Well over a century after the fact, there can be little pain in admitting that a distant cousin of mine, born to wealth and social status, was the subject of a spectacular bankruptcy proceeding in London, England in the 1860s. An account of his failed business affairs appeared in the London Times. I suspect the…
Tag: humour
Blue Monday: Grunberg writes a blue streak
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Arnon Grunberg, a 26-year-old native of Amsterdam, wrote the novel Blue Monday (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1997) on a dare. It has sold 70,000 copies in Holland and been republished in various translations. Blue Monday has been compared to Roth’s Goodbye Columbus; Grunberg’s often-pixilated protagonist, also called Arnon, is a sort of Jewish Casanova who vividly…
More Wit & Wisdom from Michael Wex
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Michael Wex, the Toronto writer, raconteur and Yiddishist whose previous non-fiction book Born to Kvetch climbed to the top of the bestseller lists, now presents us with an equally learned and funny manual about how to be a human being — humane, considerate, and wise enough to do the right thing. How to Be a…
