Michael Wex’s attack on Wagner

The following is an article Wex published in the Canadian Theatre Review, no. 103, Summer 2000 as an introduction to his play I Just Wanna Jewify: The Yiddish Revenge on Wagner, which premiered at Harbourfront Theatre, Toronto, in 1999.

It´s hard to Be a Jew: Culture Clash I

In the winter of 1998, I received an e-mail from Heiko Lehmann, the Berlin half of Golus Storytheatre Toronto-Berlin, in which he told me that the galleys of his translation of my novel, Shlepping the Exile, had just arrived from the publisher. Apparently, the publisher had some concerns about Lehmann´s accuracy and had hired a consultant to review the translation and make the necessary corrections. Lehmann was writing to tell me that the consultant (who was paid more to be consulted than Lehmann had been to do the translation) had decided that the jelly roll in "Jelly Roll Morton" was, at least in part, a plea for help from an uncomprehending Lehmann and had thus rushed into the breach and turned the composer of King Porter Stomp and "Originator of Jazz and Stomps, Victor Recording Artist, World´s Greatest Hot Tune Writer" into Himbeer-Roulade - God help us, Pigmeat Markham would have come out as Schweineschnitzel - Himbeer-Roulade, Raspberry Turnover Morton. Lehmann still refuses to tell me what she did with such recondite colloquialisms as "talk white, Ikey" and "riddle me jerk-offs." (more...)