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Short and sometimes sweet

As 2011 draws to a close, we look back over a year of books and offer a selection of bite-sized observations from the JC critics.

November 24, 2016 22:36
Nicole Krauss

ByAnonymous, Anonymous

4 min read

Historians and academics still dispute the origins of the ancient game of chess. But perhaps the real reason chess was invented was to boost Jewish self-esteem.
David Edmonds on 'Endgame', a biography of Bobby Fischer, by Frank Brady

I find it curiously refreshing, in an age where poetry is dominated by liberty and subjectivity, to turn to these poems that evince the values of a bygone age: discipline, learning, sonority. There is no trace of modernism or post-modernism here, but that is not to say the poems lack allusiveness, playfulness or spontaneity. Many have a profoundly personal tone.
Nicholas De Lange on 'Hebrew Poems and Translations' by Raphael Loewe.

Amy was not ugly, yet she disliked her own appearance. She wrote from Dresden to her anxious mother: "There won't be any impropriety in my teaching any number of young men… I have never excited in anyone a desire to forget themselves."
Elaine Feinstein on 'The Woman Who Dared: A Biography of Amy Levy' by Christine Pullen

The extent of Soros's philanthropy is inversely related to the amount of intelligence invested in his political ideas.
Oliver Kamm on 'The Philanthropy of George Soros' by George Soros and others