"… ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns." — Franz Kafka
Adam Bernstein in The Washington Post yesterday on the late actress Betsy Drake —
" She also wrote a novel, Children, You Are Very Little (1971),
about a 10-year-old girl who goes to outrageous comic lengths
to defy the mean adults in her life and unite her broken family.
A Time magazine reviewer praised its 'flair and ferocity.'
'Adults demand that children understand what they’re trying to say,'
Ms. Drake remarked at the time, 'but too often they interpret a child’s
most serious moments as stupid or cute or funny. So children, in
self-defense, learn to play for the laugh. It’s a style of craziness,
a style of survival, a style of distancing. I learned this style as a child
but I’m not really impressed with my comic or ironic side. I’d much
rather write straight out of despair.' "
The New York Times in 2014 on Drake's friend, painter Bernard Perlin —
" His early gallery work reflected the realist influence of Ben Shahn,
who had been a colleague at the United States Office of War Information
in 1942 and 1943. Perhaps Mr. Perlin’s most notable work from this period
is 'Orthodox Boys,' from 1948, which depicts two Jewish boys discussing
a Jewish text in front of a wall covered with graffiti. "
Midrash for Perlin —
See this morning's previous post on two un-orthodox Jewish boys and an
un-orthodox text.