Potash & Perlmutter: Stories of the American Jewish Experience

by Montague Glass, S.T. Joshi (Editor)

Eighteen comic stories of the American Jewish experience, featuring a pair of immigrant Jewish businessmen in early twentieth-century New York. The well-known writer H. L. Mencken said of these tales that they "are essentially character studies, and the humor in them grows out of character, and is not forced into it.... Its truth is even more assertive than its humor." Complete with an introduction and bibliography.

302 pages, Paperback

First published April 28, 2005

About the author

Montague Marsden Glass was a British-American Jewish lawyer and writer of short stories, plays and film scripts. His greatest success came with the creation of his fictional duo Abe Potash and Morris ("Mawrus") Perlmutter, who appeared in three books, a play, and several films.

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Downloaded this from Project Gutenberg after seeing it in a list of books Shackleton took to the Antarctic. Ethnic comedy from the start of the last century is usually a very dodgy proposition, but these stories about two Jewish clothing manufacturers in New York before the first world war were sympathetically written by a Jewish lawyer who knew that world. Later tuned into long-forgotten plays and films which seem to have been popular with Jewish audiences. The stories are funny, occasionally touching, and worth reading if you like humour of that vintage - and the dialect and accent are represented with a light touch (unlike, say, Kipling's attempts to reproduce the accents of soldiers). There are other books in the series.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was funny, and quaint. Two Jewish men in the cloak and suit business in New York, about 1910. Gets a bit repetitive.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Potash and Perlmutter are in the "cloak and suit" business in NYC. The book was written around 1920 (I'm too lazy to look it up). They're caught up in the machinations of competitors, employees, customers, wholesalers, and attorneys. Always trying to stay on top of the skullduggery. It's very funny. The characters are clearly German Jews but the stereotyping is quite mild for the day.