Post­ed by Nao­mi Firestone-Teeter

His sto­ry is, I mean. With a new book out from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press on his his life, Rosenfeld’s Lives: Fame, Obliv­ion, and the Furies of Writ­ing, the web has been abuzz with his name.

When Rosenfeld’s lumi­nes­cent” nov­el, Pas­sage from Home, was pub­lished in the 1940′s, lit­er­ary cir­cles thought he might sur­pass his clos­est friend and life­long rival, Saul Bel­low. How­ev­er, Rosenfeld’s promis­ing lit­er­ary career was halt­ed at the age of thir­ty-eight, when he was felled by a heart attack. Steven J. Zip­per­stein, author ofRosenfeld’s Lives, aims to peel back the lay­ers of Rosenfeld’s genius, and uncov­er the man behind the work. Uti­liz­ing hun­dreds of pri­vate let­ters, among oth­er doc­u­ments, Zip­per­stein pieces togeth­er Rosenfeld’s sto­ry and attempts to open up his work in a way that sheds light on his ulti­mate goal: to pro­duce a lumi­nes­cent fic­tion that meld­ed phi­los­o­phy with the most con­crete, flesh­ly stir­rings of life.”

A review of the new title is forth­com­ing from Jew­ish Book World, but here’s some of the oth­er buzz to hold you over:

Steven Zip­per­stein talks to Next­book about Rosenfeld

Steven Pol­lack of The Jew­ish Lit­er­ary Review on Rosenfeld’s Lives

The Incom­plete Rosen­feld on JBooks​.com

Orig­i­nal­ly from Lan­cast­er, Penn­syl­va­nia, Nao­mi is the CEO of Jew­ish Book Coun­cil. She grad­u­at­ed from Emory Uni­ver­si­ty with degrees in Eng­lish and Art His­to­ry and, in addi­tion, stud­ied at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don. Pri­or to her role as exec­u­tive direc­tor, Nao­mi served as the found­ing edi­tor of the JBC web­site and blog and man­ag­ing edi­tor of Jew­ish Book World. In addi­tion, she has over­seen JBC’s dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives, and also devel­oped the JBC’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series and Unpack­ing the Book: Jew­ish Writ­ers in Conversation.