Kill the Poor

by Joel Rose

Jo-Jo Peltz and his wife move to the Lower Eastside, on the same block where his grandparents lived in 1903, but finds the neighborhood drastically changed

Genres: Fiction, Crime

295 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1988

Reviews

[🐴 🍖]

compelling, but often a bit of a mess, or a lot of a mess: tosses you headlong into the LES ca. 1988 where homesteaders are rehabilitating a burnt-out apt block but leaving interpersonal affairs to crumble dangerously. dialogue slashes like a car antenna & portraits of residents are finely drawn but there are time jumps & POV shifts & repetitions for which this reader could not discern a narrative purpose. in keeping w/ the NYC setting this is 99-cent store as novel: the aisles are narrow, the spatulas are next to the baby powder is next to the plastic vampire fangs, the cashier barely seems aware they're IN a store, but if you hunt around long enough you might find what you need

[Fallopia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Kill the Poor for a second time because I couldn't remember most of it. It takes place in my neighborhood, but on the mythical "Avenue E" which the author created; there is no Avenue E in Manhattan.

I had forgotten that Joel Rose was the co-editor (with his French wife—hmm) of the literary mag Between C and D. The book is thinly disguised autobiography, with rich characterizations and depiction of a gritty 80s neighborhood that truthfully, I miss. The premise of the book is the beginning gentrification of the neighborhood, in which a group of residents take possession of a tenement and form "EATCO"—the E Avenue Tenants' Corporation.

The protagonist is named Joe, called "Zho" by his French wife—"and nobody ever said [my name] better," he muses—a former exotic dancer he married in order to help her get a green card. The flavor of the neighborhood is authentic; the characters are a little exaggerated, like "Beer Can," the leader of the "pussy bumpers," a pack of lesbians that roam the neighborhood.

The book draws on actual events, like the filming of an early Spielberg movie called *batteries not included ; he really did erect a tenement that was torched and rebuilt for that movie. There's a gazebo in the community garden on 8th street between avenues C and D that apparently he gave to the neighborhood. (The name of the movie is never actually mentioned in the book.)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I'm glad I read it a second time.

[britany · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book dealt with an interesting topic but the style in which it was written was the most egregious abuse of postmodernism i have witnessed to date.