The Jewish Writer

NY: Henry Holt & Co, 1998. 1s. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. Hardcover, 150 pages. B&w portraits. Jill Krementz has made a career of photographing writers. The Jewish Writer features her portraits of 78 "people of the book," among them Saul Bellow, Hannah Arendt, Maurice Sendak, and David Mamet. Some of these portraits are contemplative; others are joyous. What distinguishes them is Krementz's ability to capture the essence of a moment that is at once exquisite and mundane, be it playwright Wendy Wasserstein rolling up her sleeves at her computer or an elfin Stanley Kunitz half-hiding in the blooms of his Provincetown garden. A mischievous Bruce Jay Friedman dashes around Southampton in a spiffy convertible; a bearded, bandana'd, and bespectacled Allen Ginsberg appears at the 1972 Democratic National Convention. (Though some of these photographs date from the early '70s, most are much more recent.) Each portrait is accompanied by a description of the author's life and work, and the relationship of each to Judaism, or, more accurately, Jewishness. The Jewish Writer is a spirited testament to the enormous and diverse contributions Jewish writers have made to our literary landscape. Record # 351454