Harry Kloman

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Movie Feature Index

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All About Tej

Welcome to my Homepage at the University of Pittsburgh, where I'm the news adviser to the daily student newspaper, The Pitt News, and where I teach journalism classes in the English Department and coordinate the department's journalism program.

I also am the book review editor for Film Criticism, a scholarly film journal published by my undergraduate alma mater, Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa.

In addition, I write movie reviews for City Paper, Pittsburgh's independent weekly newspaper. In fact, you can read this week's film reviews if you like, where one of mine should be among them, or you can read a lot of my reviews in the paper's archives. Or you can read my list of the best movies of the previous year. And here's my movie pick of the week, although please forgive me if I forget to change it every week. I'll try to remember, but I'm making no promises. Most of the picks will be out of theaters, so you'll have to rent them. I've even shared a thought or two with USA Today about the movies, and with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about teaching.

Before going to work for City Paper, I wrote reviews for 14 years for In Pittsburgh Weekly. On Sept. 26, 2001, City Paper bought In Pittsburgh Weekly, then closed it and hired much of its staff. We lost the on-line In Pittsburgh archives in the process, but I've kept a selection of my reviews on my own web pages, and you can read them by visiting The Movie Review Index that I've created. My web site is now also listed on a site that collects film-related resources.

To accompany The Movie Review Index, I've also put some non-review movie pieces onto my own web pages. There's Ricky & Me, a reminiscence about my time as a childhood local TV star (if only for a day). Or check out an article I wrote on antiquarian bookselling in Pittsburgh . Or you can read this story from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that was written about me - sort of.

Feel free to look over my résumé, which will list some writing credits as well as some information on the courses I teach. You can also look at the course descriptions for the various courses I teach at Pitt.

I have a large collection of works - in English and 35 foreign languages - by Gore Vidal, the American novelist/essayist/playwright. The Gore Vidal Index I've created will tell you all about the author and every book by and about him, including the novels he published under various pseudonyms, such as A Star's Progress by "Katherine Everard," pictured here at right, and Thieves Fall Out by "Cameron Kay," as well as his commonly known "Edgar Box" mystery novels. One part of the Index allows you to take a Gore Vidal IQ Quiz to test your knowledge of the writer's life and work. I also have a list of Vidal's books in translation that's part of The Gore Vidal Index. That's where you'll also find a long interview with Gore Vidal that I conducted in 1991 when he was in Pittsburgh making a movie. We talked about politics and literature, his two favorite subjects. Another link on the Index allows you to see covers from more than 200 of his books published in translation. Or you can read about the Gores and the Vidals in politics, which is, you might say, the family business. Vidal's views on the World Trade Center attack have been very controversial, so I put together a full link on those views. And of course, there are those famous debates between Vidal and William F. Buckley on live TV during the 1968 Democratic national convention in Chicago.

For the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, I've written reviews of Palimpsest, Vidal's 1995 memoir; The Smithsonian Institution, his 1998 novel; The Essential Gore Vidal, a selection of his writings from the past 50 years; Fred Kaplan's biography, Gore Vidal; and the last novel in Vidal's American Chronicles, The Golden Age. All of these reviews are collected in The Gore Vidal Index, which also contains links to other Vidal sites on the web.

As part of my collection of Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction, I've created The Pulitzer Prize Thumbnails Project, where I list each prize-winning work of fiction and offer my thumbnail commentary on each book, including the most recent winner, Geraldine Brooks' March. The Project also has numerous links to other book prize sites, including the official pages of the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes. You might also want to visit this glossary of book collecting terms, although be sure to return to my homepage after you do.

Another my scholarly avocations is Ethiopia: the country, its history and culture, its language, and its food. In fact, it all began, in March 2000, with a meal at an Ethiopian restaurant. The food was so delicious that I had to learn more about it. That lead to extensive reading on the country itself, and now I'm learning to read Amharic, the official language of government in Ethiopia today. I prepare a wide variety of Ethiopian food myself, but the most unusual "dish" that I prepare is Ethiopian honey wine, which is called "tej" in Amharic (sometimes written t'ej in English, to capture a sense of the language's aspirated "t"). I call my label Ferenj Tej, and I've created a page to explain and discuss both my tej and tej in general. This page includes instructions for making tej and information on where to find gesho, the fermenting agent, without which you can't make it. "Ferenj" is the Amharic word for "foreigner," so the name seemed appropriate. This word is also (with a slightly different spelling) the name of a race of aliens on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the leader of that alien race is called a "negus," which is the Amharic word for "king."

In May 2004, Pittsburgh finally got an Ethiopian restaurant: Abay, located on Highland Avenue. I wrote a piece about it for its opening. A pair of writers reviewed the restaurant for City Paper, and Tony Norman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote a column about the place. Abay was also named best new restaurant in the city in 2005 by the readers of City Paper. Pittsburgh now has a second Ethiopian restaurant: Tana, which opened in December 2007 on Baum Boulevard, just around the corner from Abay.

I'm also a long-time hamster-phile, although I haven't had a hamster for many years now, and probably won't again for many years to come. My most recent hamster, Brian - seen here eating a piece of lettuce - was the latest in a long line of hamsters I've owned during the past 30 years. I wrote a piece about Brian for my newspaper's 1996 "Tails of the City" Pet Issue, and I've reprinted it here. Brian passed away in February 1997 at the incredible age of 2 years, 5 months old. The life expectancy of a hamster is about two years. His final days were hard. He will be missed.

On July 29, 2004, the student leaders of The Pitt News won their lawsuit against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania when a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals declared the state's Act 199 to be unconstitutional. Act 199 made it illegal for student newspapers in Pennsylvania to accept any paid advertising for the sale of alcohol, but the court ruled that such a ban violated the First Amendment guarantee of a free press. This lawsuit began in 1999 and has gone through numerous appeals. The Pittsburgh chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union argued on behalf of the newspaper. You can read the decision, in PDF form, on the Court's web site (Adobe Acrobat Reader required). And here's a link to an earlier ruling from the Third Circuit court that went against us and that the court essentially overturned with its July 2004 ruling in our favor.

I have a roommate here on the web: My friend (and former student) Anthony Breznican - who was with The Associated Pres for six years, and who's now with USA Today - lodged his web page material here when he graduated from college in 1998. Some day he'll move into his own space on the web, but for now, he's hanging out here. If you like, you can read the things he wrote for The Associated Press in Pittsburgh during his internship there during the summer of 1997, or for The Pitt News during his year as editor in chief. While working for the AP, Anthony was shot at by the LA police and bitched at by a noted TV personality. He's covered the Oscars and the Emmys, and he's interviewed Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion, where everything remained strictly professional - or so he says.

These web pages are perpetually under construction - especially The Gore Vidal Index - so stay tuned for more in the coming months.