Out and About: PEN Literary Awards; Schwartz's Deli, the Musical

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Today would have been George Gershwin’s 112th birthday.

How a machinist named Martin Cohen became the pre-eminent photographer of New York’s Latin music scene.
Montreal’s Schwartz’s Hebrew Delicatessen is set to be turned into a musical.
Is it time to update the Hebrew alphabet for the Internet age?
Read an interview with Allen Ginsberg collaborator and “Howl!” illustrator Eric Drooker.
The trailer for “Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer” is now out.

The Jewish Manuscript Project gives us a peek inside the creative process of poet David Lehman.
Teruah offers an appreciation of Jeremiah Lockwood’s Nigun Project, but also has some issues with it.
David Mamet has been honored with a PEN American Center literary award for “Master American Dramatist,” as has Michael Scammell for his biography of Arthur Koestler (reviewed in the Forward here). The $25,000 Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction went to Don DeLillo.
In more somber news, Isaac Babel’s widow and Moscow subway designer Antonina Pirozhkova, ’50s heartthrob Eddie Fisher, and classical music critic Jacob Siskind have passed away.
Tomorrow night is Jake Marmer’s very excellent-sounding “Jazz Talmud.”
Today is the 200th yarhtzeit of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, and one community is celebrating with — what else? — a “Nachmanifest!”
Today is (or would have been) George Gershwin’s 112th birthday, which is as good a reason as any for a little “Fantasia”:

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