5
With this new book, Jerome Weidman returns once
again to the scene of Four , h Street East to tell an-
other tale of Benny Kramer--and his mother, the
bootlegger.
When Benny s mother dies of an "accident" at the
age of eighty-three, it falls upon her son to make the
arrangements for the funeral, and more immediately,
to locate and identify the body. And so Jerome Weid-
man is launched into a dual tale: the search for Mrs.
Kramer s remains-which mysteriously disappeared
somewhere between the hospital and the morgue-
and the rediscovery of his own past on East Fourth
Street.
Mrs. Kramer had been, to
Tough and resourceful, she
put it mildly, unusual.
was totally dedicated to
the survival of her immigrant family. To insure that
survival, she had entered into a "double life": mother
-and bootlegger. But she spoke not a word of Eng-
lish, and so had to enlist the help of her fourteen-
year-old son. Benny s role in the whole affair was
first that of translator, and later, transporter of alco-
holic beverages. The situations in which this naive-
but enterprising-young boy proceeded to find him-
self caught, as he tried to collect and deliver eighteen
bottles of booze to the Shumansky wedding, are wild-
ly funny: the meetings on the docks with the blond
"southern gentleman" Walter Sinclair; the scheme to
steal the boy scout hike wagon, without which the
plan would founder; Benny s work at Lebenbaum s
candy store, with the slot machine in the back and
the Zabriskie sisters brothel upstairs; the startling
ending of the wedding ceremony itself; the coming of
Mr. Kelly of the Treasury Department to investigate
the citizens of East Fourth Street; and finally, the
uniquedisaster that climaxes this delightful novel.
Throughout all his recollections, Benny Kramer dis-
plays the warmth, the humor, the insight, and the
charm that so endeared him to readers of Fourth
Street East. Jerome Weidman h~s written another
funny and moving "novel of how it was,"
發表於2024-12-25
Last respects 2024 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載
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Last respects 2024 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載