Preface
This new Slim Novel is what it says: a novel, which means it's fiction. At first, some readers may think it is biographical because of similar names and locations, but it's not. These characters are all made up. As in all fiction, there are original sources in the author's experience.
Also, the author will try very, very hard not make it seem as though they are heroes or heroines, good people or bad people. The purpose of this novel is to try to put an 88-y-o author's experiences in his life into a fictional mode so that the reader is given a reality of life as it was and is. Perhaps readers will get certain truths or advices from reading this novel, but the author is trying very, very hard not to make this that type of novel.
CHAPTER 1
Beginnings
This is taken from a life that has almost been lived fully from birth to much longer than expected lifespan. A question comes up of beginning and ending. There used to be a joke where someone looked at you and said you began as the gleam in your father's eye as he was beginning to get the idea to rape your mother. As far as the end is concerned that seems pretty definite although today with body donation and new definitions of brain death questions still arise.
This novel begins with the gleam. It happened April 1932 in New York City and the man was married to the woman. His single sperm of billions in one hit the mark and punctured the wife's ovum. A life begins. But not yet.
What about consciousness, about spirit, about soul? Where did this added person come from, where would it go?
We'll see. Or perhaps we won’t
Nine months pass in the wife's womb.
Birth at the start of 1933. What is the environment? New York City, a hospital in downtown Manhattan; then, a few days later, a 5-room apartment on Rochambeau Avenue, north-central Bronx.
The parents, Anna and Menachem (Mannie), she the 2nd daughter of immigrants from what is today SW Ukraine; Jews, he, immigrated from same place (they were distant cousins). This their 3rd and last (married 1919; previously 2 sons, 1920 and 1924).
Mannie had a remarkable early life: oldest son of a peddlar, was affected by Zionism as youth, at 15 he left home walking one thousand miles across eastern Europe from Lvov (now Poland) to Trieste and there hiring aboard a ship to Suez and there jumping ship for Palestine where he lived for a year as military guard on a Kibbutz. Meanwhile his father, having immigrated first to New York City, wrote him to come there and he did. A little later the USA got into World War 1 and Mannie with his previous military training joined the American Expeditionary force under Black Jack Pershing and soon was a corporal fighting in France where he was wounded at the Battle of Chateau Thierry. He was already affianced to Anna and on return to NYC he married her. He attended NYU graduating as an accountant and then made CPA and by 1929 he had gone on to law school and in 1931 opened a partnership with an Irish Catholic politician and a WASP upper class attorney on 29 Broadway.
By the way, this is not going to be a biography; it will be an experimental observation of a very unusual life—-an experimental life, one may call it, because it provokes tentative conclusions—-on factors influencing it that might be used by readers, especially youths, to direct the life course out of the usual pattern for a life cycle of the place and period; so, details need to be given of the antecedents and the birth and early raising environment. I am following Erik Erikson’s 8-stage life cycle idea but, as his early stages slavishly follow Sigmund Freud, I have combined them into one Childhood and really started at what I call the encountering phase of this individual life in teenage.
Just to comment, he had good luck to have 2 loving normal parents, a good ethnic cultural background, and especially in Mannie a father who was cosmopolitan, well-read, a professional and gave a father’s love and thoughtfulness for his son’s good future. Anna devoted herself to home and children and fostered an interest in good health.
So his first decade in the Bronx gave him a solid character and a good developing mind.
Puberty started at age 9 , first noted from swelling and tenderness of breast nipples in the schoolyard one morning. From his friend he learned about masturbation and tried it and soon was doing it every day.
This novel begins with the gleam. It happened April 1932 in New York City and the man was married to the woman. His single sperm of billions in one hit the mark and punctured the wife's ovum. A life begins. But not yet.
What about consciousness, about spirit, about soul? Where did this added person come from, where would it go?
We'll see. Or perhaps we won’t
Nine months pass in the wife's womb.
Birth at the start of 1933. What is the environment? New York City, a hospital in downtown Manhattan; then, a few days later, a 5-room apartment on Rochambeau Avenue, north-central Bronx.
The parents, Anna and Menachem (Mannie), she the 2nd daughter of immigrants from what is today SW Ukraine; Jews, he, immigrated from same place (they were distant cousins). This their 3rd and last (married 1919; previously 2 sons, 1920 and 1924).
Mannie had a remarkable early life: oldest son of a peddlar, was affected by Zionism as youth, at 15 he left home walking one thousand miles across eastern Europe from Lvov (now Poland) to Trieste and there hiring aboard a ship to Suez and there jumping ship for Palestine where he lived for a year as military guard on a Kibbutz. Meanwhile his father, having immigrated first to New York City, wrote him to come there and he did. A little later the USA got into World War 1 and Mannie with his previous military training joined the American Expeditionary force under Black Jack Pershing and soon was a corporal fighting in France where he was wounded at the Battle of Chateau Thierry. He was already affianced to Anna and on return to NYC he married her. He attended NYU graduating as an accountant and then made CPA and by 1929 he had gone on to law school and in 1931 opened a partnership with an Irish Catholic politician and a WASP upper class attorney on 29 Broadway.
By the way, this is not going to be a biography; it will be an experimental observation of a very unusual life—-an experimental life, one may call it, because it provokes tentative conclusions—-on factors influencing it that might be used by readers, especially youths, to direct the life course out of the usual pattern for a life cycle of the place and period; so, details need to be given of the antecedents and the birth and early raising environment. I am following Erik Erikson’s 8-stage life cycle idea but, as his early stages slavishly follow Sigmund Freud, I have combined them into one Childhood and really started at what I call the encountering phase of this individual life in teenage.
Just to comment, he had good luck to have 2 loving normal parents, a good ethnic cultural background, and especially in Mannie a father who was cosmopolitan, well-read, a professional and gave a father’s love and thoughtfulness for his son’s good future. Anna devoted herself to home and children and fostered an interest in good health.
So his first decade in the Bronx gave him a solid character and a good developing mind.
Puberty started at age 9 , first noted from swelling and tenderness of breast nipples in the schoolyard one morning. From his friend he learned about masturbation and tried it and soon was doing it every day.
But to interject, one should not get the idea it was a perfect start and he was the ideal good lad. As time went on he exhibited many repeated bad behaviors due, I think, to the omission of having an older mentor to guide him to more moral, ethical, responsible, caring behavior. The need for an older, wise mentor is a key to final success in child raising.
In January 1944 his dad bought him a Gilbert Chemical Set for 11th birthday. This proved seminal in stimulating him toward a science career. Note he was only a 6th grader in Public School then when no science teaching was being done and on his own at home he did all the set-suggested experiments and afterwards he made his own concoctions and bought chemicals and apparatus and by spring 1945 one experiment blew up in his face.
In 1944 his dad further inserted his parental influence by taking him to see two movies: The Adventures of Mark Twain, release date May 6, 1944, and Mrs Skeffington, release date May 25, 1944. These stimulated his literary and social tastes, especially Mrs S about being Jewish. About the same time, released April 26, 1944, on his own while playing hookie from school one afternoon he saw the movie, The Hitler Gang, which also had a seminal affect on his political and sexual consciousness, the latter because by chance in the movie-house seat he found himself sitting one row in front of a fellow student, Beatrice, who also was playing hookie and he felt her up between her legs with his hand draped behind his seat and then walking home with her told her how he masturbated. But he never followed it up.
In PS 94 (to 6th grade, graduated Jan. 1945), PS 80 (7th and 8th grades, 1945 and 46) and first. 2 years in DeWitt Clinton Highschool he was a juvenile delinquent, playing hookie frequently, and going down to the Paramount movie theater on 42nd St or else fishing with pal PeWee in nearby Vancortland Lake for sunfish. But at start of 3rd year HS he became as his gang friends called him “The Brain” because of his Chemistry course and a sexy young middle aged teacher, Mrs Greenblatt. This chemistry course stimulus spread to his other courses so he became a straight-A student to his dad’s delight because it helped to pave the way to becoming a doctor.
As he moved into mid and late teenage his reading developed into Hemingway, Faulkner, Dos Paros, Philip Wylie, and Steinbeck. These each inflamed his romantic and political imagination and he approached his first Eriksonian life cycle crisis of Identity vs Role Confusion.
Note I ignore Erikson’s 4 birth to childhood stages—-1. Oral-sensory, 2. Muscular-anal,
3. Locomotor-genital and 4. Latency—- because they are Freudian jargon that have no basis in fact but are much better expressed by saying he had a loving, well-bonded upbringing by two experienced, good parents who supplied all his needs and allowed him to have a good socialization with his peers on the streets.
He understood that his father expected him to be a doctor for the routine reasons of a middle class Jewish parent of that time. But he saw himself rather as a romantic successful left wing revolutionary writer.
So the stage was set for a dramatic act. In Spring 1952 he nearly enlisted in the Navy going as far as taking the physical before backing out of the actual swearing in. Six months later he enlisted in the U.S. Army. The die was cast. His act he named later “Encountering.” A seeking of adventure, a real idyll, an identity crisis.
The 3-year Army stint instilled good qualities: orderliness, cleanliness; it also allowed for experience with all social classes and ethnics. He learned how to take orders, do a job, be member of a team. As yet he had not acquired an identity. Would he become a doctor or a writer like Hemingway? His high score on the Army test allowed him to chose the Army Language School where he was assigned to study Russian for a year from March 1953. Then he was posted to Japan. Now came the formative experience for his later life.
Sex for Real: in fall 1950 he ended his virginity. Through a pal, Gus, they got the number of Rosie. You call her and make an appointment for Sex at $5 a go. He and Gus called and got Rosie herself and next day, a weekday late in the afternoon he drove the 1950 Chrysler his dad had bought him for his upcoming highschool graduation with honors and his soon-to-start pre-med course at uptown NYU down to the address she gave them on Fox St in SE Bronx. It was a dilapidated Hispanic section. An ancient brownstone walkup. He parked in front and went up first leaving Gus to mind the new car.
At top stairs he encountered, indeed, was almost knocked over by a squat, working stiff type of guy who had just exited from the door at top of stairs. Regaining balance he stepped up to the dilapidated door and diffidently knocked and got a Cum in! And entered. There was Rosie!
In January 1944 his dad bought him a Gilbert Chemical Set for 11th birthday. This proved seminal in stimulating him toward a science career. Note he was only a 6th grader in Public School then when no science teaching was being done and on his own at home he did all the set-suggested experiments and afterwards he made his own concoctions and bought chemicals and apparatus and by spring 1945 one experiment blew up in his face.
In 1944 his dad further inserted his parental influence by taking him to see two movies: The Adventures of Mark Twain, release date May 6, 1944, and Mrs Skeffington, release date May 25, 1944. These stimulated his literary and social tastes, especially Mrs S about being Jewish. About the same time, released April 26, 1944, on his own while playing hookie from school one afternoon he saw the movie, The Hitler Gang, which also had a seminal affect on his political and sexual consciousness, the latter because by chance in the movie-house seat he found himself sitting one row in front of a fellow student, Beatrice, who also was playing hookie and he felt her up between her legs with his hand draped behind his seat and then walking home with her told her how he masturbated. But he never followed it up.
In PS 94 (to 6th grade, graduated Jan. 1945), PS 80 (7th and 8th grades, 1945 and 46) and first. 2 years in DeWitt Clinton Highschool he was a juvenile delinquent, playing hookie frequently, and going down to the Paramount movie theater on 42nd St or else fishing with pal PeWee in nearby Vancortland Lake for sunfish. But at start of 3rd year HS he became as his gang friends called him “The Brain” because of his Chemistry course and a sexy young middle aged teacher, Mrs Greenblatt. This chemistry course stimulus spread to his other courses so he became a straight-A student to his dad’s delight because it helped to pave the way to becoming a doctor.
As he moved into mid and late teenage his reading developed into Hemingway, Faulkner, Dos Paros, Philip Wylie, and Steinbeck. These each inflamed his romantic and political imagination and he approached his first Eriksonian life cycle crisis of Identity vs Role Confusion.
Note I ignore Erikson’s 4 birth to childhood stages—-1. Oral-sensory, 2. Muscular-anal,
3. Locomotor-genital and 4. Latency—- because they are Freudian jargon that have no basis in fact but are much better expressed by saying he had a loving, well-bonded upbringing by two experienced, good parents who supplied all his needs and allowed him to have a good socialization with his peers on the streets.
He understood that his father expected him to be a doctor for the routine reasons of a middle class Jewish parent of that time. But he saw himself rather as a romantic successful left wing revolutionary writer.
So the stage was set for a dramatic act. In Spring 1952 he nearly enlisted in the Navy going as far as taking the physical before backing out of the actual swearing in. Six months later he enlisted in the U.S. Army. The die was cast. His act he named later “Encountering.” A seeking of adventure, a real idyll, an identity crisis.
The 3-year Army stint instilled good qualities: orderliness, cleanliness; it also allowed for experience with all social classes and ethnics. He learned how to take orders, do a job, be member of a team. As yet he had not acquired an identity. Would he become a doctor or a writer like Hemingway? His high score on the Army test allowed him to chose the Army Language School where he was assigned to study Russian for a year from March 1953. Then he was posted to Japan. Now came the formative experience for his later life.
Sex for Real: in fall 1950 he ended his virginity. Through a pal, Gus, they got the number of Rosie. You call her and make an appointment for Sex at $5 a go. He and Gus called and got Rosie herself and next day, a weekday late in the afternoon he drove the 1950 Chrysler his dad had bought him for his upcoming highschool graduation with honors and his soon-to-start pre-med course at uptown NYU down to the address she gave them on Fox St in SE Bronx. It was a dilapidated Hispanic section. An ancient brownstone walkup. He parked in front and went up first leaving Gus to mind the new car.
At top stairs he encountered, indeed, was almost knocked over by a squat, working stiff type of guy who had just exited from the door at top of stairs. Regaining balance he stepped up to the dilapidated door and diffidently knocked and got a Cum in! And entered. There was Rosie!
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