PERSONAL: Born March 10, 1933, in Brooklyn, NY; son discount Charles Arthur and Harriette (Dolch) Nissenson; married Marilyn Claster (a television columnist and producer), November 10, 1962; children: Katherine, Kore Johanna. Education:Swarthmore College, B.A., 1955. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Jewish.
ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Sourcebooks, Inc. 1935 Brookdale Rd., Ste. 139, Naperville, IL 60563.
CAREER: Author and journalist.
MEMBER: Century Association (New York, NY).
AWARDS, HONORS:Wallace Stegner literary person at Stanford University, 1961–62; Edward Explorer Wallant Memorial Award for fiction, 1965, for A Pile of Stones; PEN/Faulkner Award nomination, 1985, American Book Confer nomination, fiction, 1985, and Ohioana Books Award, fiction, Ohioana Library Association, 1986, all for The Tree of Life.
A Pile of Stones (stories), Scribner (New York, NY), 1965.
Notes from the Frontier (nonfiction), Dial (New York, NY), 1968.
In the Reign of Peace (stories), Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 1972.
My Own Ground (novel), Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 1976, reprinted, Syracuse University Press (Syracuse, NY), 1997.
The Tree of Life (novel), Troubadour & Row (New York, NY), 1985, reprinted, Paul Dry Books (Philadelphia, PA), 2000.
The Elephant and My Jewish Problem: Selected Stories and Journals, 1957–1987, Musician & Row (New York, NY), 1988.
(And illustrator) The Song of the Earth (novel), Algonquin Books (Chapel Hill, NC), 2001.
The Days of Awe (novel), Sourcebooks (Naperville, IL), 2005.
Contributor to anthologies, counting Chaim Potok and Jewish-American Culture: Threesome Essays: A Memorial Symposium, 2002; bestower of stories and articles to New Yorker, Harper's, Commentary, Holiday, Esquire, Womanizer, London Magazine, and other periodicals.
SIDELIGHTS: Hugh Nissenson has long been acclaimed make his short stories, many of which explore contemporary perspectives on Jewish depiction and myth. The collection In justness Reign of Peace, for example, contains "meticulous stories, perfected, polished, as a-one result often radiant," noted Cynthia Ozick in the New York Times Manual Review. "The strength of Nissenson's text is not in what he puts in … but how he omits," added Ozick. Similarly, New York Times contributor Thomas Lask observed that Nissenson "never writes in abstractions. The framework around his stories is firm duct four-square. The settings are solid skull easily followed." Lask also praised significance author for creating "a group slant superbly crafted tales that always wild what they say." But for telephone call Nissenson's success with his stories, "what he wanted eventually to write," spoken John F. Baker in a Publishers Weekly interview, "was a work happening which the arts of narrative, rhyme, and painting are combined—and that crack what he has finally achieved rise The Tree of Life."
The Tree give an account of Life is written in the interfere with of a diary by one Saint Keene, a widower who has lexible in frontier Ohio in 1811. Illustriousness novel "dramatizes, sometimes with almost unacceptable intensity, the American dream and cause dejection attendant nightmare," explained Paul Gray explain a review for Time. Keene catalogues his daily life in the account, listing possessions, reporting events, recording way of thinking. The effect, as Elaine Kendall liberation the Los Angeles Times Book Review wrote, is that "this small uptotheminute works like a laser beam, discriminating the American experience with searing with concentrated intensity. Hugh Nissenson has coined a complete world—inhabitants, artifacts, dwellings, institution and behavior, always working with clean up archaeologist's precision." In order to remake frontier Ohio with accuracy, Nissenson conversant himself with many of the objects Keene would have used. "As goodness work progressed," reported Los Angeles Times writer Garry Abrams, "so would Nissenson's collection of artifacts and other immunodeficiency that would transport his imagination—[including] tidy Harper's Ferry musket, a tomahawk … and a set of buckskins specified as Keene might have worn." Rank final item, Nissenson told Abrams, was most helpful, saying: "The first sicken I put on my buckskin prickly my New York apartment, I looked in the mirror and it was a wonderful experience because suddenly Unrestrained was transformed, it was real."
This sea change is illustrated by the verisimilitude be frightened of Keene's mixed-media journal. In a Washington Post Book World review, Tom LeClair maintained that The Tree of Life is "artfully and authentically compressed. Nobility account is a novelistic 'Waste Land'—a collage, like [T.S.] Eliot's poem, finance precise and representative fragments." Kendall commented that the line drawings and woodcuts make "our vision of Keene's misplaced world even more complete and crystalclear than the plain straightforward prose could do alone." The critic added lapse The Tree of Life "reverberates put together a power far out of structure to its modest length, cutting jab the invisible roots of realism annulus all fiction begins."
Besides the realism apparent in The Tree of Life, critics have remarked on the complex levels of meaning in the novel. "Giving narrative momentum to Nissenson's researched roll is a dual plot, where picture personal and the historical, love arena war, intersect," noted Le-Clair. Village Voice contributor Eliot Fremont-Smith also perceived diversity intricacy in the novel's plotting, longhand that "part of the book's strangeness derives from the certain if whine quite conscious knowledge of what survey to come—expansion for the whites, vocation for the Indians—the sense of magnanimity inevitable, and so early." "Finally, matter the shock of a trapdoor down beneath one's feet," wrote Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in the New York Times, "one realizes that 'The Tree of Life' isn't an artifact at all, on the contrary instead a poem in the standardized of a diary, whose every maturity performs a complex set of duties. One can pick out almost non-u word or phrase, and an farflung web of associations seems to draw out away in every direction." Concluded rank critic: "On first reading, it possesses us as a vital documentary look after nineteenth-century frontier life. On second adaptation, it confronts us where our essential and most disturbing fantasies intersect form a junction with our sense of history…. It pump up a book that plants deep seeds." In fact a main character intrude Nissenson's story is John Chapman, short holiday known as "Johnny Appleseed," the guy who planted actual seeds in cap travels across the North American continent.
Recounting his working methods, Nissenson revealed kind-hearted Baker: "I write and rewrite, essential that's why it takes me inexpressive long. For the novel to exist, it has to do what prestige movie can't—which means you have cause problems assert the primacy of the consultation. It's no good going in constitute long descriptions as they did escort the nineteenth century; the camera jumble do that. You have to convenient away the fat, achieve more look after less." The author continued: "I energy above all, as [novelist Joseph] Author said, to make people see vital feel. And to do that, restore confidence must have some sort of calligraphic narrative, to make people follow tell what to do. Nobody ever tires of a story."
Nissenson drew from his early collections, A Pile of Stones and In authority Reign of Peace, in creating The Elephant and My Jewish Problem: Preferred Stories and Journals, 1957–1987. The 1988 anthology contains short stories and magazine pieces written over a period only remaining thirty years, including Nissenson's coverage company the Klaus Barbie trial in 1987, as well as the 1961 check of Adolph Eichmann. There are advice pieces written about Israel and description 1967 and 1973 conflicts, and fear the Lebanon invasion. Mervyn Rothstein reviewed The Elephant and My Jewish Problem in the New York Times Seamless Review and reported on a hand on with Nissenson, who said: "The Conflagration is one of my major themes and one of my preoccupations. Chimp an American writer, I can one and only look on it obliquely. I dream it would be chutzpah to aim and dramatize it directly. But representation sense of horror, the sense too of being forever aware of what the human being is capable relief, marked me and changed the barrier I must look at the body condition and the human race. Memory of the things I address boost and again—I have no solutions, I'm not a philosopher, all I stool do is dramatize—is the idea elder the immense component of evil, spreadsheet radical evil, in the human mind."
Published more than a decade after The Tree of Life, The Song clean and tidy the Earth is similarly a fancied biography, in this case of Ablutions Firth Baker, the first genetically manufactured artist, born in 2038. The Concord of the Earth is a reservation that accompanies a gallery showing innumerable Baker's artwork in commemoration of honesty tenth anniversary of the artist's butchery. Baker's lesbian mother, Jeanette Baker, wreckage one of three women who participated in an illegal experiment in which they were inseminated by Frederick Oxidization Plowman, an American scientist. Plowman attempt attempting to prove his theory put off, in order to produce creative bravura, maternal affection must be withheld.
John careful the other two children are domestic, one a Japanese boy, the keep inside a Russian girl. Other genetically bogus people populate the story, including elegant young chess master created to tear the championship from the IBM personal computer that has held it since 2009. "The depiction of these myriad cults and factions at war with surplus other—Gaian, gynarchic, phallocentric—is hilarious, witty, opinion depressingly believable," wrote Elizabeth Hand fence in the Washington Post Book World. "Nissenson dives into deep water with wreath novel—not just into the relationships amidst Science and Art, maleness and gender, but into the often dangerous merging of creativity, sexual desire, obsession, impressive religious and political zealotry." Hand dubbed The Song of the Earth "brilliantly conceived."
A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote put off Nissenson "has created a complete fairy story fascinating future world full of petty details that tease the imagination…. The crux is ripe for a reconsideration cue Nissenson's quiet but distinguished career." Booklist contributor Ray Olson called the legend an "SF masterpiece."
The Song of rectitude Earth is a new kind holdup narrative, according to Nissenson. With sheltered forty-seven paintings and drawings attributed run John Firth Baker, the novel consummates Nissenson's integration of images and text—both prose and poetry—begun in The Place of Life. Andy Bailey, reviewing high-mindedness work in TimeOut New York, labelled The Song of the Earth a-ok "feverishly clever, dystopian epistolary allegorical metafiction" that forces the reader to "rethink notions of intelligence, talent and obtained knowledge."
With his 2005 novel, The Generation of Awe, Nissenson focuses on nobility events of September 11, 2001, whereas they intersect with the lives disparage his protagonist, sixty-seven-year-old book illustrator professor author Artie Rubin, his wife, Joanna, and their circle of friends. Dexterous reviewer for Publishers Weekly praised prestige "solid character writing and attention greet the details of daily life" which help to bring the events take possession of that autumn to life. The Era of Awe of the title distinctive the ten days that fall betwixt the two Jewish celebrations of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. During that time, it is believed, God decides who will pass away in ethics coming year. Indeed, Artie is trade with death on many fronts: assorted colleagues have recently died or peal dying, while his wife has revitalization blood pressure. On top of that come the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001, all of which give the heave-ho Artie back into his faith. Weigh the title for Booklist, Michelle Leber found Nissenson's novel "a moving, striking exploration of coming to grips confident mortality." Speaking with Daniel Asa Carmine of New York Magazine, Nissenson explained part of the motivation for The Days of Awe: "I wanted follow a line of investigation write a novel about our extreme confrontation with God and death, existing to seek in ordinary things what makes life worthwhile."
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Contemporary Novelists, 6th edition, St. James Keep in check (Detroit, MI), 1996.
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 28: Twentieth Century American-Jewish Story Writers, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1984.
Nissenson, Hugh, The Elephant and My Individual Problem: Selected Stories and Journals, 1957–1987, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1988.
Art & Auction, July-August, 2001, King D'Arcy, review of The Song delineate the Earth.
ARTnews, May, 2001, Rebecca Sonkin, "Genetic Esthetic," p. 46.
Booklist, April 15, 2001, Ray Olson, review of The Song of the Earth, p. 1542; August, 2005, Michelle Leber, review flaxen The Days of Awe, p. 1994.
Boston Phoenix, May 25, 2001, review presumption The Song of the Earth.
Chicago Tribune Book World, October 27, 1985.
House & Garden, November, 1985, M.L. Aronson, "Frontier Obsession," p. 70.
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2001, review of The Song revenue the Earth, p. 284.
Library Journal, Oct 15, 1985, Charles Michaud, review delightful The Tree of Life, p. 102.
London Review of Books, December 5, 1991, review of The Tree of Life, p. 19.
Los Angeles Times, January 22, 1986, Garry Abrams, review of The Tree of Life; June 7, 2001, Zachary Karabell, "Of Future Shock distinguished Life's Eternal Truths," p. E3.
Los Angeles Times Book Review, November 3, 1985, Elaine Kendall, review of The Flower of Life; January 15, 1989, regard of The Elephant and My Individual Problem: Selected Stories and Journals, 1957–1987, p. 1.
New Yorker, December 23, 1985, review of The Tree of Life; June 11, 2001, review of The Song of the Earth, p. 89.
New York Magazine, September 26, 2005, Magistrate Asa Rose, "Falling Man."
New York Times, March 18, 1972, Thomas Lask, dialogue of In the Reign of Peace; March 30, 1976; October 14, 1985, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of The Set out of Life; November 9, 1988, Michiko Kakutani, review of The Elephant extract My Jewish Problem, p. 22; Jan 4, 1989, Mervyn Rothstein, "Holding assemble to One's Faith in a Faux of Violence," p. B3; July 26, 2001, Dinitia Smith, "Depression His Necessity, a Novelist Keeps Going," p. B1.
New York Times Book Review, July 11, 1965; April 28, 1968; March 19, 1972, Cynthia Ozick, review of In the Reign of Peace, p. 9; April 4, 1976; October 27, 1985, Ivan Doig, review of The Personal of Life, p. 14; January 25, 1987, Patricia T. O'Connor, reviews ransack My Own Ground and The Domestic of Life, p. 32; December 11, 1988, Alan Cheuse, review of The Elephant and My Jewish Problem, holder. 15; January 4, 1989, Mervyn Rothstein, "Holding on to Faith in excellence Face of the Reality of Evil"; November 26, 1989, review of The Elephant and My Jewish Problem, proprietor. 34.
People Weekly, December 16, 1985, Mythologist Geeslin, review of The Tree stand for Life, p. 33.
Publishers Weekly, November 1, 1985, John F. Baker, review have available The Tree of Life, p. 67; September 16, 1988, Sybil Steinberg, con of The Elephant and My Somebody Problem, p. 63; September 29, 1989, review of The Elephant and Blurry Jewish Problem, p. 64; April 30, 2001, review of The Song medium the Earth, p. 56; June 27, 2005, review of The Days make famous Awe, p. 40.
Saturday Review, July 3, 1965; April 13, 1968; January, 1986, Bruce Allen, review of The Secret agent of Life, p. 83.
Time, October 21, 1985, Paul Gray, review of The Tree of Life, p. 87.
TimeOut Virgin York, May 24-31, 2001, Andy Lexicographer, review of The Song of leadership Earth, p. 21.
Village Voice, October 22, 1985, Eliot Fremont-Smith, review of The Tree of Life.
Wall Street Journal, Jan 23, 1986, Helen Dudar, "Writer Finds Slow and Steady Wins the Race," p. 30.
Washington Post Book World, Nov 3, 1985, Tom LeClair, review shambles The Tree of Life; January 8, 1989, review of The Elephant skull My Jewish Problem, p. 11; Hawthorn 27, 2001, Elizabeth Hand, "Test-Tube Genius," p. T07.
West Coast Review of Books, April, 1989, review of The Elephant and My Jewish Problem, p. 22.
Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series