Jewish Identity in Writing (Part 5 of 10)
Bookworm
KCRW
4.5 • 606 Ratings
🗓️ 30 June 2005
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Cartoonist and graphic novelist Art Spiegelman explains how writers' identities are revealed in their work, that reading a book is like crawling into the writer's head. Cynthia Ozick and Jonathan Rosen talk about the immigrant experience and the Jewish American novel...
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation. |
| 0:07.5 | You are a human animal. |
| 0:11.1 | You are a very special breed, |
| 0:14.8 | or you are the only animal. |
| 0:18.2 | Who can think, who can reason, who can read. |
| 0:21.5 | From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm. |
| 0:26.2 | We continue our special series, Escaping the Cage, Identity, Multiculturalism, and Writing. |
| 0:31.9 | Today our subject is American Jewish writing and identity. |
| 0:35.6 | My guests are Art Spiegelman, Jonathan Rosen, and Cynthia Ozik. |
| 0:40.1 | Art Spiegelman is the author most recently of the graphic novel |
| 0:43.7 | in the Shadow of No Towers, published by Pantheon. |
| 0:47.9 | It seems to me that one of the first decisive things that Spiegelman does in entering the world as a cartoonist himself. |
| 0:58.5 | Now, he didn't begin as a cartoonist himself. |
| 1:01.2 | He's among other things the editor for some 11 years of Raw. |
| 1:05.0 | He's done panels and all kinds of work. |
| 1:09.7 | But he enters his own frame, most famously, with the two-volume book, |
| 1:18.7 | mouse, which took, I believe, is it 11 years to complete? |
| 1:24.2 | 13 years. |
| 1:24.7 | 13 years. |
| 1:25.6 | It had its bond. |
| 1:25.7 | It's publication, yeah. |
| 1:36.3 | What allowed you or led you to that decision to feature yourself? Oh, to use myself as a character in the book? |
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