Blog

Looking Back at Hong Kong: A Reading & Convo with Writers of/from Hong Kong

Watch a reading and panel discussion with Nicolette Wong, Xu Xi, Sharon Yam, Yeung Chak Yan, and Q.M. Zhang! Amidst the reshaping of Hong Kong’s social, cultural, political and ideological landscapes, how do we re-envisage a city that exists in our memories? For those who have left their hometown—or the place they . . .

Read More
My American Father

My American Father

(Jules Chametzky. Photo by Ned Gray) Just a couple of days after I arrived to Amherst, Jules Chametzky called to invite me for lunch. My wife and oldest son (the youngest was born three years later) were still in New York. The following day, we met at a local restaurant. Right away, . . .

Read More
in honor of garlic cloves. . .

in honor of garlic cloves. . .

(Jules Chametzky. Photo by Jerome Liebling, courtesy of Rachel Liebling)  in honor of garlic clovesbaked wholein rosemary olive oil  that eating together could bean artwhich Americans have perfected that auld lang syne could come in versions unexpected that canons are what you make of them that living in generations brings gracefulness to . . .

Read More
For Jules, in Appreciation

For Jules, in Appreciation

(Jules Chametzky. Photo by Jerome Liebling, courtesy of Rachel Liebling) By the second half of the twentieth century, apartheid was so deeply embedded in the national culture that the divide between black and white, codified in law, was fully embraced by institutions from pulpit to prison—and nowhere more so than in colleges . . .

Read More
Broadening the Canon

Broadening the Canon

(A Chametzky family photograph, Brooklyn, NY, 1942. Jules Chametzky, fourteen years old, is standing in the back row, second from the right, next to his father and behind his mother.) From “Broadening the Canon, or Talmudic Faulknerism: Reading Chametzky, Knowing Jules” (MR 44 1/2, 2003). When we met in Berlin he adopted . . .

Read More
Remembering Jules

Remembering Jules

(Jules Chametzky. Photo by Jerome Liebling, courtesy of Rachel Liebling) Jules and I were colleagues before we were friends. We met in 1973 when we joined about a dozen faculty, aggrieved by budget cuts and administrative incompetence more broadly, on an organizing committee aiming to unionize faculty and librarians on the UMass . . .

Read More
Our Rabbi

Our Rabbi

Jules was my rabbi, and I think he was the rabbi for many of those who came to his service at Wildwood Cemetery on September 27. He was our rabbi in the spiritual sense, in the police procedural, and in the parental sense. He looked after us. He counseled us. He shared . . .

Read More
for Jules

for Jules

On Thursday, September 23, the founding editor of the Massachusetts Review, Jules Chametzky, died in Amherst, at the age of ninety-three. To commemorate his passing, and to offer his friends an opportunity for reflection and remembrance, we offer here a small gathering of memories, collected from a few of his friends. I . . .

Read More
10 Questions for Alex Mouw

10 Questions for Alex Mouw

The manatee’s strangest feature is she’s alwaysworking, seven straight ruminant hours pawing shallow floors for mangrove leaves and pickerel weed.Even sleeping half the day, each quarter hour—from “Anxiety Medication,” Volume 62, Issue 3 (Fall 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.In elementary school I wrote a story about . . .

Read More
10 Questions for David Ricchiute

10 Questions for David Ricchiute

Near a creek where his mother said don’t dare go, a young boy spots a garter snake, jaws surrounding a half-swallowed worm, compelling the boy to bend at the knees, starting the descent toward the lumbering snake. It’s then that he buckles from weakness in his legs, ignored for days as a . . .

Read More

Search the Site

Sign up to stay in touch

Get the latest news and publications from MR delivered to your inbox.