MARC ESTRIN —AUTHOR, CELLIST, ACTIVIST— edit
BIOGRAPHY
Marc Estrin was born in Brooklyn, New York on April 20, 1939, and attended Queens College (1955 – 1959), graduating with honors in Chemistry/Biology and with honors in Music. From 1959 to 1961 he was a Graduate Fellow in a PhD program at Rockefeller University in New York. But he left the prestigious Rockefeller program to pursue a master’s degree in Theater Directing at UCLA (1961-1963).
In short, Estrin came to novel-writing late. In the fall of 1998, he and his wife Donna were on holiday in Prague and decided to visit the grave of Franz Kafka, whose work had been pivotal in Estrin’s life. A “red diaper baby” (Marc’s brother is named Carl), Estrin had grown up in a small Bronx apartment so crowded with his parents’ books that the family had to walk sideways in the hall. Despite the urgings of his parents, Estrin claims that he had read not one of those books until the age of sixteen. Kafka’s The Trial was his introduction to the larger life—which explains a great deal. Newly awake to literature, he was challenged by his father to read The Magic Mountain during the summer before he attended college. And, by his own account, the book appeared to him as a topo-map of western thought and culture. With Thomas Mann as his guide, Estrin began his baroque educational path through college and graduate schools, finally making a Hegelian leap out of graduate science into the richer, if riskier area of the arts.
Much happened before he and Donna reached Prague, and his careers in several fields did not align in traditional, straight-line professional growth. Through the 1960s he worked in some of the best repertory theaters in the United States — The Pittsburgh Playhouse, the San Francisco Actor's Workshop, theaters in Washington, DC. But, when the Vietnam War and Bertolt Brecht brought him whole-heartedly into political action, his professional theater work began to be displaced by his community organizing, college teaching, and communal living.
He helped found and was the first coordinator of the Burlington Peace and Justice Center, worked on numerous antiwar campaigns, and most recently has stood for seven years in all weather with a Monday-through-Friday peace vigil in Burlington. These days, his political work focuses on two arenas: a just settlement between Palestine and Israel and what he considers to be crucially unanswered questions of 9/11. His website contains links to his organizations and some of his current political writing.
Between 1969 and 1977 he was a full-time faculty member at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, and he delivered the commencement address to the final residential class at the college in 2000—the year he completed work on his first published novel, Insect Dreams: The Half Life of Gregor Samsa.
From 1974 through 1983, primarily to put food on the table, Estrin reached back into a past life to study and practice medicine as a Physician’s Assistant at several Health Centers in Vermont.
In 1985, in another clear leap of imagination, he enrolled in the Starr King School for the Ministry. He became an ordained Unitarian minister in 1988 and served at churches in Idaho and Vermont until 1991, though his political activity was complicating in that role.
And all the while, he had performed as cellist and vocalist in all the places he lived. He has been affiliated with the Prometheus Symphony Orchestra, the Berkeley Opera Orchestra, the Starr King Chorus, the Washington-Idaho Symphony and Cello Quartet, the Vermont Philharmonic Orchestra, the Montpelier Chamber Orchestra, the Lyric Theater Orchestra, the Vermont Symphony Chorus, the Burlington Choral Society, and the Oriana Singers.
WRITING CAREER
In 1998, Estrin left a note on a gravestone in Prague, playfully inviting Kafka to drop by if he ever found himself in Burlington. Estrin has said that the concept, an outline and the opening episodes of Insect Dreams arrived in Vermont three weeks later (one morning at 3 AM). At the time, he had been at work on the first draft of Golem Song which had launched his life as a novelist in response to a phone call he received from New York, during which he was asked to procure a rifle for the coming war between Jews and African Americans. But as a result of Gregor Samsa’s literary arrival in Vermont, Golem Song would become the second Estrin novel to be published. The first, Insect Dreams, was met with extraordinary praise:
“This book promises to become a pivotal literary landmark”—Library Journal [1]
“The kind of book from which one wakes clutching surreal scenes, desperate to tell others, delighted and baffled and horrified.”—The Christian Science Monitor [2]
“Ambitous and arresting.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“A wit deepened by a vivid depiction of generosity, curiosity, and heroic persistence.”—The New York Times Book Review [3]
“His characterizations of historical protagonists are uick, sure-footed, even poetic.”—The Washington Post Book World [4]
“His encounters . . . are rendered with a combination of humor, chutzpah and intelligence.”—Publishers Weekly
“A grand comic opera.”—Kirkus Reviews
Insect Dreams was not the first Estrin book to be published. In 1971, Dell Publishing released reCreation: Some Notes on What’s What and What You Might Be Able To Do About What’s What, collected, constructed and edited by Marc Estrin. That book was a Whole Earth-like compendium as self-indulgent and wacky serious as the era that produced it.
But Insect Dreams was the writer’s first published novel. It appeared from BlueHen/Putnam in 2002. Since then, Insect Dreams has been re-released (by Unbridled Books) and five other Estrin books have found their way into print:
In 2004, Chelsea Green released Rehearsing with Gods: Photographs and Essays on The Bread and Puppet Theater. [5] This is a beautiful analysis of the work of Peter Schumann through his remarkable cultural activist theater, which is now based in Vermont. Estrin and his wife have been actively involved in performances at the Bread & Puppet compound and on its European tours since 1983. The photographer for Rehearsing with Gods is Ronald T. Simon, and the volume includes a Foreword by Grace Paley.
The other four titles to appear by the fall of 2008 are all novels:
The Education of Arnold Hitler (Unbridled Books, 2005)
Golem Song (Unbridled Books, 2006)— This is also Estrin’s Israel-Palestine novel and should have been more controversial than it was.
The Lamentations of Julius Marantz (Unbridled Books, 2007)— The reviewer for The San Francisco Chronicle (the only review it received?) praised the little novella for its satirical value if not for its narrative strategy.
The Annotated Nose (Unbridled Books, 2008)— Includes artwork by the Vermont artist, Delia Robinson, who is also, oddly, a character in the book.
Three other Estrin novels have been announced but haven’t yet been released: Skulk, a comic novel spinning from the national politics that followed 9/11, forthcoming from Progressive Press in Vermont; Tsim-Tsum, a comic novella about a world-weary God in a broken-down Hyundai, which has (long) been announced by Spuyten-Duyvil in Brooklyn; and The Good Doctor, set for fall 2009 from Unbridled Books.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
reCreation: Some Notes on What's What and What You May Be Able To Do About What's What, collected, constructed, and edited by Marc Estrin, Dell Publishing, 1971
Insect Dreams, Blue Hen/Putnam, 2002
The Education of Arnold Hitler, Unbridled Books, 2005
Golem Song, Unbridled Books, 2006
The Lamentations of Julius Marantz, Unbridled Books, 2007
The Annotated Nose, Unbridled Books, 2007
SELECTED BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:
PERIODICALS
The Education of Arnold Hitler Booklist, April 1, 2005, Frank Sennett, p. 1341, review Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2005, p. 135, review Library Journal, February 1, 2005, Lawrence Rungren, p. 67, review San Francisco Chronicle, April 3, 2005, Kevin Smokler, "Adventures of a Boy Named Hitler," p. F3.
Golem Song Booklist, November 15, 2006, Donna Seaman, p. 31, review Library Journal, November 15, 2006, Molly Abramowitz, p. 55, review Publishers Weekly, September 18, 2006, p. 33, review
Insect Dreams: The Half Life of Gregor Samsa Christian Science Monitor, February 14, 2002, Ron Charles, "The World Was His Roach Motel," p. 15, review Library Journal, December, 2001, p. 52, review Publishers Weekly, December 10, 2001, p. 52, review World and I, June, 2002, Steve Dowden, "The Wound That Will Not Heal," p. 246, review
The Lamentations of Julius Marantz Library Journal, September 1, 2007, Kevin Greczek, p. 126, review Publishers Weekly, September 17, 2007, p. 33, review San Francisco Chronicle, November 21, 2007, review
Rehearsing with the Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater Booklist, May 15, 2004, Jack Helbig, p. 1589, review Publishers Weekly, May 3, 2004, p. 188, review Times-Argus (Montpelier, VT), May 14, 2004, David M. Kaslow, "Meditation on 40 Years of Bread and Puppet."
EXTERNAL LINKS
Backstory, (February 8, 2007), M.J. Rose, "Marc Estrin's Backstory." [6]
Blogcritics, (October 29, 2006), Gordon "Von Zipper" Hauptfleisch, "Golem Song by Marc Estrin." [7]
BookBrowse.com, (December 14, 2004), "An Essay by Marc Estrin." [8]
Breakthrough Technologies (January 12, 2002), Dan Wickett, interview with Estrin. [9]
Conversational Reading (January 11, 2007), review of Golem Song. [10]
identitytheory.com (December 14, 2005), Robert Birnbaum, "Author of The Education of Arnold Hitler converses with Robert Birnbaum." [11]
Marc Estrin Home Page (January 29, 2008). [12]
MR Zine (December 23, 2006), Ron Jacobs "Golem Song: A Conversation with Marc Estrin." [13]
PopMatters (November 19, 2006), Jason B. Jones, review of Golem Song. [14]
Seven Days (August 11, 2004), Margot Harrison, "The Evolution of Marc Estrin." [15]
ZNet (October 12, 2007), Ron Jacobs, "Marc Estrin Takes on the Rapture in The Lamentations of Julius Marantz." [16]