Itinerantdaughter's Blog

Matt and Ben, by Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers, has come off press!  A sampling:

Matt: Interior.  Ben’s apartment.  A lazy Saturday in Somerville, Massachusetts.  Stage right we see a desk, a computer, all untouched.  Center stage we got a second hand couch.  Pan left we see various junk food… and Ben.  Lights up on Ben.  Alone… at the desk.

(Matt exits.)

(Ben is waiting.  He faces the keyboard.  He types one letter.  Deletes letter.  Waits some more.  He straightens a pile of paper.  Waits some more.  Etc. etc. etc.  We understand Ben is fidgety and anxious, anticipating Matt’s arrival.  Matt enters with a pizza.  He is out of Ben’s line of vision, but Ben senses he is there and begins typing voraciously.)

Matt: Hey Ben.

Ben: Hey, Matt.  Long time no see.  Long time… no see.

Matt: The craziest thing –– I’m walking out of Papa Gino’s, and I run into Naomi…

Ben: You’re like two hours late man.

Matt: No.

Ben: It’s twelve thirty.

Matt: Wow.  Well, I was just, uh, picking up the pizza –– here, I got extra cheese –– anyway, so I ran into Naomi ––

Ben: Who is Naomi?

Matt: Naomi from 10th grade, from Ms. Parson’s history class.  Lesbian.  Do you know how I know this?  She sees me in line.  She comes up to me and says “Hi Matt, how are you, how’s the acting doing?”  And I said, “Oh, can’t complain, Naomi, how are things with you?”  And she goes, “Great.  I work at the Radio Shack, in Burlington?  And I’m a lesbian.”  Just like that.  I know!  I know!  So I was like, “Oh Radio Shack?  That’s cool.”  And I left.

From the Dorothy Parker Society email newsletter:

Hotel Salute

This month the Algonquin Hotel is turning 110 years old. When guests checked in on a cold November day in 1902, a room and bath could be had for $2 or $3 dollars a night, and there was a horse stable next door to the hotel. Well those stables are now the famous Blue Bar, and that’s where we are going to have a toast to 110 years of being the best literary landmark in New York. Join us at the bar on Tuesday, Nov. 27, at 6:30 PM for cocktails. The Blue Bar was renovated this spring, and if you haven’t visited, the place is gorgeous. Have a cocktail as we salute the Algonquin Round Table, the hotel, and the many historical events that have taken place. Address is 59 West 44th Street, between 5th and 6th avenues.

I will be there, will YOU?

Eudora Welty, at 23, asking The New Yorker if she can work for them. Thanks, Letters of Note.

March 15, 1933

Gentlemen,

I suppose you’d be more interested in even a sleight-o’-hand trick than you’d be in an application for a position with your magazine, but as usual you can’t have the thing you want most.

I am 23 years old, six weeks on the loose in N.Y. However, I was a New Yorker for a whole year in 1930-31 while attending advertising classes in Columbia’s School of Business. Actually I am a southerner, from Mississippi, the nation’s most backward state. Ramifications include Walter H. Page, who, unluckily for me, is no longer connected with Doubleday-Page, which is no longer Doubleday-Page, even. I have a B.A. (’29) from the University of Wisconsin, where I majored in English without a care in the world. For the last eighteen months I was languishing in my own office in a radio station in Jackson, Miss., writing continuities, dramas, mule feed advertisements, santa claus talks, and life insurance playlets; now I have given that up.

As to what I might do for you — I have seen an untoward amount of picture galleries and 15¢ movies lately, and could review them with my old prosperous detachment, I think; in fact, I recently coined a general word for Matisse’s pictures after seeing his latest at the Marie Harriman: concubineapple. That shows you how my mind works — quick, and away from the point. I read simply voraciously, and can drum up an opinion afterwards.

Since I have bought an India print, and a large number of phonograph records from a Mr. Nussbaum who picks them up, and a Cezanne Bathers one inch long (that shows you I read e. e. cummings I hope), I am anxious to have an apartment, not to mention a small portable phonograph. How I would like to work for you! A little paragraph each morning — a little paragraph each night, if you can’t hire me from daylight to dark, although I would work like a slave. I can also draw like Mr. Thurber, in case he goes off the deep end. I have studied flower painting.

There is no telling where I may apply, if you turn me down; I realize this will not phase [sic] you, but consider my other alternative: the U of N.C. offers for $12.00 to let me dance in Vachel Lindsay’s Congo. I congo on. I rest my case, repeating that I am a hard worker.

Truly yours,

Eudora Welty

Or: “Why Is It That Every Idea I Have Is Already Taken?”

A month ago or so, I read an article in the marvelous publication The Jewish Review of Books by philosophy professor Carlos Fraenkel about an “underground” philosophy club he wound up teaching to the Hasidim of Brooklyn.  A little taste (you can read the whole thing here):

“‘How could the medieval thinkers get away with interpreting the Torah according to Aristotle or the Sufis?’ Jacob wonders.

‘Well,’ I say, ‘they thought that if Judaism is true, it must agree with every true insight, even if it came from a Greek or a Muslim. The Haredim, on the other hand, think that they have to shelter true Judaism from any supposedly corrupting outside influence.’

This leads us to discuss whether the Haredi fight against cultural contamination is a lost cause from the start. I point to an interesting passage in Toledot Yaakov Yosef, the first published Hasidic book, by Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoye, a disciple of the founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov. R. Yaakov Yosef draws a contrast between a “small” and a “great” struggle; the former refers to a battle with weapons, the latter to the moral wrestling of the soul with the ‘evil inclination’ (yetzer ha-ra). The source of the metaphor is actually a famous hadith frequently cited by Sufi mystics. In this tradition, the Prophet Muhammad tells a group of soldiers that after returning from the ‘smaller jihad’ — the jihad of the sword — they now must take up the ‘greater jihad’ — the jihad of the soul against pleasure. Of course, the Baal Shem Tov and his disciples didn’t study the Sufi masters. But they did study Bahya ibn Paquda’s Duties of the Heart, which was translated from Arabic to Hebrew in the 12th century and became a classic of Jewish thought. Bahya’s account of the soul’s ascent to God was strongly influenced by Sufism and includes a version of the hadith in question, without, of course, the reference to the Prophet Muhammad. As Isaac points out, excitedly, the Satmar Rebbe, Joel Teitelbaum, was also a devoted student of Bahya’s Duties of the Heart!”

I was so taken with the article that I quickly emailed the author, as I am wont to do these days (every day I’m hustlin’) the following:

Dear Dr. Fraenkel,

I read with great with pleasure your article “Spinoza in Shtreimels” in the latest issue of The Jewish Review of Books, which is a fantastic publication I am always glad to get the chance to peruse.  Part of my interest in your piece was my light philosophical education –– I went to This University, which has strict Western Philosophy requirements, nearly all of which I’ve guiltily forgotten save the buzz phrase “categorical imperative” –– and part of it was because I am also a writer who has sort of inexplicably found herself covering a number of stories in the haredi community (upcoming pieces in Tablet and The New Yorker‘s Culture Desk blog.)

The main reason that I’m writing is that in addition to being a freelance writer, I’m also working for a publishing company called xxx, which is located in New York City and run by the venerable PM.  Something about your piece made me feel like there was may be a short book that could come out of it –– perhaps it was the idea of an underground club akin to Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran or some unavoidable titular association with Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (The Lubavitchers’ Philosophy Club?) –– and I’m writing to see if you thought there is an opportunity here to expand the piece into a book.  Of course, you are the author of the article and also the man with the experience, so you’ll know best whether or not the material you amassed was exhausted in the article, but just perhaps it wasn’t.  If in fact it was, or you are busy working on other projects, I still want you to know that the article was wonderful, entertaining, and pretty damn funny at times.

Let me know if you have any thoughts on this, or you just want me to continue to compliment your writing style and ability to get haredim to warm to you.  I’m good for that, too.

Best,

Carlos Fraenkel

—

My, that Fraenkel is a nice man!  And finally, my somewhat cheeky reply to him:

Dear Carlos,

Woah… so… what you’re saying is basically I’m psychic re: book titles/themes?  I think that is what you’re saying.  I’ve got to add this new skill to my resume.

Anyway, your new move and the new book sound very exciting indeed!  I’ll be keeping an eye out for its release (unless you want to save me some trouble and tell me know when it’s coming off press?) and for future pieces in JRB and other places.  Please do keep me and X Publishing in mind for future work!  We actually do a lot of stuff that has an academic bent but is aimed for a lay readership, so we may just be the perfect place for your next project.

Hope to speak again some day!

The moral of the story is: even if an idea you have has been “taken,” it feels better than it being flat out rejected, so awkwardly email away!