Ever since I started doing my own Jewish genealogy, I hear Simon and Garfunkel's The Sound of Silence very differently. I've finally put my thoughts into a video. I'll be interested to hear what others think.
I've looked into Paul Simon's genealogy and, no surprise, it shares a great deal in common with my own, from the horrors of the pogroms...
... and the general deprivation and systemic oppression of Jews in Lithuania and the larger Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe...
... that led so many Jews to leave Europe as refugees and try their luck in New York...
... to the overcrowded...
... impoverished, "tenement halls" of the Lower East Side of Manhattan (ie the Jewish ghetto) that Simon sings about in the song...
... to the "words of the prophets" written on the "subway walls"...
... to the "neon lights that split the night"...
... to the peaceful but difficult silence of the very Jewish, Forest Hills, Queens ...
... to Forest Hills High School...
... which Simon and Garfunkel attended...
... with my father...
... to the silence both my family and Paul Simon's kept to protect the youngsters from the pain of knowing their family's past and present suffering...
... and the alienation and anger about that silence that led my father, and Simon and Garfunkel to distance themselves from that silence... without knowing its cause.
Yes, Paul Simon's family story and my own share a great deal in common.
And so I felt I might be a bit qualified to take second look at The Sound of Silence, a song we all know and think we understand... a second look that takes the Jewish American experience as the song's starting place, even if its fresh faced writer didn't even know it.
Okay, now that I've got your attention... Let me introduce you to the first in what I hope will become a series of book review videos.
For the record, I actually do have some cred when it comes to doing book reviews. My Bachelor's degree is in Communications, English, and Women's Studies, and my Master's degree is in English literature and language. I taught college English courses for many years, until my disability became too severe and I was forced to retire. I also wrote many book reviews and interviewed many authors when I was a journalist.
Me at 19
I even have extra cred when it comes to doing a review of a lesbian pulp novel: I came out in 1989 at 18 years old, I wrote for gay and lesbian newspapers through the 90s and early 2000s, and I focused a lot on lesbian history in both my undergraduate and graduate degrees.
But mostly I just thought it would be fun to talk about the books I'm reading these days. Because: books!
What was lesbian pulp? Where could people get it? Who read it? Was any of it any good? What was it like to be a lesbian in the mid 1960s? Why does lesbian pulp have such loopy covers? Is there as much sex in lesbian pulp novels as their covers would suggest? What was a New York city gay bar like in 1965?
Whatever happened to the author, Paula Christian, herself?
And, most importantly, is The Other Side of Desire worth reading?
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