Some Thursday Readings

The kindest of ghosts: A new history of childhood reading is a treasure – Simon Evans at The Critic Magazine. 

Jeffrey Archer: My 10 Favourite Agatha Christie Books – at CrimeReads.

 

University Cancels Panel Because Author is a ‘Zionist’ – Joe Nocera at The Free Press.

 

John Thomas Smith’s Rural Cottages – Spitalfields Life.

 

J.D. Salinger and the Wounds of War – Via Soho at CrimeReads.

 

Discovering a Classic: The Mass of Brother Michel – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

September Sketches – Brian Miller at A South Roane Agrarian.

 

When Did You Stop Writing? – Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

 

An Artist in the Ghost Army – Mikall Venso at Missouri History Society.

 

Of Course It Still Matters! Why Story Literature Today – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review talks with Henry Oliver.

 

Photograph: Agatha Christie.

Redcar Collector, a short story by Glenn McGoldrick, is free on Amazon Kindle today.

 

Some Monday Readings

“Shine, Perishing Republic,” poem by Robinson Jeffers – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern. 

The Triumph of Red States – Joel Kotkin at The American Mind. 

 

On the Appalachian Trail, I Fell in Love with America – Elias Wachtel at The Free Press.

 

Protecting America’s Promise: On combatting anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism – Ronald Lauder at The New Criterion. 

 

Is History Only for Historical Novels? – Connie Berry at CrimeReads.

 

The Unlikely Verse of H.P. Lovecraft – Ed Simon at The Hedgehog Review.

 

Whittington’s Stone and Whittington Park – a London Inheritance.

 

Walter Scott, A Legend of Montrose – Adam Roerts at Adam’s Notebook.

 

Lessons from the CrowdStrike Crisis That Paralyzed Our Digital World – Neville Hobson.

 

Things Worth Remembering; Barry Goldwater’s Speech at the RNC – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

"The Banished Heart" by Libi Astaire

Paul Hoffman is preparing to defend his doctoral thesis on William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. He’s been navigating his literature department with varying degrees of success and failure. Everything has become political, and even a 400-year-old play can be suspect. His advisor is in one political camp, the department head in another.  

Political violence erupts the day he is to make his defense; in fact, it happens just as his defense begins. Paul is verbally attacked by the department head and severely beaten by radical students. During a period of unconsciousness, Paul has a dream, in which he’s offered a choice. Stand for truth to make a difference, or die.

 

A story begins. It is a story of a young William Shakespeare, a boy in Stratford-on-Avon. He befriends another boy, whose family is ostensibly Christian and Anglican but are secretly Jewish. According to English law at the time, all Jews are banished from the kingdom. And it is the boy’s grandfather who begins to teach his grandson the Torah in secret. Young Shakespeare finagles his way into the studies, thing the Hebrew words and letters are a secret code.

 

From there, the story moves to Shakespeare’s London. The young boy is now a playwright of growing fame, one who’s caught the eye of Queen Elizabeth. Political events almost mandate that theater companies produce a play about an evil Jew. Shakespeare, remembering his childhood friend, is loath to do it. Eventually, he writes a play that makes the lead Jewish character seem human. It scandalizes the theater owner and Shakespeare’s patron. 

 

Libi Astaire

What does this have to do with Paul Hoffman’s decision? Paul is living in 1933 Berlin. Hitler has just been elected, and Nazi violence, like the famous book burning, is on the upswing. During his thesis defense, Paul, who is Jewish, is attacked by faculty and students espousing Hitler’s cause. And he faces a decision.

 

The Banished Heart by Libi Astaire is the story of Paul in early Nazi Germany and William Shakespeare in a London hostile to Jews. It’s an almost hypnotic tale of anti-Semitism, mob violence, and personal courage. That Astaire combines the two historical periods in one story suggests that she clearly sees parallels.

 

Astaire has also published the Jewish Regency Mystery series, the novel Terra Incognita, a set of the retelling of Chasidic tales entitled Choose Light!, Day Trips to Jewish History: Essays, and The Latke in the Library & Other Mystery Stories for Chanukah. 

 

The Banished Heart is a moving story of hatred, violence, mobs, and the courage required to swim against the stream. And it holds many lessons for our own time.