When he was 73, Mayer Kirshenblatt was encouraged by his family to start painting. He says, “Regrettably, I have very little imagination.” But he had a phenomenal memory, and in THEY CALLED ME MAYER JULY (Univ. of California, $39.95), he has recalled in inspired detail his childhood village of Apt in pre-war Poland. His objective here was to remember how people lived (and not how they died). The text is a collaborative effort between the artist and his daughter, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Professor of Performance Studies at NYU. She began taping her father’s memories forty years ago, and the resulting text has a remarkable freshness, well matched with Mayer’s colorful and closely observed paintings. This book is a treasure. Carla Cohen. Politics and Prose
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