Al Filreis Blog

Jeff Martinek (class of 1987)

My brilliant former student (class of 1987) Jeff Martinek has been a professor at Iowa Wesleyan for many years—and recently won a teacher-of-the-year award. A local newspaper covered the commencement speech he gave to the graduating class. He recalled his Penn graduation in Franklin Field. From his speech: “It was...

Review of “1960”

Review of 1960 by Rob Baxter: Al Filreis’s 1960: When Art and Literature Confronted the Memory of World War II and Remade the Modern, is a compendium of the belated responses of fiction, poetry, history, painting, sculpture, film television and every medium of art and communication to the language defying...

Sam Filreis, Navy guy, remembered on Veterans Day

My dad, the late & much-missed Sam Filreis, was young & not world-savvy at the time of WW2 but he enlisted. He absolutely had the temperament of a pacifist (disliked fighting and disagreement, very placid in style, avoided conflict) but he enlisted nevertheless. I honor him for that decision. (In...