Alan Kaufman's Blog

• How I Came To Write The Novel 'MATCHES'

  February 4, 2008

  • Many readers who know me only as a poet and memoirist may be rather surprised to learn that my first full-length fictional effort is about Israeli soldiers serving in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
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• On Hubert Selby Jr., The Greatest Post-War American Writer

  February 3, 2008

  • "God and the Devil are struggling for the soul of man," Dostoyevsky wrote, "and the battleground is the human heart." That could well summarize the oeuvre of Brooklyn-born Hubert Selby Jr., who died i
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• A Brief Note On Beat Gravitas

  February 3, 2008

  • Irreverence, not piety, seems like the perfect sentiment to characterize the Beats.
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• Charles Bukowski Was The Ultimate Outsider Poet

  February 3, 2008

  • When Charles Bukowski died at 73, he left behind more than 45 volumes of poetry and prose, an oeuvre that to this day makes up the most entertaining affront ever delivered to modern letters.
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• Statement on Zionism from 'The Zionist Five'

  February 3, 2008

  • In addition to being a professional author, I am also a professional painter.
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• On The Autobahn

  February 3, 2008

  • *Since the events recounted in this memoiristic piece, anti-Semitism has not only spread throughout Germany but has exploded globally.
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• On Being A Jewish Writer

  January 26, 2008

  • Isaac Bashevis Singer considered himself a perennial outsider not only in his native Poland but also in the United States (to which he fled in the 1930s to escape Hitler's growing shadow over Europe)
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