Teitlebaum's Window

by Wallace Markfield

Overview

Welcome to Brighton Beach of the 1930s and early '40s as filtered through Simon Sloan, from youth to would-be artist-as-a-young-man at Brooklyn College to the eve of his induction into the army. Wallace Markfield perfectly captures this Jewish neighborhood—its speech, its people, its unique zaniness.

But like any masterpiece—Joyce's "Dubliners" comes readily to mind—"Teitlebaum's Window "both survives and expands upon its time and place. While remaining rooted in the specifics of its own world, thirty-seven years after first being published it teems with Markfield's inventiveness, hilarity, and singular voice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781564782199
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	10/01/1999
Edition description:	1ST DALKEY
Pages:	387
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.39(h) x 1.04(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Wallace Markfield (1926-2002) was one of the most important Jewish-American writers of the twentieth century. His novelTo an Early Gravewas adapted into the filmBye, Bye Braverman, directed by Sidney Lumet, and he was also the author ofTeitlebaum's Window, You Could Live If They Let You, and Radical Surgery.

Dalkey Archive Press

Editorial Reviews

"Mr. Markfield is a parodist, a relentless jokesmith, a gifted improviser in the Nichols and May tradition." --Alfred Kazin,New York Times Book Review

Dalkey Archive Press

"So full is the book with the feel of the times, it would seem that Mr. Markfield, like Joyce, hoped that if all other records disappeared, Brighton Beach could be reconstructed from these pages.... It's all great fun, done with much verve and high spirits, a fictional romp during which the author enjoyed himself thoroughly and the reader will too." --Thomas Lask, New York Times

Dalkey Archive Press

"Teitlebaum's Window is a series of brilliant and often brilliantly sustained gags, takeoffs, and blackouts on daily American life in the American Diaspora during the Great Depression. The relish with which it exploits comic potentialities recalls Isaac Babel." --Marvin Mudrick,Hudson Review

Dalkey Archive Press

From the Publisher

So full is the book with the feel of the times, it would seem that Mr. Markfield, like Joyce, hoped that if all other records disappeared, Brighton Beach could be reconstructed from these pages. . . . It's all great fun, done with much verve and high spirits, a fictional romp during which the author enjoyed himself thoroughly and the reader will too.
Thomas Lask, New York Times, 10/16/70

Thomas Lask

Mr. Markfield is a parodist, a relentless jokesmith, a gifted improviser in the Nichols and May tradition.
Alfred Kazin, New York Times Book Review, 10/18/1970

Alfred Kazin

In effect, Wallace Markfield has taken traditional American-Jewish and stood it on its head. . . . The rhythms of the language (Yiddish slang), normally so strange, are stranger still; and the characters--whom we expect to be either eccentric or volatile or an inflammable combination of the two in this genre--are here extended to the point of sheer lunacy.
CamTPell Black, New Statesman, 5/7/71

CamTPell Black

Teitlebaum's Window is a series of brilliant and often brilliantly sustained gags, takeoffs, and blackouts on daily American life in the American Diaspora during the Great Depression. The relish with which it exploits comic potentialities recalls Isaac Babel.
Marvin Mudrick, Hudson Review, 8/1/70

Marvin Mudrick