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A review by outcolder
The Rise of David Levinsky by Abraham Cahan
4.0
One schande after another! Actually quite gripping, I had been a bit nervous that there might be too much commerce, but instead I found the story of his rise in the needle trades as exciting as the chapters about talmud schools and infatuations with modern women. Cahan sees the hypocrisy in everyone but still manages to make every character someone I want to spend time with... even grasping Mrs. Chaiken. The Catskills chapter moved me a great deal, and set me to wondering about my grandparents...
Cahan originally wrote this for McClure’s and sometimes that was a little grating. Writing for the gentiles, we are left to guess what are the “ring-shaped rolls” he bought in the Jewish bakery. Seriously? It’s hard to imagine there was a time when English speakers may not have heard of a bagel. There were other, more subtle instances where I thought had he been writing for a Jewish audience this scene would have been different. But I guess when Cahan wrote for Jews, he wrote in yiddish. So the flavor isn’t as heavy here as in some other books about the Jewish lower east side. The end is also less than satisfying but all in all this is a fun visit to that time and place.
I also thought one could give it a queer reading. The main character has several crappy, doomed from the start infatuations with women, but some of his relationships with men are far more spiritual. I can imagine him sending for Naphthali and then having him as a boarder, then he wouldn’t be lonely. Or what happened to his yiddish theater buddy? That guy is definitely gay. It’s the attention that other men receive that causes him to make life-changing decisions but all the women he claims to desire are out of reach... except for the prostitutes. I know Cahan is saying that being an orphan, coming from extreme poverty, and committing that hard to business can leave you lonely in a world where you suspect everyone ... but one could also read another, less explicit reason for Levinsky’s deep sense of loss and longing for those days bent over the talmud.
Levinsky is desperate to impress the people he considers “aristocrats.” As long as he is Antomir, that means he either must excel at talmud, or he must go to college and become a more modern kind of scholar. In the Babylon of late 19th Century New York, he must make money to “show them.” He never really does know what it is he really wants. I often think that about people bent on getting rich, although the ones I meet are not likely to “succeed” like Levinsky, still I often have the impression that they have chosen business or finance because that’s what’s expected, but there is no other dream they’re giving up, it’s just that their dreams are so pathetic: get rich. And then? Na, ja, spend it. Sure there are people who care about a product or service and then lo and behold they make a successful business out of it, that’s not what I mean. I mean young people whose only vision for their future revolves around consuming status symbols.
Cahan originally wrote this for McClure’s and sometimes that was a little grating. Writing for the gentiles, we are left to guess what are the “ring-shaped rolls” he bought in the Jewish bakery. Seriously? It’s hard to imagine there was a time when English speakers may not have heard of a bagel. There were other, more subtle instances where I thought had he been writing for a Jewish audience this scene would have been different. But I guess when Cahan wrote for Jews, he wrote in yiddish. So the flavor isn’t as heavy here as in some other books about the Jewish lower east side. The end is also less than satisfying but all in all this is a fun visit to that time and place.
I also thought one could give it a queer reading. The main character has several crappy, doomed from the start infatuations with women, but some of his relationships with men are far more spiritual. I can imagine him sending for Naphthali and then having him as a boarder, then he wouldn’t be lonely. Or what happened to his yiddish theater buddy? That guy is definitely gay. It’s the attention that other men receive that causes him to make life-changing decisions but all the women he claims to desire are out of reach... except for the prostitutes. I know Cahan is saying that being an orphan, coming from extreme poverty, and committing that hard to business can leave you lonely in a world where you suspect everyone ... but one could also read another, less explicit reason for Levinsky’s deep sense of loss and longing for those days bent over the talmud.
Levinsky is desperate to impress the people he considers “aristocrats.” As long as he is Antomir, that means he either must excel at talmud, or he must go to college and become a more modern kind of scholar. In the Babylon of late 19th Century New York, he must make money to “show them.” He never really does know what it is he really wants. I often think that about people bent on getting rich, although the ones I meet are not likely to “succeed” like Levinsky, still I often have the impression that they have chosen business or finance because that’s what’s expected, but there is no other dream they’re giving up, it’s just that their dreams are so pathetic: get rich. And then? Na, ja, spend it. Sure there are people who care about a product or service and then lo and behold they make a successful business out of it, that’s not what I mean. I mean young people whose only vision for their future revolves around consuming status symbols.