Great Neck (eBook)

Jay Cantor (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2007 | 1. Auflage
720 Seiten
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (Verlag)
978-0-307-42611-6 (ISBN)

Infos

In 1960, a group of friends are plucked from their sixth grade classroom in privileged Great Neck, Long Island and confronted for the first time with the horrors of the Holocaust. They hear a challenge from the past, a cry from history to set the world on a better course, but it is the murder of a much-loved older brother during Mississippi's Freedom Summer that makes their mission clear.

From the front line of the civil rights movement to Andy Warhol's New York art scene, from comic book superheroes to the violent maelstrom of the Weather Underground, Great Neck immerses us in a charged time not so long ago, and illuminates the lives of those who were shaped by its energies and ideals. Vigorous, funny, profound and altogether gripping, it is a masterpiece of contemporary literature.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Textauszug

On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Arthur Kaplan-nicknamed Arkey by his brother-in-law and transformed to OurKey in the BillyBooks series Tales from the Kabbalah-bounced nervously in a taxi, bumping along on an Israeli jockey's Island City route to the courtroom. Asleep or awake, in long reveries and fleeting images, Arkey Kaplan was given to dreaming, mixtures of memory and longing that transformed and commanded him. Today, a sentient corpse ordered him to pat his jacket pocket to make sure he had his checkbook-in case he needed to pay his childhood friend Beth Jacobs bail for not showing up for trial in Chicago nearly a decade before. Or for setting bombs throughout this great land of ours. Or for God knows what else.

Can you actually pay bail with a personal check? Distracted, Arkey forgot to tell the cab driver to take the bridge. Too late. The Israeli jockey had thrust them into the line for the Holland Tunnel-that insecure Dutch dike against the river, that clammy, oppressive place, that long, tight ceramic tomb.

Ghouls and coffins were much on Arkey's mind. Perhaps they always had been, but a year and a day ago, Arkey had had his second operation for skin cancer at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. 'Happy Birthday,' his surgeon had said as Arkey lay nauseous in the recovery room, dreaming of the time he'd opened a mojo hand's rolled scroll and so put a curse on himself. 'The margins were very good,' the doctor had said. 'We got it all.' His savior had looked down at his chart then and had added, mildly, 'Probably.'

Arkey wore his long-sleeved shirt buttoned to the top so the sun couldn't tickle his weak-willed skin. He had a white scarf around his neck and a Panama on his head, and he even kept his hands in his pockets. Moisture bloomed under his arms, formed a fragrant acid-and-roses river with the Guerlain cologne he wore to mask his continual sweating. How had Billy Green managed to predict that in his comic books?

And how much longer would this damn tunnel go on for? Any dark enclosed space made Arkey feel already trapped in his grave. How long, each bump said, how long, how long? This fucking tunnel ends in Pardes, Arkey dreamt, and the cab would take him to join the person he had most respected, his grandfather Abraham, the shop steward, now one month in his own tomb. The word reminded him of the Tombs, where Beth waited, just as Granddad had predicted, Avraham having found strength to denounce her, among others, before he died, this allrightnick's Eleventh-and scrupulously observed-Commandment being Thou shalt criticize others. 'She was never part of the world she supposedly wanted to save, Arthur. She acted without guidance from any class organization. No discipline. No solidarity.'

'They had solidarity, Granddad. With the Third World.'

'Baloney!' Abe's once strong voice was now a harsh whisper. 'A fantasy,' he gasped-magisterially. His finger, skinny but for the swollen knuckles, tapped a temple. 'She and her pals really served their own meshuginah psychologies. That's it!'

Thank God, Arkey had thought, I've always remained faithful to long dead socialist organizations-for avoiding Abe's poking finger had been, since childhood, Arthur Kaplan's Eleventh Commandment. And Abe's approval? That miracle was reserved for the great-the greatly moral, observers of the mitzvahs, heroes of labor. I.e., not Arkey, who was merely a historian of the movement, not a participant.

His grandfather had coughed, the ratchets of his lungs grinding on each other. A claw reached toward the night table for Kleenex, scattering bottles, letters, flowers, capless ballpoints. Arkey had knelt to pick things up, bobbed up...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 18.12.2007
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 0-307-42611-4 / 0307426114
• ISBN-13: 978-0-307-42611-6 / 9780307426116