Word: rosten
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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DIED. LEO ROSTEN, 88, author best known for his works celebrating Jewish culture; in New York City. His definitive reference work, The Joys of Yiddish, published in 1968, introduced readers to colorful and now common terms like schlemiel, schmaltz and chutzpah. A native of Poland, Rosten seasoned his scholarship with humor, which he called "one of the requirements for sanity...
Laderman's Marilyn, on the other hand, is for grownups. The libretto by Norman Rosten, based on his 1973 memoir Marilyn: An Untold Story, concentrates on Norma Jean's notorious love life, tracing her downward spiral to a drug- induced death in 1962. Soprano Kathryn Gamberoni gives a breakthrough performance as Monroe: after this, companies should be lining up to offer her femmes fatales from Bellini's Norma to Berg's Lulu. The opera, however, is as much of a mess as Marilyn was. Rosten's lines (Marilyn to her half-sister: "How's your little dog Lollie...
...list of people and objects that have offended the Amis sensibilities: shrinks, the British army, body odor on crowded Prague streetcars, bebop, racist profs at Nashville's Vanderbilt University (where he taught for a semester). Then there are such literati as Arnold Wesker, John Wain, Malcolm Muggeridge and Leo Rosten, author of the H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N stories, whose cardinal sin, apparently, was failing to ply a dinner guest (Amis) with sufficient booze...