looked like mine, whether onstage or off. There were no brown girls.
Until I discovered Misty.
Until recently, Misty Copeland was a long-serving soloist at American Ballet Theatre and the highest-ranking African-American woman to dance on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House. The first time I saw her dance, my heart soared. Here was a woman who looked like me, like my sisters, like my friends. She was artistic, graceful, strong. It's hard for me to articulate all of the things she meant to me, but suffice it to say that in that moment I felt like I belonged: like I deserved ballet, and like it deserved me.
Flash forward seven years from that summer. I was an editorial assistant at Touchstone Books, in my first year in my first job, when I emailed Misty to ask her if she might be interested in writing a book about her life. I honestly never imagined she'd write back! I remember how nervous I was the first time we met, but she was so gracious and kind--everything I had hoped she'd be--that I was immediately put at ease. Working with her and her cowriter, Charisse Jones, was a dream come true.
It was amazing to hear her talk about her unconventional entrée into the ballet world through the Boys and Girls Club, and the hardships and blessings she encountered. Her path to finding her art was rocky, as she came to ballet at the late age of thirteen from an impoverished background, and then experienced heartbreaking family struggles that nearly caused her to quit dancing.
I'll never forget a particular visit she made to the office to work on Life In Motion. We were working together in a conference room, and I asked her what she meant by a certain ballet term. She stood up at the table and immediately began demonstrating her port de bras and tendu routine. Oh my God, I thought. I'm getting a private performance by Misty Copeland.
When I think about the things I'm most proud of, helping to bring Misty's life story to thousands of readers is one of the achievements that tops the list. I know I'm her editor and it sounds cliché, but her example of continually defying expectations, going after what she deserves, remaining devoted to her passions, and dedication to passing along what she's learned is a daily inspiration.
On June 30, 2015, Misty made history by becoming the very first African-American female principal dancer in the American Ballet Theatre's seventy-five-year history. It's amazing to think it took us this long to get here, but I'm so glad to be living in a time when the most famous face of American ballet is a young black woman--a black woman, like me. And I might be biased, but I think there's no better person to fill those shoes than Misty.
More Recommendations from Off the Shelf:
Beat the Heat With These Summer Book Club Picks
10 Compelling Graphic Memoirs that Will Make You a Devoted Fan of the Genre
Get Off the Shelf Delivered Daily to Your Inbox
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.