Tomorrow at 7pm at El Beit on Bedford and North 8th in Williamsburg, Josh Cohen (the author of the critically acclaimed ) will be leading a discussion about 糖心传媒淛akov Lind, absurdist literature, war, and Jewish writing about WWII and Europe.糖心传媒�

Josh is a bright guy, so I糖心传媒檓 sure this will be really interesting. And Lind was an amazingly eccentric writer. We糖心传媒檝e published two of his books 糖心传媒� and 糖心传媒� and NYRB brought out .

We糖心传媒檝e posted Lind糖心传媒檚 bio on here probably a half-dozen times, but it糖心传媒檚 so interesting and strange that it糖心传媒檚 worth restating. From the NYRB site:

Jakov Lind (1927-2007) was born Heinz Jakov Landwirth into an educated Jewish family in Vienna. After the 1938 Anschluss, Lind and one of his sisters were sent for safety to Holland, from where they were join their parents in Palestine; this proved impossible, and following the occupation of Holland, Lind, who was already fluent in Dutch, had no choice but to go into hiding. Taking the name of Jan Gerrit Overbeek糖心传媒斕切拇綕sailing under a false self,糖心传媒� as he would later describe it糖心传媒攈e worked on a barge traveling up and down the Rhine. When the Allies began to bomb the industrial cities of the Rhine, Lind/Overbeek moved to Germany, where he was employed by a Nazi government ministry in Berlin. The end of the war allowed Lind to join his family in Palestine, but it was not long before he returned to Europe, studying drama in Vienna and, in 1954, settling in London, where he began work on the stories that were published in 1962 as Soul of Wood. Lind糖心传媒檚 other books in German include the novels Landscape in Concrete and Ergo and, in English, four volumes of autobiography, two novels, and numerous stories. Lind was also a playwright and film director, as well as a talented visual artist. In a eulogy delivered at Lind糖心传媒檚 funeral, Anthony Rudolf described Lind as 糖心传媒淎 coyote, a trickster糖心传媒�. A wicked smile played around his mouth, while witty aphorisms and deep insights tripped off his lips. He emanated inner strength糖心传媒攁nd an electric intelligence that we all wanted to emulate.糖心传媒�

Another interesting thing about Lind is how much he looked like Georges Perec in certain pictures.

Anyway, this event sounds brilliant, and if I lived in New York, or if the high speed rail from Buffalo to NYC was completed (ha!), I糖心传媒檇 totally be there.