In this Book
- Missing a Beat: The Rants and Regrets of Seymour Krim
- Book
- 2010
- Published by: Syracuse University Press
- Series: Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and the Arts
summary
In 1961, Beat writer Seymour Krim set Greenwich Village on its ear with a slim volume of essays that featured an unleashed voice, a brash title, and a foreword by Norman Mailer. James Baldwin called Views of a Nearsighted Cannoneer an "extraordinary volume." Saul Bellow published an excerpt in his journal The Noble Savage, and Mailer saluted Krim’s jazzy prose with its "shifts and shatterings of mood." Despite such praise and critical attention, Krim’s work is excluded from most Beat anthologies and is little known outside literary circles. With Missing a Beat, a collection of eighteen essays by Krim published between 1957 and 1989, Cohen introduces this influential writer to a new generation. In the Village Voice, New York Magazine, New York Times, and elsewhere, Krim pioneered a new style of subjective and personal reporting to write about the postwar American scene from a Jewish angle. Aggressively unacademic, Krim’s journalism displays the "rapid, nervous, breathless tempo" that Irving Howe called a hallmark of Jewish literature. Krim outlived his early literary fame, but he produced an impressive body of work and was a tremendous prose stylist. Missing a Beat resurrects an American original, finding Krim a new literary home among such celebrated writers as Norman Mailer, David Mamet, and Saul Bellow.
Table of Contents
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- Acknowledgments
- pp. xiii-xv
- Editor’s Introduction
- pp. xvii-xxxix
- PART ONE: Intellectuals
- 1. What’s This Cat’s Story?
- pp. 3-27
- 3. The American Novel Made Me
- pp. 58-77
- 4. The 215,000 Word Habit
- pp. 78-82
- 5. Remembering Harold Rosenberg
- pp. 83-88
- PART TWO: Whites and Blacks
- 6. On Being an Anglo
- pp. 91-93
- 7. Anti-Jazz
- pp. 94-99
- 8. Ask for a White Cadillac
- pp. 100-116
- PART THREE: Success and Failure
- 10. Making It!
- pp. 131-137
- 11. Norman Mailer, Get Out of My Head!
- pp. 138-160
- 12. Mario Puzo and Me
- pp. 161-168
- PART FOUR: Jews
- 15. The Menahem Begin Image
- pp. 193-195
- 16. Sitting Shiva for Henry Miller
- pp. 196-200
- 17. My Sister, Joyce Brothers
- pp. 201-206
- 18. Epitaph for a Canadian Kike
- pp. 207-219
- Works Cited
- pp. 225-229
Additional Information
ISBN
9780815651628
Related ISBN(s)
9780815609483
MARC Record
OCLC
794700208
Pages
296
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No