01/19/2025
For Sunday, a thread on great Jewish-American novelist and playwright Ira Levin (1929-2007).
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Levin wrote twisty suspense thrillers; Stephen King called him the "Swiss watchmaker" of novelists. "Every novel he has ever written has been a marvel of plotting," King said.
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Levin's best known novels are two feminist parables about women being trapped by domesticity and patriarchal conspiracy. ROSEMARY'S BABY (1967) and THE STEPFORD WIVES (1972) were both made into major films.
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Levin doesn't necessarily talk about his Jewishness directly in most of his novels. A sort-of exception is THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL, a novel about N***s cloning Hi**er. The protagonist, Ezra Lieberman, is a Jewish post-war N**i hunter.
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Levin's books are often about double lives, or passing (esp his q***r murder drama, DEATH TRAP and his early novel A KISS BEFORE DYING, abt a sociopathic social climber.) You could argue that he's thinking through issues around Jewish marginalization and (in)visibility.
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His 1984 play CANTORIAL is a Jewish ghost story...though it's not considered one of his better works.
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Levin thought about issues of identity, oppression, and assimilation through sideways, puzzle-box stories, that are Jewish in part because of the way that they don't explicitly claim or embrace Jewish identity.
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If you're interested in Jewish books and authors, check out our titles at ben yehuda press!
https://www.benyehudapress.com/
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