Roberta Markels

Seduction Of Nonny Stein (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

THE SEDUCTION OF NONNY STEIN should have been published fifty-five years ago, in 1959, and it should have made its author, the late Roberta (Bobby) Markels, a household literary name, along with Philip Roth and John Updike, whose first novels were both published in 1959. For Roth, it was GOODBYE, COLUMBUS, which has been described as "...an irreverent and humorous portrait of American-Jewish life."

Those exact words could be used to describe this book. It's that, and more-like Roth's book, it's a coming-of-age story, with all the universality implied by that, but from a female perspective. Few serious female writers back then, with the notable exception of, for example, Mary McCarthy, were allowed the latitude by the publishing world to tell the punch-to-the-solar-plexus truth that's the defining quality of great fiction. THE SEDUCTION OF NONNY STEIN is rich with humor, but it's the valiant, heroic sort of humor that arises from that profound place where comedy and tragedy overlap, rarified territory where only the best writers can go.

The setting is a well-to-do household in the South Side of Chicago. It's 1945. Nonny Stein is nineteen, a girl with a wild rebellious streak, still living at home with her genteel mother and occasionally-cruel stepfather. Her real father is long dead. Her older sister, the "beautiful, terrible Caroline," has married and moved out. Nonny goes to night school, where she reads Auden and the Greek philosophers, and works by day in a chaotic office for Morry, a frenetic, enterprising, clever, fast-talking "jobber" twenty-plus years her senior.

The "long, shattering adolescence" is over, and Nonny and her mother and stepfather live warily within a shaky truce, though occasional buried landmines can still be tripped and explode. Glimpses of past episodes-truancy, shoplifting, flunking, getting booted out of school-come in flashbacks and El-riding ruminations. Dashing in and out of the tale is Nonny's beloved rascally Uncle Augustus ("Popper")-a kindly-but-slightly-shady womanizing bachelor, glib, high-rolling, changing his spots to stripes depending on the backdrop he moves against. For Nonny, though, he's a rock, steadfast and true.

Aunts, uncles, cousins, schoolmates and their parents, suitors, a street bum, and the salesmen in Morry's office populate the tale richly, but it's Morry who emerges full-blown. He starts as a risible clown, a jackanapes, a figure of fun; by the time he disappears in the distance, we weep for him even as we cringe. This is the stuff that only real writers can deliver-the ones who have the literary muscle, insight, integrity, courage, and most of all, the savvy.

In 1958, this novel was entered in a contest sponsored by Houghton Mifflin, Roth's first publisher. The prize was $10,000, a contract and publication. A letter from the publisher arrived in the mail. Dear Mrs. Markels, the letter said; we want you to know that your manuscript was by far the best one submitted. But....we've decided to cancel the contest and not give the award to anyone! Frightfully sorry!

The book languished, and not even the efforts of major literary lions who read it and loved it could penetrate the indifference, bias and lousy judgment of the publishing world. Here's what one of those luminaries thought of THE SEDUCTION OF NONNY STEIN:

"Dear Mrs. Markels,

What are you afraid of? You've got the stuff, the real thing. I make no reservations. I'm much and happily impressed. What a pleasure, finally, to read a new writer, genuinely new. Believe me, I don't go overboard because we happen to be Chicagoans, both of us. Try me on other Chicagoans. The results might be quite different."

--Saul Bellow

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: BookBaby
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Juli 2014
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781631921209
• Artikelnr.: 41394369