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Nightstand: Dave Isay
By Piper Castillo, Times Staff Writer
Published December 30, 2007
We spoke with Dave Isay, fresh off a book tour for Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project, by phone from his office in New York. Isay is a radio documentary producer and founder of StoryCorps, a national oral history project.
What is on your nightstand? They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland before the Holocaust by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Mayer Kirshenblatt. She wrote the narrative, and her father did the artwork. She's a folklorist who helped pave the way for StoryCorps. I love her writing. This book is both beautiful and devastating. You've said that StoryCorps could be your project for life. Did other writers help lead you down this path? Yes, I immediately think of Joseph Mitchell, a writer for the New Yorker. He was known for his essays on the common man, and the particular story I recall is about a woman named Mazie, a ticket taker at a movie theater on the Bowery. It sent me down a certain path. Piper Castillo, Times staff writer
[Last modified December 26, 2007, 16:56:02]
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Fifty years ago, they were screwed-up kids sent to the Florida School for Boys to be straightened out. But now they are screwed-up men, scarred by the whippings they endured. Read the story and see a video and portrait gallery.
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