Norman Fruchter

Norman Fruchter is a Jewish American writer, filmmaker, and academic.

Life

He graduated from Rutgers University, in 1959, where he edited the literary magazine, Anthologist.

He was arrested protesting with CORE and James L. Farmer, Jr., Bayard Rustin, Rev. Donald Harrington, and Michael Harrington, at the 1964 New York World's Fair. From 1960 to 1962, he served as assistant to the editor of New Left Review. He was an editor at Studies on the Left, (1959–1967).

Newsreel

He was a member of Newsreel which was founded in 1967.

From 1968 to 1972, Newsreel produced sixty protest films, in New York and then in California. [Robert] Kramer moved to California and participated in the West Coast collectives movement, teaching for a while in San Francisco. In 1969, Kramer, Norman Fruchter and John Douglas produced People's War for Newsreel, shooting in North Vietnam during American bombing.

As part of their mission to instigate social change, members of Newsreel would present films to political organizations and community groups across the United States. The retrospective, Exit Art / The First World had Newsreel members Norman Fruchter, Roz Payne and Lynn Phillips discuss the films. He was a member of SDS along with Tom Hayden, Jesse Allen, Robert Kramer, also full-time organizers for the group: Carol Glassman; Terry Jefferson; Constance Brown; Corinna Fales; and Derek Winans. He was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

He recommended Christine Choy to the Newsreel group, after meeting her at Ironbound neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey.

Education

He was a member of School Board 15, in Brooklyn, and formed Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which sued the city of New York over inadequate school funding. He headed the Institute for Education and Social Policy at New York University. He commented on the Gates Foundation:

The Gates Foundation has given an enormous boost to small schools," Fruchter says. "Because of the extent of the funding, they have leverage with school systems that no one else has. They have helped make small schools a part of districtwide reform agendas in a way that wasn't possible before.

He commented on Mayor Michael Bloomberg's reforms:

Norman Fruchter, director of the Community Involvement Program at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and the author of a report highlighting problems afflicting New York's middle schools, said he did not think the changes would improve the situation in those schools. Autonomy is not a virtue in and of itself, he said. "If you're living in an abandoned building, you have lots of autonomy," he said. "What you need isn't autonomy" but help.... While there have been some gains in elementary scores, said Fruchter, it's "not translating into middle school gain." The school system, he said, "has not figured out how to build conceptual skills at the eighth grade level."

Family

He married Rachael G. Fruchter (d. July 15, 1997), who was member of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology State University of New York for nearly 25 years.

Awards

He won the first Edward Lewis Wallant Award.

Works

Commentary

Profile of The Ginger Man's author J. P. Donleavy.

Review of the film The Savage Eye.

Cited in: Preview.

Cited in: Preview.

Filmography

• Race Against Prime Time - ( Narrator(- Narration) / 1984 / Released / Albany Video )
• The People's War - ( Director / 1970 / Released / )
• WE GOT TO LIVE HERE, Robert Machover & Norman Fruchter, (1965, 16mm B&W/sound, 20 min.)
• Troublemakers, Robert Machover & Norman Fruchter, (1966, 16mm B&W/sound, 54 min.)
• FALN (1965), Peter Gessner, Norman Fruchter and Robert Machover, Robert Kramer
• Summer '68 (1969)

Reviews

There was a time in literature when men aged gracefully and died benevolently. Now the old men of fiction are always difficult, as if they had all taken Dylan Thomas' advice: "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." The hero of this novel rages even more than most. The novel covers only one day in his life, but its ferocity is enough for generations. Though old age is a curious subject for a first novel, Norman Fruchter, 25, writes with the accumulated wisdom of a nonagenarian....A reader is torn between exasperation and pity. It is a measure of Fruchter's skill that he can make the old man so grotesque and at the same time so sympathetic.

External links

• Robert Kramer and John Douglas interviewed: “Reclaiming our past, reclaiming our beginning“, G. Roy Levin, JUMP CUT