Jerome Charyn’s first novel, Once Upon a Droshky (1964), confirmed his status as a premiere chronicler of Lower East Side Manhattan Yiddish life. In Droshky, Charyn dreamed up Mendel the pushcart peddler, Morris the fiddler, and the double-dealing Gershen. In Ravage & Son, this author of more than 50 books creates an early 20th Century New York City ghetto with characters such as Rabinowitz the apple peddler, Ravage the plumber, Polski the shoelace shill, Eastman the enforcer, and Brill the pickpocket instructor.
Charyn, 86, fashions his ghetto by blending historical figures with fictional ones – a nod to E. L. Doctorow. His knowledge of the Lower East Side is impressive. He takes us inside the Jewish Daily Forward on East Broadway with editor Abe Cahan, an historical figure, before we board an elevated train to the Pinnacle, a “dreary little café” on Rivington Street. In the evening, we stroll to the Bowery to observe Clara Karp “deliver […] her lines in Yiddish and English” at the Thalia Theatre. Charyn’s Lower East Side “was a boisterous slum, denser than Bombay, with sweatshops, cafeterias, [and] a “Pig Market.”
The author’s holographic characters are so spirited that we may believe they are still alive. As a young socialist in Russia, Cahan chafed against its autocratic society and hunted any Cossack who aligned with the czar. Here as editor of the Forward, he writes a lonely hearts column, begrudgingly takes advertising money from capitalists, and assists any woman reader in crisis. His protégé Ben Ravage, a rogue and Harvard-educated orphan, works for the Kehilla, “a quixotic gang backed by wealthy uptown patrons to help the police rid the Lower East Side of criminals.”
Lionel Ravage, a slumlord and owner of Ravage & Son hardware empire, is “a man with his own harem, who had spawned a whole tribe of bastards.” Jacob Schiff is the captain of the Kehilla who also runs Montefiore, a “home for Jewish cripples.” He “was the only one of the uptown aristocrats respected on the Lower East Side.”
Charyn’s description of Monk Eastman, Ben’s enforcer and historical figure, is daunting:
“Monk wore the tight jacket and flared trousers of a nineteenth-century hoodlum. His hobnailed boots could tell their own tale. He might erase any cadet [pimp] on Allen Street with half a dozen kicks. His swagger and a derby that was much too small for his pumpkin-size head were enough to make a den of gamblers and their bodyguards tremble.”
Charyn channels his inner Gabriel Garcia Márquez through Monk whose canaries escort him on every clean-up mission. Once they are released “The [roughnecks] stop […] in their tracks as the canaries they dreaded circle […]” above them.
Ravage is noir fiction powered by syntax and vocabulary (“shamas, shul, ganef”) that allow us to sidle up next to Ben, Monk, and Cahan on the mean streets of Lower East Side Manhattan. Charyn renders his suspenseful story with prose as mysterious as a Dybbuk. Both social commentary and a whodunit, Charyn’s novel incorporates stock features like the opulent mansion, femme fatale, early suspect, and a crooked police force.
Ben Ravage, Monk, and Cahan are at the center of the two conflicts – the hunt for a ripper who is killing women and Jews on the Lower East Side, and the turf battle between the uptown German Jews and the downtown Russian Jews who committed “half the crimes in the city.” At times, this clash pits Cahan directly against Lionel Ravage.
The streets are dangerous and unpredictable. Women are disappearing at an alarming rate. Ben’s mother was taken from him when he was six, a young woman is kidnapped, and Leila, Bad Babette’s lover, was “dredged out of the East River with bruise marks all over her body.”
Charyn portrays the disparity between social classes in describing Schiff’s home for chronic invalids, which is cloaked in luxury: “Ben was startled by the opulence of Montefiore. It didn’t smell of charity, at least not in the vestibule, with its marble pillars and chandeliers.” While Montefiore was the designation for downtown Jews, uptown Jews sent their grandparents to spacious houses in upstate New York.
In Ravage & Son, Charyn has formulated an entertaining street crime novel – but more, he tells a story about social issues relevant today including LGBT shame, class struggle, immigration standards, antisemitism, and balanced journalism. His talent at blending history with fiction results in his a magnificent portrait of the darker side of society. Having honed his mastery of craft for 60 years, Charyn is legitimately described by Michael Chabon as “one of the most important writers in American literature.”
[Published by Bellevue Literary Press on August 22, 2023, 288 pages, $17.99 paperback]