Great Neck

by Jay Cantor

In 1960, a group of friends are plucked from their sixth grade classroom in privileged Great Neck, Long Island and confronted for the first time with the horrors of the Holocaust. They hear a challenge from the past, a cry from history to set the world on a better course; but it is the murder of a much-loved older brother during Mississippi’s Freedom Summer that makes their mission clear.

From the front line of the civil rights movement to Andy Warhol’s New York art scene, from comic book superheroes to the violent maelstrom of the Weather Underground, Great Neck immerses us in a charged time not so long ago, and illuminates the lives of those who were shaped by its energies and ideals. Vigorous, funny, profound and altogether gripping, it is a masterpiece of contemporary literature.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Novels

720 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Ciara · Rating 2 out of 5]

i wanted to like this book, but i just couldn't. after i finished reading it, i think i spent about two months going around, telling people how much i hated it, actually. my loathing has cooled, but i still dislike this book quite a bit. let me try to conjure up the basic plot from the dark recesses of memory (i read this over two years ago): this whole crew of childhood buddies hails from the town of great neck. they are mostly class privileged, jewish, over-achieving types, though they of course fall into various archetypes. one of them is a curmudgeonly writer type who was so obviousky jay cantor's mary sue that it was kind of sickening. the quietest, nerdiest member of their little group goes on to become a very successful comic book artist as an adult. one of the women joins a weather underground-style group (the characters were kids in the fifties, indoctrinated in cold war paranoia & weird jewish survivor's guilt concerning the holocaust, & hence were the perfect age & temperment to become anti-war activists in their early 20s) & is either living underground as a fugitive or maybe she died. i honestly don't remember. i do remember that the comic book artist character based one of his best-selling comics on her--a kind of neo-liberal wonder woman or something. the curmudgeonly writer character was in love with her, i think, & is angry that the comic artist is using her image or something, & there's all this adult intrigue with secrets coming out & people having affairs & this is a classic example of why i get so sketched out by sex scenes in novels. i just feel like i am learning more about jay cantor than i really wanted to know. seriously, two years & some two hundred books have passed since i read this, so i don't remember any more plot points, or even how the whole situation was resolved. i do remember HATING the characterization of women in the book. i was very exploitative & objectifying--classic "women are there to be sexual foils for men". which made the characters' obsession with their dead/fugitive classmate all the more gross & problematic. rather than learning lessons about her political beliefs from the way things went down with her, the dudes just all talked about how much they wanted to bone her, & the ladies were all jealous of her beauty. am i the only girl in the world who really does not waste my energy comparing myself physically to other women? maybe there are girls who are prettier than me, but i don't really care. i'd rather know what they think or feel about the world around them. whatever. skip this book if you're not a pervy lech, & probably a virgin still hooked on comic books.

[Ralph Kleinman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book very much. It long and sprawling, and funny at times, and poignant. And I liked that it was unafraid to be Jewish, in a complicated way.

[Eddie · Rating 1 out of 5]

mildly entertaining.. but i couldn't even finish it...

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this in college with great delight. Unfortunately, the Suck Fairy has paid a visit.

I didn't believe in it. Any of it. It was "anvilicious" in the worst way.

The "BillyBooks" in which the cartoonist Billy immortalizes his friends don't read like the underground comix they're supposed to be.

The civil rights activists don't sound the way civil rights activists wrote.

The radical leftists don't sound the way actual radical leftists of the 70's wrote.

The Jewish stuff was just, frankly, painful to read. Over the top. Every goddamn thing is a Jewish metaphor (helpfully explained, for the rare Gentile reader.) My own brain has an unwelcome tendency to come up with a religious association for every occasion, but I have the decency to keep it in check! This guy is a worse gunner for the Sisterhood book club than Michael Chabon, and that is saying something.

The ages are all mixed up. Does Cantor even remember being a teenager? These kids are all over the place. Sometimes they're babyishly naive, sometimes he forgets and makes them narrator-stand-ins. And for a supposed chronicle of adolescent awkwardness, these are the fastest, most painless sexual awakenings I've ever seen. The one gay character perfunctorily checks off the "angst" box, then waltzes off to hang out with Andy Warhol. No. Seriously.

I liked Beth the first time around, and wanted to like her now. The precocious daughter of the Holocaust-survivor psychoanalyst, the Wagner-loving student radical. She has a little Joan-of-Arc flair. But only a little. She's just a jumble of quirks. An NPC, like everyone else in this book.

Frankly, I think by now there are more novels written about bomb-throwing 60's radicals than there were actual bomb-throwing '60's radicals. The great ones are, in my opinion, Philip Roth's American Pastoral , and Brian Hall's The Saskiad. They at least give me the impression that the author might have a clue what he's talking about.

[Dana · Rating 1 out of 5]

Self-indulgent, scattered and way too long. And yet, I had to read through to the end. This book takes what are, to me, several interesting pieces of recent history (the civil rights movement, the Weather Underground)and makes them into scattered pieces of narrative, some of which are nearly incoherent. Basically, the pieces don't add up to the whole, and at 700 pages, you kind of expect that. Not recommended.

[Ayelet Waldman]

This was my Hawaii beach reading, and it's a nice thick tome. I like to bring a big book with me on vacation. All I do is read, so I'd rather bring one or two huge books than schlep a suitcase full. There are some hysterically funny lines in this book, and he does a great job of showing us this world.

[Marc · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked this up randomly, struggling with the beginning, we'll see if it gets any better.

Never really got much better, lots of stuff going on in it, which I think hurts it. Also, I didn't really connect with any of the characters. Somewhere between 2 and 3 stars

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this for my dad for xmas. Did he read it? Good question.

[Rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've been trying to get into this book and it is just not happening. I keep hoping it will grab me but it loses my interest after a couple of pages.