cover image The Mensch

The Mensch

David Weiss. Mid-List Press, $14 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-922811-32-8

Winner of the publisher's 1996 First Series Award for a first novel, this lyrical, gritty debut is a Jewish-American novel situated self-consciously in the tradition of Malamud and Bellow. But, set in the crime-ridden, graffiti-infested South Bronx of the near-present, it voices the raw pain and anguish of the inner city. Sensitive, caring Leon Roth, just 25, seems not cut out to be landlord of the decrepit Bronx apartment buildings he manages. He's a mensch, and his inability to deal with evictions, leaking pipes and disruptive tenants adds resonance to the ironic undertones implicit in the title (""A mensch doesn't like being called one.... It's a burden, a kind of curse. Like being born with a bit in your mouth instead of a silver spoon""). A walking pressure-cooker (he explodes in the story's climax, a verbal showdown with a Lebanese slumlord), Leon is guiltily haunted by memories of Magda Serce, his hippie-ish Catholic ex-girlfriend and live-in lover, who went crazy and was institutionalized. Weiss, a poet, essayist and comparative literature professor, was born in the Bronx and has managed apartment buildings. While he displays remarkable powers of observation and a gift for description, he fails to build narrative momentum. And while the characters--Edgar Gaetana, a simpatico yet erratic Ecuadorian superintendent; Allan Fein, Roth's greedy, loudmouthed boss; retired Mr. Lieberman, an endearing, theatrical tenant whom Roth befriends--are not stereotypes, they behave in predictable fashion. (Jan.)