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The Old Bunch
Meyer Levin. The Old Bunch. New Viking, 1937. First edition, first printing. Octavo. 964 pages.
964 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1937
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 26, 2023
⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
There’s probably a correct word to describe this book. It was published in 1937 and was contemporary fiction at the time. Now it’s a look back at an era that is long gone.
The book’s time period is 1921 through 1934. As the novel opens, a bunch of Jewish kids have just graduated high school. They are all second generation immigrants, most of their mothers still speak Yiddish. By the time the book ends, it’s the last night of the great two year Chicago World’s Fair. The implication in the book is that the fair was put together to try to combat the effects of the Great Depression.
In the storyline, there are ten or twelve kids trying to find their way in the world. A few become lawyers, two become doctors, Another couple work their dad’s businesses. There are a number of boy and girl siblings, who end up marrying within this bunch. One girl, who is very tall and thin, ends up a spinster. Another is the “loose” one who’s a little too free with her favors. One of the boys gets into long distance (6 day) bicycle racing and another becomes a sculptor.
I don’t know if this book was ever a bestseller per se. This author’s most famous work is book titled COMPULSION, which I’ve not heard of or read. For some reason this old mass market paperback (1962 edition) has been in my possession for a great number of years. It literally fell apart as I was getting to the end. It was an interesting look back at Chicago written while the events described were really happening.
One more interesting note, I actually found on line a Time Magazine book review for it dated March 15, 1937.
There’s probably a correct word to describe this book. It was published in 1937 and was contemporary fiction at the time. Now it’s a look back at an era that is long gone.
The book’s time period is 1921 through 1934. As the novel opens, a bunch of Jewish kids have just graduated high school. They are all second generation immigrants, most of their mothers still speak Yiddish. By the time the book ends, it’s the last night of the great two year Chicago World’s Fair. The implication in the book is that the fair was put together to try to combat the effects of the Great Depression.
In the storyline, there are ten or twelve kids trying to find their way in the world. A few become lawyers, two become doctors, Another couple work their dad’s businesses. There are a number of boy and girl siblings, who end up marrying within this bunch. One girl, who is very tall and thin, ends up a spinster. Another is the “loose” one who’s a little too free with her favors. One of the boys gets into long distance (6 day) bicycle racing and another becomes a sculptor.
I don’t know if this book was ever a bestseller per se. This author’s most famous work is book titled COMPULSION, which I’ve not heard of or read. For some reason this old mass market paperback (1962 edition) has been in my possession for a great number of years. It literally fell apart as I was getting to the end. It was an interesting look back at Chicago written while the events described were really happening.
One more interesting note, I actually found on line a Time Magazine book review for it dated March 15, 1937.
April 12, 2019
A near-great novel about a group of Jewish kids growing up in Chicago in the 1920s-30s. A bubbling pot of idealism, corruption, crime, romantic yearning and the search for meaning in a turbulent era. Countless vivid scenes. Essential reading for those who want to understand Chicago.
August 3, 2019
The Old Bunch" is truly one of the Great Novels!
Meyer Levin's best-known book is Compulsion, which is a novelization of the notorious Loeb and Leopold murder case of 1924. Levin was in a special position to tell the tale, because he was personally acquainted with the perpetrators. It's excellent. Levin is also famous for bringing Anne Frank's diary to light. But I think "The Old Bunch" was his greatest work.
"The Old Bunch" was written in the mid-to-late 1930's, and it tells the tales of the kids of a Chicago Jewish ghetto coming of age and stepping out into the world. It's presumably something of a fantasy autobiography, echoing Levin's own adventures -- Levin was born in 1905, and the events in this book take place beginning in the year 1921 (when the "bunch" is graduating from school) into the early 1930's.
The book is compelling for its individual stories and for its living window into history. Because it was written prior to the horrors of WWII, it's a very pure window into the pre-war era. (Anything written later will necessarily be done with hindsight, and will likely de-emphasize "unimportant" details in favor of those that connect to major events of history.) But the history is merely a fascinating byproduct of the vivid human stories that fill the pages.
I'm shocked that, as I post this, there are few reviews of "The Old Bunch". This really is one of the great novels, and I'd say it belongs up there with Tolstoy and Steinbeck. To back that up: If you Google on keywords "Meyer Levin" and "Old Bunch" and "Wall Street Journal", you'll find an article titled "Destiny's Children" by the scholar Joseph Epstein, published in the WSJ on January 28, 2012. The following paragraph is the conclusion of that article:
(Before you follow my advice and seek out Epstein's WSJ article, be warned that it discusses various plot points, and I think the reader will best appreciate and enjoy the novel with no foreknowledge. By the way, the Joe Freedman character mentioned in the above paragraph seems to me to have most closely followed in Levin's real-life footsteps. This is not to say Freedman is Levin; just that I suspect there's overlap.)
Meyer Levin's best-known book is Compulsion, which is a novelization of the notorious Loeb and Leopold murder case of 1924. Levin was in a special position to tell the tale, because he was personally acquainted with the perpetrators. It's excellent. Levin is also famous for bringing Anne Frank's diary to light. But I think "The Old Bunch" was his greatest work.
"The Old Bunch" was written in the mid-to-late 1930's, and it tells the tales of the kids of a Chicago Jewish ghetto coming of age and stepping out into the world. It's presumably something of a fantasy autobiography, echoing Levin's own adventures -- Levin was born in 1905, and the events in this book take place beginning in the year 1921 (when the "bunch" is graduating from school) into the early 1930's.
The book is compelling for its individual stories and for its living window into history. Because it was written prior to the horrors of WWII, it's a very pure window into the pre-war era. (Anything written later will necessarily be done with hindsight, and will likely de-emphasize "unimportant" details in favor of those that connect to major events of history.) But the history is merely a fascinating byproduct of the vivid human stories that fill the pages.
I'm shocked that, as I post this, there are few reviews of "The Old Bunch". This really is one of the great novels, and I'd say it belongs up there with Tolstoy and Steinbeck. To back that up: If you Google on keywords "Meyer Levin" and "Old Bunch" and "Wall Street Journal", you'll find an article titled "Destiny's Children" by the scholar Joseph Epstein, published in the WSJ on January 28, 2012. The following paragraph is the conclusion of that article:
"The Old Bunch" is a reminder of why novelists were once regarded as gods--gods in the sense of being omniscient. It also reminds us that novelists of any earlier time had larger ambitions than they do in our day, when they are often content to write about people who, like themselves, live more in their minds than in the world. One Levin character, the sculptor Joe Freedman, asks, "Why did one get sidetracked with some shred of truth, with religion or love, politics or surrealism, but so few seemed to keep themselves open for the whole bitter truth of the human race?" "The Old Bunch," Meyer Levin's neglected masterpiece, is, finally, a reminder that nothing less than "the whole bitter truth of the human race" was once the subject of the novel.That's pretty effusive praise for a long-out-of-print book! I think it was Epstein's article that generated a rush for copies, which actually became quite scarce until a couple of new editions were reissued. If you buy a new copy, I would suggest you avoid the Waking Lion edition, which contains far too many typos for satisfying reading, and look at the Rancho Lazarus editions, available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle.
(Before you follow my advice and seek out Epstein's WSJ article, be warned that it discusses various plot points, and I think the reader will best appreciate and enjoy the novel with no foreknowledge. By the way, the Joe Freedman character mentioned in the above paragraph seems to me to have most closely followed in Levin's real-life footsteps. This is not to say Freedman is Levin; just that I suspect there's overlap.)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews