Reviews
Ginsberg deftly weaves his narrative through the lives of these four women,their affairs and marriages, triumphs and tragedies....Ginsberg has written a book that is difficult to put aside....would make a great movie., The premise of The Salome Ensemble is both clever and interesting. Ginsberg traces an artistic thread to describe how four immigrant Jewish women joined together to create a novel and a film. This book is both fascinating and important in providing a new way to look at immigrant Jewish women and how women can work together., The Salome Ensemble offers readers a glimpse into the individual and collective lives of four women that is simultaneously sweeping in scope and focused like a jeweler's loupe., In four movements, an overture, and a coda, Ginsberg imaginatively blends into a single cultural analysis a novel by Anzia Yezierska, the story of Rose Pastor Stokes, which was one of Yezierska's sources, the playscript by Sonya Levien, and the performance of Jetta Goudal, who acted the part of Salome of the Tenements on screen. Based on extensive research and accompanied by portraits, screen shots, and other illustrations, The Salome Ensemble retraces versions of an intermarriage story that was, paradoxically, both a Salome and a Cinderella tale., A study of gender, culture and art and how these elements mix to produce four women who managed to find the real American Dream--self-realization., A study of gender, culture and art and how these elements mix to produce four women who managed to find the real American Dream-self-realization., The Salome Ensemble reads like a novel. Ginsberg has written a thoroughly absorbing work of cultural and feminist history that restores to vivid life the lives and intertwined careers of four compelling and indomitable women., A fascinating story of four remarkable women who made their way through the 'bewilderness' of the United States at the start of the last century. Rose Pastor Stokes, Anzia Yezierska, Sonya Levien, and Jetta Goudal lived in a country churning with labor agitation, feminism, immigration, experimental literature, and the birth of Hollywood. Experiencing modernity in full, they represented that experience in fiction and film. In the process, they not only forged new identities as independent Jewish American women but also helped redefine what it meant to be an American., Alan Robert Ginsberg's "The Salome Ensemble" looks at the lives of four extraordinary Jewish women who were linked to the 1925 Paramount film "Salome of the Tenements".... Sadly, the film "Salome of the Tenements" is, like a majority of the films from the silent era, considered lost forever. But Ginsberg has done an admirable job of commemorating the women who created it.
