Helen Epstein
By Helen Epstein When you’re sitting in a traffic jam on the Mass Pike or the Taconic Parkway it’s instructive to reflect that one hundred and fifty years ago, it often took less time to get to the Berkshires from Boston or New York City than it does today. The Berkshires were then a major…
Read MoreBy Helen Epstein No one reviews talks but I’ve just attended two by some highly gifted women that deserve wider notice. Director Anna Brownsted and actress Dana Harrison discussed their work on R.T. Rogers’ provocative play “White People” at Shakespeare & Company last week and author Brenda Wineapple gave a brilliant mini-seminar in American cultural…
Read MoreWhite People by J.T. Rogers. Directed by Anna Brownsted. At Shakespeare and Company, Lenox, Massachusetts, through September 4. By Helen Epstein What can possibly connect a reflective young History professor in New York’s Stuyvesant Town, a disconsolate Southern housewife and ex-homecoming queen, and a demanding Midwestern corporate lawyer? In J.T. Rogers’ powerful drama White People…
Read MoreTHE THOMASHEVSKYS: MUSIC AND MEMORIES OF A LIFE IN THE YIDDISH THEATER. Written and hosted by Michael Tilson Thomas. Directed by Patricia Birch, with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood. by Helen Epstein I’m a fan of the serious introspective kind of memoir, that tries to wrest meaning from existential and emotional chaos.…
Read Moreby Helen Epstein Go here for information about a live-chat, scheduled for August 23rd, with Helen Epstein on “The Art of Narrative Writing.” They were around for most of my lifetime, I thought as I listened to Martin Bookspan, the 83-year-old radio announcer and music commentator and 80-year-old conductor, composer, and jazz artist Andre Previn.
Read Moreby Helen Epstein Go here for information about a live-chat, scheduled for August 23rd, with Helen Epstein on “The Art of Narrative Writing.” HE: How did this situation evolve? JK: The basic facts are in the “NY Times” story. Yale University told the press to remove the illustrations: first the cartoons, then a second illustration,…
Read MoreCan you imagine a scholarly press publishing a book about the Mona Lisa without a reproduction of the painting? Or, perhaps a more pertinent example, a book about anti-Semitic stereotypes without an illustration of them? Brandeis professor and author Jytte Klausen was asked to sign what she called a “gag order” by Yale University Press.…
Read Moreby Helen Epstein Go here for information about a live-chat, scheduled for August 23rd, with Helen Epstein on “The Art of Narrative Writing.” Despite what the NYTimes thinks Meryl Streep cooks up a storm in “Julie and Julia.” I usually trust the Times‘ A. O. Scott on movies, but this time I don’t share his…
Read Moreby Helen Epstein Go here for information about a live-chat, scheduled for August 23rd, with Helen Epstein on “The Art of Narrative Writing.” If you’re at all interested in popular culture, don’t miss Aviva Kempner’s new documentary “Yoo-Hoo Mrs. Goldberg.” Kempner is the D.C.-based director of the award-winning documentary “Life and Times of Hank Greenberg”…
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