The Williamsburg Trilogy by Daniel Fuchs

First published:Summer in Williamsburg, 1934; Homage to Blenholt, 1936; Low Company, 1937 (First published together as Three Novels: Summer in Williamsburg, Homage to Blenholt, Low Company, 1961; published as The Williamsburg Trilogy: Summer in Williamsburg, Homage to Blenholt, Low Company, 1972)

Type of plot: Surrealism

Time of work: The 1930’s

Locale: Primarily the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, New York

Principal Characters:

Summer in Williamsburg

• Philip Hayman, a senior at New York City College
• Mr. Hayman, Philip’s father
• Sam Linck, one of Philip’s neighbors
• Uncle Papravel, Philip’s uncle

Homage to Blenholt

• Max Balkan, a dreamer
• Mandel Munves, an amateur etymologist
• Coblenz, a gambler
• Rita, Max’s sister
• Ruth, Max’s girlfriend
• Mr. Balkan, and
• Mrs. Balkan, Max’s parents

Low Company

• Louie Spitzbergen, a soda shop owner
• Moe Karty, a gambler
• Shubunka, the owner of a string of houses of prostitution
• Arthur, a dishwasher

The Novels

The Williamsburg Trilogy consists of three separate novels, Summer in Williamsburg, Homage to Blenholt, and Low Company. Each has a separate plot and group of characters. All are set for the most part in and around the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. The first two involve mainly characters who live on Ripple Street in Williamsburg. The third is set primarily in Neptune Beach, a seaside resort based, critics say, on either Brighton Beach or Coney Island. Summer in Williamsburg consists of a series of vignettes focussing on different characters whose lives weave together, often simply by virtue of their living in the same area. Although Philip Hayman, the book’s central character, has no contact with Sam Linck, Linck’s tempestuous relationship with his wife and mother and adulterous relationship with Marge figure prominently. Still, Philip and Linck live in the same building, where Sam’s mother is landlady.

The novel traces Philip’s growing awareness of Williamsburg as part of the lives of the people who live there. The book begins with the suicide of one of Philip’s neighbors and includes the suicide of the man’s wife and her murder of their children; the attempted suicide of Philip’s friend, Cohen, a dreamer and bungler; and Cohen’s death in a fire in the tenement in which they live. It also traces the rise of Philip’s Uncle Papravel, of whom Philip’s father disapproves and for whom Philip’s brother Harry works. Papravel’s thugs intimidate Morand, owner of the Silver Eagle Bus Line, to get him to shut his Williamsburg office. Papravel works for Rubin, president of the Empire Bus Line, who wants a monopoly on the lucrative summer business between Williamsburg and the Catskill Mountains. Papravel puts Morand out of business and becomes president of the Silver Eagle Line, with Rubin as his vice president.

Homage to Blenholt traces Max Balkan’s growth from jobless dreamer immersed in get-rich schemes involving no work on his part to person determined to get a job, help his parents financially, and marry his girlfriend Ruth. Mandel Munves, an unemployed amateur etymologist, proposes to Rita, Max’s sister, and comes up with what seems the impossible idea of running a delicatessen with Max. As a result of a gift of three hundred dollars from Coblenz to Max’s mother out of his gambling winnings, the dream may come true.

The book’s title comes from Max’s determination to attend the funeral of Blenholt, the commissioner of sewers. Max venerates Blenholt, a petty criminal. Max never met Blenholt but is determined to attend the funeral. Coblenz and Munves, who promised to go, desert Max, so he goes with Ruth, who never wanted to go. During the funeral procession and memorial service, Max makes a fool of himself, and Ruth flees. Late in the novel, one of his get-rich schemes seems about to bear fruit. He suggests that a group of onion growers bottle onion juice. A group representative meets with Max and tells him that they have been bottling it for years. Instead of returning with hundreds of dollars, Max returns with a bag of onions.

In Low Company, Shubunka runs a string of whorehouses in Neptune Beach. When a syndicate gives him part of a day to get out of town or be killed, he argues that he too is human and deserves to be treated with dignity. He tries to hire thugs to oppose the syndicate, but none will work for him. He tries unsuccessfully to bribe some hoodlums who work for the syndicate. After two thugs beat him and he realizes he is in real danger, he tries to hide at Herbert Lurie’s apartment but thinks the syndicate has followed him there. He is last seen fleeing for his life.

Spitzbergen owns Ann’s, a soda shop in Neptune Beach, but he also owns some apartment houses and rents them to Shubunka. When the syndicate takes over, their men tell Spitzbergen that he now does business with them, and he reluctantly agrees. He immediately abandons Shubunka in spite of the years of their relationship. He does not want to get mixed up with the syndicate but feels that he has no choice.

Moe Karty was a successful accountant. He is now a gambler who thinks he has a sure system for making a fortune on the races but cannot find anyone to back him. He stole money from his wife’s brothers, and they demand its immediate return. Her brother Harry beats Karty, and they threaten him with greater pain. Karty convinces Arthur, Spitzbergen’s dishwasher, to steal twenty dollars from Ann’s cash register. With the money, Karty takes Arthur to the races and loses. Later that day, Karty begs Spitzbergen for money. When Spitzbergen says no, Karty loses his temper and beats Spitzbergen to death.

The Characters

Different characters people each of the works in the trilogy. In Summer in Williamsburg, many of the characters, such as Philip, Cohen, Sam Linck, Harry, Papravel, Mr. Hayman, and Mrs. Hayman, are fully realized individuals. Even many of the minor characters, including Mrs. Linck (Sam’s mother), Anna Linck (Sam’s wife), Marge (Sam’s girlfriend), Miller (a miser), and Morand, come to life. In his attempts to understand Williamsburg, Philip grows. Sam, however, remains static, taking up with Marge again and again, even after she gets into a fight with Mrs. Linck and Anna, makes anti-Semitic remarks, and gets some of her friends to beat Sam, and after Anna catches Marge and Sam together. Cohen changes moods rapidly but never grows. Morand finally becomes an attractive figure when Papravel breaks his spirit. Papravel, however, is a ruthless gangster who stands by his men, even when one of them kills a state trooper. He singlemindedly pursues his goals, destroying anyone getting in his way. His brother-in-law, Philip’s father, always is concerned with leading a moral life. Mrs. Hayman constantly helps others and ministers to the needs of her family. Philip ultimately decides that he admires his father tremendously and that the life of someone like Papravel is not for him.

The characters in Homage to Blenholt are closer to being types. Max is a dreamer, so caught up in his schemes that he does not recognize that people suffer because of him. Munves is so absorbed by his small etymological discoveries that he does not notice the problems in the world around him.

Coblenz suffers from toothache, gets drunk, breaks things in his apartment, wins money, and gives it to Mrs. Balkan, telling her to take it, for he does not need it, and adds, “I was just thinking of jumping off the roof.” Mrs. Balkan insists, “It’s only for lend.” As soon as Coblenz leaves the Balkan apartment, however, he regrets having given away the money. Max, Munves, and Coblenz have been classified as schlemiels, a Yiddish term for bunglers and habitual victims.

None of the characters in Low Company is honest or even concerned with honesty. All are self-centered and, with the possible exceptions of Arthur and Shubunka, willing to hurt others without hesitation in pursuit of their own goals. Karty is the worst. He has no sense of responsibility for the money he stole from his brothers-in-law. He gets furious when people refuse to lend him money, so much so that he beats Spitzbergen to death when he finally refuses. He has no qualms about getting Arthur to steal money from Spitzbergen’s cash register.

Critical Context

The Williamsburg Trilogy was at first largely ignored. According to Fuchs, Summer in Williamsburg and Homage to Blenholt each sold only four hundred copies, and Low Company sold only twelve hundred. Only after the three novels were published did Fuchs conceive of them as a trilogy. In 1961, they were reissued under one cover; Fuchs then began to get critical recognition. When Fuchs later went to Hollywood to write movie scripts, one of the movies he wrote was The Gangster (1947), based on Low Company.

Fuchs is sometimes compared to Nathanael West, especially in Day of the Locust (1939), West’s chronicle of Hollywood in the 1930’s, in which West focuses on the difference between humanity’s possibilities and humanity’s actualities. In style, too, the trilogy is compared to West’s work, since both tend to be surrealistic, especially Low Company, with its nightmarish vision.

Fuchs’s novels focus on relatively poor, secularized Jews living in New York City. Thus, they resemble works like Michael Gold’s Jews Without Money (1930) and Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep (1934), although Fuchs apparently shares none of the left-wing political concerns of Roth and Gold. Yet like Roth’s and Gold’s works, the trilogy has been labeled basically as a work of the Great Depression.

Bibliography

Fiedler, Leslie A. To the Gentiles. New York: Stein and Day, 1972. A brief, largely negative treatment of Fuchs in the context of Jewish American literature. Fiedler, though, praises Homage to Blenholt.

Guttmann, Allen. The Jewish Writer in America: Assimilation and the Crisis of Identity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Briefly examines the trilogy in the context of other Jewish American works that treat the generational conflict as the children of immigrants become more and more Americanized.

Klein, Marcus. Foreigners: The Making of American Literature, 1900-1940. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Gives sensitive, perceptive readings of all works in the trilogy. Places them in the context of the contributions of “foreigners” to building a distinctively American literature.

Miller, Gabriel. Daniel Fuchs. Boston: Twayne, 1979. A book-length introduction to Fuchs’s life and writing. Contains careful readings of each book in the trilogy.

Sherman, Bernard. The Invention of the Jew: Jewish-American Education Novels (1916-1964). New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1969. Treats surreal aspects of Summer in Williamsburg.