Reviews for The Rise of David Levinsky

The average rating for The Rise of David Levinsky based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-02-19 00:00:00 Dawn Cuglietto I read this one a long time ago and was really drawn in by the pathos and the humor, and, of course, the journey. Cahan refuses to make this a simple story about good and evil. Levinsky falls as he rises, and rises as he falls, and perhaps there is something almost universally true about the human predicament of success. This book could just as easily have been called "The Fall of David Levinsky", with its descriptions of a boy who goes from being the king of the cheder in his shtetl, to becoming a wealthy American at the very high price of spiritual and emotional poverty. Some of Cahan's political idealism is showing through, but it never overwhelms the book. The narrator is not only a complex character, but one who is willing to bear his soul to us in the hopes that he will find some relief from his existential pain and confusion, or maybe it is understanding he seeks. What is certain is that the move from Eastern Europe to New York, and the rise from poverty to wealth, leaves Levinsky culturally and spiritually adrift, and I think if this were a tighter novel (some reviewers comment that it is too wordy) it wouldn't hold all of the puzzles it manages to hold without forcing resolutions, which is one of the things that sets it apart from other novels, and somehow, though it could not be farther apart in style, gives it a little bit of the gloom and atmosphere of a Dickens novel. I can't say I didn't enjoy the playful banter, the high yiddish drama, the fantastic yiddish cursing. The 1975 film "Hester Street" (thanks Cathy!) is based on one of Cahan's short stories and it's quite good. (Carol Kane's entrance into film!) Some excerpts from the novel: Antomir, which then boasted eighty thousand inhabitants, was a town in which a few thousand rubles was considered wealth, and we were among the humblest and poorest in it. The bulk of the population lived on less than fifty copecks (twenty-five cents) a day, and that was difficult to earn. A hunk of rye bread and a bit of herring or cheese constituted a meal. A quarter of a copeck (an eighth of a cent) was a coin with which one purchased a few crumbs of pot-cheese or some boiled water for tea. Rubbers were worn by people "of means" only. I never saw any in the district in which my mother and I had our home. A white starched collar was an attribute of "aristocracy." Children had to nag their mothers for a piece of bread "Mamma, I want a piece of bread," with a mild whimper "Again bread! You'll eat my head off. May the worms eat you." Dialogues such as this were heard at every turn... One of my recollections is of my mother administering a tongue-lashing to a married young woman whom she had discovered flirting in the dark vestibule with a man not her husband. A few minutes later the young woman came in and begged my mother not to tell her husband. "If I was your husband I would skin you alive." "Oh, don't tell him! Take pity! Don't." "I won't. Get out of here, you lump of stench." "Oh, swear that you won't tell him! Do swear, dearie. Long life to you. Health to every little bone of yours." "First you swear that you'll never do it again, you heap of dung." "Strike me blind and dumb and deaf if I ever do it again. There." "Your oaths are worth no more than the barking of a dog. Can't you be decent? You ought to be knouted in the market-place. You are a plague. Black luck upon you. Get away from me." "But I will be decent. May I break both my legs and both my arms if I am not. Do swear that you won't tell him." My mother yielded... I had only one teacher who never beat me, or any of the other boys. Whatever anger we provoked in him would spend itself in threats, and even these he often turned to a joke, in a peculiar vein of his own. "If you don't behave I'll cut you to pieces," he would say. "I'll just cut you to tiny bits and put you into my pipe and you'll go up in smoke." Or, "I'll give you such a thrashing that you won't be able to sit down, stand up, or lie down. The only thing you'll be able to do is to fly'to the devil." This teacher used me as a living advertisement for his school. He would take me from house to house, flaunting my recitations and interpretations. Very often the passage which he thus made me read was a lesson I had studied under one of his predecessors, but I never gave him away...

Review # 2 was written on 2017-10-15 00:00:00 Peter Fuentes Montoya 41. The Rise of David Levinsky by Abraham Cahan published: 1917 format: ~535 page ebook acquired: 2014 from Project Gutenberg read: Sep 8 - Oct 9 rating: 4½ I step into the WWI era of literature with a great deal of ignorance and find myself in the world of my ancestry. Cahan, a Russian Jewish immigrant who arrived in New York in 1882, captures a whole world of Jewish New York over a 30 year period of immigration and rebirth. He takes Dickens and Thackeray (or so he more or less claims) and creates history from first hand experience, and it's moving to someone like me because this world is what four different parts of my family experienced (although not all in NY). David Levinsky is an orphan and teenage Talmudic scholar who stumbles across a benefactor, a young female divorcee, who provides him with a ticket to America. He will arrive, and stumble and fall in so many different ways, each remarkably real. Discarding the Talmud and faith and even theism, he becomes through will and guts and luck someone who finds himself in the newpapers associated with "the Vanderbilts, the Goulds, the Rothschilds...by calling me 'a fleecer of labor' it placed me in their class. I felt in good company." Cahan was something of a leader in the Jewish socialist movement of the late 1800's/early 1900's. That he can write sympathetically of his capitalist hero, one who both fights and has a tolerance for socialists, is interesting and an expression perhaps of a wide experience and open mind. There is a mixture of history and tragedy of sorts mixed. As Levinsky finds success, and reader gets a lesson on the evolution of Jewish clothing manufacture in American, he becomes a representation of the success of Jews in American with pride and also ambivalence. Listening to the Star-spangled Banner There was the jingle of newly-acquired dollars in our applause. But there was something else in it as well. Many of those who were now paying tribute to the Stars and Stripes were listening to the tune with grave, solemn mien. It was as if they were saying: "We are not persecuted under this flag. At last we have found a home." But what was the price. David will lose his culture, religion and in a way his soul. He has no family, few close friends despite extensive acquaintances, and is unable to find affection for women remotely appropriate for him. He will end up alone and unable, really, to understand why. A split of intellect from soul, or maybe of real and spiritual, a gain and a loss. The Dickens sense in the title is no accident. This is the only Cahan novel I know of, but it's very well developed, entertaining, capturing many different worlds in both Russian and America. It's long coming of age, and a full fictional autobiography, if you like, and one that clearly reflects Cahan's own experience. Recommended to those interested in American Jewish heritage.