Word: vossen
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Barish fiendishly maximizes tension and antagonism. Then there are the long-absent daughter, Yahina (another Ma in the making), her husband, Feivet, a deaf mute, and her son, Pildesh, who while urinating from a fourth floor window, tumbles out. The savior of this twisted family is old, orange-eyed. Vossen Gleich, with his lopsided chest ("one side sunk in, the other humped and swollen to his chin"), who ends his virginity with poor, sickly Mrs. Charpolsky--from downstairs...
Into this madhouse prances Vossen Gleich with an admonitory "Oi, Shemanskys!" He pours out a stream of instructions on how to live together and how to mourn. Gleich is a nut too, but different from the Shemanskys: fortified with faith in ritual and his own deep warmth, Gleich temporarily stuns the Shemanskys into their tradition: to mourn, to rend their clothes, to talk compassionately of the dead idiot child. The Shemanskys, however, soon evict Gleich (who had moved in with Mrs. Charpolsky) and, as Ma dictates, do not mourn for Zadie (the Shemansky grandfather and financial supporter who died...
...machine. He appears abruptly, expounds Simckes' orthodox panacea, and departs suddenly. The Shemanskys are too incredible. From the first page, they are fantastic, insufferable, sick; who can identify with a Shemansky? Can it be said, what's good for the Shemanskys is good for the U.S.A.? Simckes, like his Vossen Gleich, has an acute humans concern, but too limited a focus. Yet, within his unique realm, Simckes tells a grotesque and Rabelaisian tale that does create philosophic reverberations...