FictionView From the Seventh LayerAnother slew of "unsolvable" stories from fabulist Brockmeier. A Most Wanted ManHamburg, terrorism and disloyalty are Le Carré's bread-and-butter in no. 21. The Great GatsbyFitzgerald's "careless people" are preserved in perfect amber. Jesus' SonJohnson's story stories about addiction get under the cuticles of starkness. The White TigerDespite the hype, Dostoyevsky is not at risk from Aravind Adiga's Man Booker winner. The Invention of Curried SausageUwe Timm's modest recollection of post-war German life is gritty and charming. GhostsIn Aira's 1990 novel, the ghosts are visible. It's their beckoning that counts. TemptationJános Székely's period-piece tale is a vivid primer for inter-war Eastern Europe. Snow CountryThe melancholy Kawabata captures love's sad limitations in cold 1950s Japan. NonfictionOne LifeTom Lampert lets Nazi-era "normalcy" damn itself. |
 BOOK REVIEW
Jews Without Money
By Michael Gold
Carroll & Graff, 1996, . 309 pages The title says it all: part autobiography, part Marxist screed, this fictional autobiography, first published in 1930, chronicles the life of the Gold family on New York's Lower East Side in the decades around 1900. The cast of characters is a who's who of seedy city life: schnorrers, prostitutes and slumlords. Gold's prose is primordial, stripped to the bone, yet the story takes unexpectedly tender twists, especially when relating the European childhood of the narrator's parents. At times he seems to have forgotten why they had emigrated in the first place. The book's message is clear, however: America has defeated the old-time religion of the author's immigrant parents and has replaced it with the God of Capitalism. Instead praying for the Messiah, Gold's protagonist lyrically pines for the coming of the Workers' Revolution. Take it or leave it, it's worth reading for the punchy prose. With an introduction by Alfred Kazin. Reviewed by Marc Alan Di Martino
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February 8, 2010 | Rome, Italy | Partly Cloudy, 2°C
