Ann S. Epstein Writer

Learn History Through Fiction: Nazis Killed Berlin’s Jewish Fashion Industry

A century ago, Berlin’s fashion industry thrived, thanks to Jewish designers and manufacturers. The 2,700 fashion houses on Hausvogteiplatz rivaled the prestige and glamour of Paris and London. All that died when the Nazis destroyed Jewish businesses in the 1930s. Not only was glass shattered on Kristallnacht, but books — and fabric — were burned. Today, a non-Jewish conglomerate is bringing back Germany’s famous labels, including Manheimer’s mens and ladies wear, seeking the endorsement of the founders’ heirs to reestablish their long tradition. Read more about fashion and the Nazis in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).

Manheimer’s was a world-famous fashion house before the Nazis closed all Jewish businesses

Hausvogteiplatz was the site of 2,700 fashion houses, most run by Jews

A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. by Ann S. Epstein (Alternative Book Press, Editors’ Choice Selection of Historical Novel Review)

What I’m Reading: Stoner by John Williams

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Stoner (Rating 5) – A lacerating yet loving look at academia. In understated and simple prose, Stoner by John Williams nails the complexity of university life. A belated reader to this 1965 classic, I nevertheless found it a lacerating yet loving look at academia as it endures today. Williams’s controlled prose is masterful, a skill I appreciate both as a reader and a writer (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page). He lulls readers with the sameness of Professor Stoner’s life, then ignites a spark that inflames both the character and us. We urge Stoner to rebel against his wife’s sabotage and department chair’s vindictiveness. Instead, Williams holds steadfast to his character’s acquiescent nature, in turn persuading readers to acquiesce to the author’s choice. Thus do Stoner, and Williams, earn their place in the literary pantheon.

Why writers read: “To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” – Victor Hugo

Learn History Through Fiction: Not the Reaction He Hoped For

Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle (1905) to expose the brutal and dangerous working conditions in Chicago’s meat-packing industry. Workers, most of them Eastern European immigrants, earned pennies an hour, for 10-hour days, six days a week. They lived in tenements in Packingtown, next to the stinking stockyards and four city dumps. Almost as an afterthought, Sinclair included a chapter on how diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat products were doctored, mislabeled, and sold to the public. He was dismayed when the public reacted with outrage about the filthy meat but ignored the plight of the workers. “I aimed at the public’s heart,” he said, “and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” Read more about the meat-packing industry a hundred years ago in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to expose brutal labor conditions in Chicago meat-packing plants

The public cared more about being sold rotten meat than about the plight of the immigrant workers

Pushcart Prize Nomination

Ponder Review submitted my piece “David’s Crossing,” about my father emigrating from Poland to America as a boy, to the nominating committee for the Pushcart Prize in creative nonfiction. Read more in MEMOIR.

Reality and Authenticity in the Arts

In his profile of director Todd Haynes, critic John Lahr writes “When Haynes was in eleventh grade, his film teacher, Chris Adams, told him ‘that films shouldn’t be judged on how they conveyed reality, that films were not about reality.’ Cinema was a trick, almost like Renaissance perspective: a two-dimensional event that represented three-dimensionality; it created the sense of direct, unmediated life, whereas, in fact, everything in it was mediated. The notion, Haynes said, was ‘a revelation to me.’ He began to interrogate our ‘endless presumptions about reality and authenticity.’” (“The Director’s Cut: How Todd Haynes rewrites the Hollywood playbook” by John Lahr, The New Yorker, 11/11/19, p. 57). I think this observation also applies to writing fiction. The author’s challenge is to make readers experience a highly mediated story as a direct and real event. As a writer, I bend reality to my “narrative will” so that fact and fiction are equally plausible and hence achieve authenticity. For more of my thoughts about writing, see REFLECTIONS.

Raphael’s “School of Athens” is considered the renaissance painter’s masterpiece because of its accurate projection of perspective

Learn History Through Fiction: Wages Not Rosy for Rosie the Riveter

As men went off to fight in WWII, women were hired to replace them in the defense industry. Although the iconic poster of “Rosie the Riveter” is fixed in our minds, she was one of many women in manufacturing jobs. Rosie and her peers accounted for as much as 80% of the labor force in some factories. As valuable as they were, however, women were paid far less than men: $31.50 versus $54.65 per week on average. After the war, women were expected to return home and resume their roles as housewives. Read more about Detroit’s Rosie the Riveter and WWII in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve., a fictional biography of the actor who played the Munchkin Coroner in The Wizard of Oz (see NOVELS).

Rosie the Riveter’s wages were only 58% of what men in the same position earned

The Minnesota Review to Publish “Poppies Journal”

My short story “Poppies Journal” has been accepted for publication in The Minnesota Review (November 2020, Issue 95). Here is the log line: In “Poppies Journal,” a preschool teacher observes children at play. Is the troubling behavior she records in the classroom notes an indication of their disturbed minds, or hers? Read more in SHORT STORIES.

“Poppies Journal” to be published in the next issue of The Minnesota Review (Volume 20, Number 93)

What really goes on in a preschool classroom?

Why writers write: “To speak up, insofar as we can, for those who cannot do so.” – Albert Camus

Learn History Through Fiction: Small, Strange, Animals

By 1900, the majority of men in Manhattan over 21 were foreign-born. Those coming ashore at Ellis Island were no longer from Northern Europe, but Eastern and Southern Europe and the Russian Empire. Nor were they Protestants, but Jews, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox. Nativist Americans, alarmed by the influx, favored mass deportations. Novelist Henry James, reflecting public sentiment, wrote of his disgust with “swarming” Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side, who reminded him of “small, strange animals … snakes or worms.” Read more about anti-immigrant sentiment a century ago in On the Shore (see NOVELS).

Immigrants on the Lower East Side circa 1900

Novelist Henry James called Jewish immigrants akin to “snakes and worms”

On the Shore (Vine Leaves Press) by Ann S. Epstein

Learn History Through Fiction: Shortage of Coffins After Historic Factory Fire

After the 1911 Triangle Waist Company fire, which killed 146 workers, police asked the morgue for 75 to 100 coffins but only 65 were available. A steamship traveled from the Bronx to Manhattan’s East River to pick up 200 coffins from the carpentry shop of Metropolitan Hospital on Blackwell Island and delivered them to the morgue. Read more grisly details about the aftermath of the fire in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

Police had to order extra coffins for the 146 victims of the Triangle Waist Company fire

Tazia and Gemma (Vine Leaves Press) by Ann S. Epstein

What I’m Reading: Five Days Gone by Laura Cumming

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother’s Disappearance as a Child (Rating 3) – A Wordy Book About a Taciturn Town. In Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother’s Disappearance as a Child, Laura Cumming sets out to solve the intriguing mystery of her mother’s brief abduction at age three. Her mother did not learn of the incident for decades. Nor was she told she was adopted until ten years after her disappearance. About both instances, her parents were close-mouthed, as was the entire village. Cumming seeks to uncover the facts of the kidnapping, and more challenging, to learn why the townsfolk remained so taciturn. She therefore goes into great detail about the rural English landscape and historical setting, details which interest Cumming as she investigates her roots, but won’t engage readers because they fail to explain the silence. We are also introduced to many characters, who are hard to keep straight because many don’t come to life on the page. As a fiction writer who extensively researches my books (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I’ve learned to only include information that furthers character and plot development. Cumming is too self-absorbed to pare down her narrative. Because her mother (and father) were artists, she draws analogies between famous paintings or photos and people and scenes in her search. Some succeed; too many are forced. Most disappointing, while Cumming paints a loving and sympathetic portrait of her mother, readers don’t emerge with any deep insights into why, decades hence, the community still refuses to talk.