I didn't realize Taffy Brodesser-Akner was writing the Great American Novel until about halfway through.
Before that, I was reading in fits and starts.
I thought it was an out of control comic novel, until I realized it was not. And then I was driven to finish it.
You won't have the same experience I did unless you've already read "Long Island Compromise" or stop here, because I'm going to break my rule, I'm going to tell you what it's about.
A multi-generational Jewish family. From nothing to success and then...
Yes, Zelig immigrates from the old country, starts a styrofoam factory and everybody gets rich. But what happens to the subsequent generations? What's it like to grow up rich, to never have to worry about money, how does it affect you?
This is a very Jewish novel. Not that non-Jews cannot enjoy it, but if you're a Jewish Boomer or Gen-X'er you're going to identify. This is your life.
Although the focus is on the Fletchers, there's the families that struggle, a household driven by an intellectual. Is money everything, is it the defining characteristic of society?
If you grew up in the Jewish suburbs of the fifties, sixties and seventies...everybody knew each other, from the synagogue, from the Jewish Community Center, from camp. It was very different from today. On some level I envy my parents, they had an incredible social life, nobody I know has the equivalent today. And there was a constant run of gossip about everybody, from parents to children. We knew everybody's wealth, how well they did in school, who they were dating. It was nearly incestuous.
They used to make movies about this. About the country club, about the small society that was everything to its members.
Who drove a Cadillac, what neighborhood your house was in, where you went to college, these were bedrock, and it's almost like the rest of the world didn't exist.
And we, the progeny of our parents who'd succeeded, had opportunity, we were allowed to live our dream, even though most ultimately punted, many ultimately living the same life in the same neighborhood as their parents. I had no intention of staying, I couldn't wait to get away. But in retrospect, I was the outlier.
So the father busts his balls to earn a living so...you don't have to focus on money, you're not struggling. Many of my contemporaries are not doing as well financially as their parents, because they just don't have that hunger, that drive. Their best lives were led when they were living at home, going on trips, to restaurants, living it up in retrospect. It took money, and there was enough, but this was also when there was a strong middle class, when mothers didn't have to work unless they wanted to.
But the successful... There were choices buried in the past. As my father said, "Schnooks get sh*t on." This is one of the reasons people hate the Jews, because they're loud, they test the limits, they won't take no for an answer. Why don't they just shut up and wait their turn like the rest of us?
Well, having been excluded from so many opportunities, jobs, clubs, the Jews had to find their own way to survive. And many of the goyim don't like it.
Is every Jew rich? Far from it. But I've never been to a quiet dinner with Jews, it's like the dinner table in "Radio Days," everybody talking over each other.
So...
With opportunity, what do you do?
Well, there's always one who ends up running the family business.
And then one who gets into drugs and alcohol and tests the limits.
And another one who does their best to hide their wealth, they're ashamed of it.
Once again, the Fletchers are rich. How do people treat them?
Beamer is charismatic, a star from the outside, but crippled on the inside.
Nathan is afraid of the world.
And Jenny, the baby, the only girl, wants almost nothing to do with the family. She keeps going to school, but has no friends, because she can't accept that people are plain, like the ones she grew up with in Middle Rock, on Long Island. Ultimately she realizes friends are everything, is it too late? Has she been such a dilettante, wearing blinders, that she's missed her whole life?
I know people like this. Who don't have to work. They're lost. In many cases even if they have a job. They've had advantages, believe they're above the hoi polloi, but don't really fit in, to the degree they even want to try. They're ultimately lost souls, living on the last vestiges of the money, assets sold to keep up their lifestyle, and then a new hungry generation takes over.
"Long Island Compromise" is not the easiest book to read. Not because the words are big, but because there's a lot of interior dialogue, nearing stream of consciousness. The book is broken down by character, and each one is gone into in extreme depth. And each has their own personality, which they're hobbled by...aren't we all?
"Long Island Compromise" is one of the best-reviewed books of the year, the number one best-seller in the "Los Angeles Times" last week. All of which is why I read it. I was thrilled to get it so soon from the library, but as I waded in...I truly wondered whether I could finish. At first it verged on a beach read. And then it seemed like humor took precedence. But as I got deeper into the characters, one by one, the book came alive.
"Long Island Compromise" is not a slam dunk. You're on your own here. It's not as breezy as early Philip Roth, yet not as dense as Roth's later works. I could recommend many other books if you only read novels occasionally. But if you're Jewish, if you're willing to look at yourself...
Ultimately, "Long Island Compromise" is in Franzen territory, but without the fog of heaviness in his books. Actually, I'd rather read "Long Island Compromise" than all but the last Franzen, "Crossroads," which is great in case you gave up on him, but the lightness of "Long Island Compromise" is absent.
I don't know... I usually only feature recommended stuff, or stuff everybody is talking about, but Taffy Brodesser-Akner captured an essence of my life, which I wasn't prepared for, her previous novel, "Fleischman Is in Trouble," did not attempt to chew off as much, and I didn't love it.
And she came up via journalism, as opposed to the Iowa Writers' Workship. How high should one's expectations be?
I was caught off guard, I was ultimately enraptured, "Long Island Compromise" took me away from my everyday life while ironically evoking it.
I just had to write about it.
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