Teitlebaum's Window

By Wallace Markfield

Book 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1564782190
• ISBN13: 9781564782199
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Length: 387 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.4"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Hysterical -- both clinically and comedically

I agree with Mark Rutherford - if you don't recognize this milieu and these characters, you are not an American Jewish male of eastern European extraction born in a large U.S. city between 1925 and 1955. Breathtakingly funny, and a kick in the kishkes, too.

The funniest growing-up-Jewish-in-the-depression novel ever

This novel does everything that a novel can do--Joycean in its range--while remaining utterly realistic and so funny you could die. Best to read on a solitary vacation--if not you will alienate anyone you are with by insisting on reading aloud longer and longer passages.