Stanford University Press Blog

Némirovsky's Anti-Semitic Scandal

A recent article by Ruth Franklin of The New Republic seeks to shed light on the anti-Semitic controversy surrounding Suite Française author Irène Némirovsky, who died at Auschwitz 60 years before the English translation of her novel hit the New York Times bestseller list. Upon its U.S. release, Suite Française drew comparisons to The Diary of Anne Frank as another great Jewish literary work that was able to survive the trauma of the Holocaust.


Franklin sees this as a false media spin considering Némirovsky’s anti-Semitic past, despite her Russian-Jewish lineage. Franklin cites Jonathan Weiss’s biography Irène Némirovsky: Her Life and Works (2006) to reinforce this argument, referencing its examples of the author’s closeness with right-wing political circles and publishers. Némirovsky was able to establish a profitable career through writings that depicted Jews in ugly racial stereotypes. When the threat of arrest and deportation became clearer, Némirovsky appealed to her right-wing contacts, contending that she was not one of “the undesirable foreigners” of France. Her husband even championed her anti-Semitic writings in the hopes of gaining protection. Franklin says, “As Weiss’s important and prodigiously researched biography makes clear, Némirovsky was the very definition of a self-hating Jew.”

Franklin analyzes the anti-Semitism found in new, recent translations of Némirovsky’s other works, including David Golder and The Ball, and challenges some critics’ argument that Némirovsky’s characters were representations of how she saw Jews. “…She seems to not have wondered whether there was more to Jewish life than what she saw, or whether what she saw was any different from what the racists and the anti-Semites were seeing.”

It is undeniable that Némirovsky’s death—which occurred not long after her arrest in 1942—was tragic. This fact, coupled with her literary displays of anti-Semitism, brings up questions of how to now approach Suite Française and its uncertain position amongst other literary works born out of the Holocaust. Examining her personal history, as Weiss has done in his thorough biography, may be the first step in answering those questions.

Off Mike makes it to Bay Area Bestseller List

Three weeks into his book tour, Michael Krasny’s Off Mike makes it to the Bay Area bestseller list! Krasny has been making appearances in bookstores throughout the Bay Area to packed audiences of the KQED show Forum’s fans, curious to get to know the man behind the mike, the literary radio host they are used to encountering on the air waves on their commutes every morning.

The book takes readers inside Krasny’s world—his coming of age during the heady times of the 1960s with their blend of the civil rights movement, political activism, and sexual experimentation. Krasny talks of a strong desire to become a novelist in the footsteps of Saul Bellow and Philip Roth; and then discovering his real talent as a communicator—a deft ability to draw others out as an interlocutor and host of KQED Radio's Forum, which is rated as one of the most popular NPR shows today. He is a maestro for educated radio listeners, who prefer their discourse high and civil; he is a writer's interviewer.

The book provides insightful and amusing vignettes, and behind the scenes accounts, from his encounters and interviews with cultural, literary and political luminaries, including Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Alice Walker and Salman Rushdie.  Forum fans and lovers of literature will be riveted by the sharp commentary and entertaining stories from one of the country's leading interviewers.

Michael Krasny launches “Off Mike” tour to Enthusiastic Reviews

Michael Krasny’s Off Mike was released on October 1.  In case you are wondering, here's what the critics have been saying....

Publisher’s Weekly remarked that, “His steadily honed love of language is palpable and infectious, suited more to the book party-hopping literary junkie than the broadcast historian. Eminent newsmakers, literary greats and iconoclasts open up to him like patients on a psychiatrist’s couch.”

Leah Garchik in SF Chronicle wrote that Krasny's knack reminded her of Grace Paley’s remark: "I hear people talk. When they're really speaking truthful, they speak well and I hear that. ... Of course, I help them."

Ben Fong-Torres (also in SF Chronicle) writes that, “Krasny, and his subjects, offer plentiful food for thought.”

Last Sunday Peter Laufer at KPFA spoke with Michael Krasny about his on and off mike personas, and his quest to write the great American novel. The two hosts also compared notes on the art of interviewing. Listen here. 

The book includes Krasny's interviews with eminent writers like Umberto Eco, Amy Tan, Alice Walker, Art Spiegelman, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Joan Didion.

 

Michael Krasny Puts Pen to Paper

This fall, we will be publishing KQED host Michael Krasny's book, Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life.  The book will be available in bookstores on October 1.  In a recent article, Contra Cost Times columnist, Bill Mann writes that “Krasny interweaves tales of his youth with literary-interview excerpts and stories from his radio career. It is the latter I savored the most, especially the numerous stories about Krasny's tempestuous days at top-rated KGO show..”

In the book, Michael Krasny describes his experiences as host of Forum—the popular KQED show with a reputation for interviewing the country’s leading literary figures, intellectuals, and policymakers. Whether Krasny is asking Joyce Carol Oates what fires her imagination, examining with Ian McEwan why Saul Bellow is wildly popular among British novelists, considering Tony Kushner’s remark that it is harder being gay than Jewish, or discussing with Umberto Eco why he loves comic books—he is witty, amusing, and often politically charged. Brought together in Off Mike, these vignettes and commentary cast a provocative lens on our times. The book includes vignettes from 47 interviews, including Joyce Carol Oates, Amy Tan, Alice Walker, Art Spiegelman, Tom Stoppard, Isabel Allende, and Joan Didion. (These links take you to Forum's audio interviews with these writers and artists.)