The Angel Max: A Novel - Hardcover

Glassgold, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151002207 ISBN 13: 9780151002207

Publisher: Harcourt Brace, 1998

Synopsis

Combining an intimate look at one family with an epic tale of the immigrant experience in the United States, a first novel follows the odyssey of Max Petrovich as he realizes his own American dream while trying to remain distant from communist relatives.

About this title

About the Author

Author of The Angel Max and former editor at New Directions, Peter Glassgold is a noted translator (Dutch, Old English, etc) and a distinguished novelist. He lives in upstate New York.

Reviews

In the 1870s, Russia is enduring a dark night of the soul while America is enjoying the Gilded Age. In his fiction debut, Glassgold (a translator of Dutch poetry), fitfully explores the contrast between the old world and the new through the person of Max Kraft, the Russian immigrant who narrates this interesting, intelligent but not quite dynamic novel. Adopted by his wealthy stepfather after his mother dies, Max finds himself drawn into Russian politics as a courier for his stepsister's small anarchist group. When the czar is assassinated, Max gets a taste of the anti-Semitic hysteria that results. So he emigrates to New York and becomes, in a few years, a real estate tycoon. Determined to embrace his new world, Max decides that there will be no old languages for him, no Yiddish, Russian or German. But how can he escape from history? His New York turns out to be as politically divisive as Russia. Emma Goldman is a cousin of his wife, Fanny. And then there are his anarchist stepsisters and his nihilist half-brother, Mishka, who mixes revolution with blackmail. Max, partly out of sympathy and partly out of fear of extortion, contributes money to various anarchist movements. Glassgold deals knowledgeably with the history of the left in America, from the Homestead riot to the deportation of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman in 1917. This lends the novel an edifying documentary tone, but Glassgold doesn't extract much drama from it. Max, as one of the characters says, is a cold fish, and readers may prefer the nihilists and anarchists to characters like the floundering Max.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From a veteran translator, a first novel that proves to be a lavishly detailed but emotionally tepid tale of revolutionary passions and politics in late 1880s New York. The Jewish narrator, Max Kraft, begins this long political saga in Tsarist-ruled Eastern Europe, where he was born in 1866. Like other principal characters here, Max is not a credible flesh-and-blood creation but, rather, resembles a subway car into which history and ideas are stuffed and then released at the appropriate junction. As a child, Max, unlike his half-sisters Sophie and Nina and half-brother Mishka, dreamed of emigrating to America. While his siblings were soon plotting to bring down the Tsar, Max taught himself English and read the novels of Fenimore Cooper. But he cant escape the politics of his sisters and their friends. He accidentally kills a Russian agent, acts as a courier, and once in the States, though he refuses to join their plots, becomes the financial backer``the Angel''of anarchists and revolutionaries. In Manhattan, he meets up with Zak, a fellow immigrant, and the two soon become wealthy builders and landlords; he marries Fanny, Emma Goldman's cousin, and has two children; his sisters escape from Siberia and continue their work, and Mishka turns into a radical thug. Max, always struggling to stay out of trouble, reluctantly bankrolls revolutionaries like the anarchist historian Kropotkin, hosts political discussions, and witnesses the famous Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire. But neither the times, nor his relatives and friends who plot, bomb, and attempt, like Sasha Berkman, assassinations, allow him to escape. As civil war breaks out in Russia, the US begins deporting foreign radicals, and, in a close call, Max finally becomes not just a good fellow but one of the revolutionary ``them.'' A light fictional gloss on history, with a disappointingly heavy and melodramatic hand. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

When Max's stepbrother is born in Kovno, near Riga, in 1870, he thinks Mishka looks like a boiled turnip and will not touch him. Max's tortured relationship with Mishka is at the center of this sprawling Dickensian tale that follows Max and a huge cast through immigration to New York City, the rise and growth of anarchism there, and the activities of Max's distant cousin Emma Goldman. No character appears who does not turn up later in some interconnected way; events like the assassination of McKinley, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and World War I impede. Through it all, Max clings to rationality, rejection of religion, and his passion for America as his talismans, keeping the anarchist/revolutionist cause at bay even as he contributes cash and, occasionally, support. Glassgold, a translator, has some lovely things to say about languages and their differences and relationships; he uses key images and repetition of phrases to hold the long tale together. GraceAnne A. DeCandido

Born in Lithuania in 1866, Max Kraft dreams of emigrating to America because there only one language is spoken and people understand each other. It is an easy dream to appreciate, given the political and social turmoil in eastern Europe during that period. As Max matures, his determination only hardens even as his siblings become caught up in the anarchist/nihilist underground. He finally makes it, marries well, and joins in the American dream as a real estate mogul in New York City. But try as he might, he cannot escape his past, becoming "an angel" for the anarchist cause?doling out dollars to help his sisters, his violent half-brother, and "Red Emma" Goldman herself. In the end, he finds that in America, too, people do not always understand. Glassgold's first novel is inventive and explores a fascinating sidebar of American history, but, alas, it does not quite grab the reader. What could have been a dynamite tale gets bogged down with too many characters and too much distracting detail. For public libraries where historical fiction is popular.?David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harcourt Brace
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0151002207
• ISBN 13: 9780151002207
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 450