Word: hod
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...flow off the pages seep into the reader's mind so that, at a certain point in the novel, the character suddenly emerges, fully-fleshed and fully-human. Quickly and easily Williams skerches the relationship between his central characters: Browning, the Don. a now-inactive Mafia kingpin, and Itzhak Hod, the triggerman...
...Hod, a massive hulk of a man, is a Russian Jew whose family fled to the Warsaw ghetto, then to Palestine to escape both the pogroms of the goyim and the onslaught of the Nazis. But in Palestine there were the Arabs to contend with. In order to survive, the Jews had to become killers, and Itzhak Hod became one of the best they had. After the war Hod joined the hunt for escaped Nazi war criminals, and he became very good at that...
...hands of another writer the plot of Sons of Darkness could have easily have fallen prey to sensationalism. But Williams always keeps his per-spective. Although some of the characters are not fully developed. we are always aware of their humanity: Hod a killer yet a gentle man of principle; the Don. who takes a special interest in Browning in part because of a long-ago romance; Val. Browning's wife. who wears her hair au naturel. but who, like Browning. is firmly in the middle class: even Carrigan, the cop. who, furstrated with his job and marriage takes...
...strengths, the novel also has its faults. Its ending, for instance. leaves one vaguely disappointed. Everything ends too well for the central characters. Browning, the Don. and Hod all emerge unscathed by the events of the book-as if. after The Man Who Cried I Am, Williams wanted to write a book that would end happily, or at least, not tragically. At the novel's end, the domestic scene is still exploding and another perhaps final international war (the United States versus China) is imminent: but the central characters have been removed from the scene of action...
...raises for cutters and pressers, who are mostly white, while settling for minuscule increases for many of its 150,000 nonwhite members. In construction, Negroes make up about 35% of the laborers' union. Black membership is also high in the so-called "mud trades"-bricklaying, plastering, hod carrying-that white workers increasingly shun. There are few Negro electricians, sheet-metal workers, glaziers, plumbers or pipe fitters. Particularly in the South, there are still several hundred segregated all-Negro locals-in the machinists, carmen, railway clerks, paper mill workers and other unions...