Letters Read Online Free Page A

when I was about thirteen. He and I were very mischievous and we used to translate—or parody—famous poems into Yiddish, just for fun. That’s why we did T. S. Eliot. So: In dem zimmer / vu die waibers zinnen / redt men fun Karl Marx und Lenin . . .”) Both parents inculcate early love of nineteenth-century Russian literature.
     
    1930 Following graduation from Sabin Junior High, enters Tuley High School, where, in addition to Rosenfeld, friends include Oscar Tarcov, Louis Sidran, Abe Kaufman, Sam Freifeld, David Peltz, Hymen Slate, Louis Lasco, Stuart Brent, Rosalyn Tureck, George Reedy, Nathan Gould, Herbert Passin, Yetta Barshevsky and Zita Cogan. (“The children of Chicago bakers, tailors, peddlers, insurance agents, pressers, cutters, grocers, the sons of families on relief, were reading buckram-bound books from the public library and were in a state of enthusiasm, having found themselves on the shore of a novelistic land to which they really belonged, discovering their birthright, hearing incredible news from the great world of culture, talking to one another about the mind, society, art, religion, epistemology, and doing all this in Chicago.”) Collaborates with childhood friend Sydney J. Harris—later well-known columnist at Chicago Daily News —on novel. Sydney brings book to New York; is taken up by John Dos Passos and Pascal Covici among others. (“In the opinion of the New York experts who had read our manuscript, Sydney was an obvious winner. Covici the publisher had commissioned a book on Chicago’s revolutionary youth and paid Sydney an advance of two hundred dollars. In the judgment of the publishing illuminati, I would do well to enter my father’s business.”)
     
    1931-32 Abram’s fortunes improve, despite Depression. Family moves from West to East Humboldt Park. (“We belonged to the heart of the country. We were at home in the streets, in the bleachers. I remember portly sonorous Mr. Sugerman, the schochet on Division Street, singing out the names of the states during the Democratic roll call, broadcast on the radio, that nominated FDR. He did this in cantorial Jewish style, as though he were standing at the prayer desk, proud of knowing the correct order from A to W, an American patriot who wore a black rabbinical beard.”)
     
    1933 In January, graduates from Tuley and enrolls at Crane Junior College in Chicago Loop. At home, frequent political arguments between father and son. (“For some reason Trotsky took a very powerful hold in certain American cities and Chicago was one of them. To read Trotsky’s History of the Revolution was an eye-opener—even though most of it was party-line; we didn’t know that at the time. And this caused conflict at home because my father didn’t want me reading Lenin. He was very shrewd about such things, and he knew a lot about what was going on in the Soviet Union in the Twenties, and he knew much more about it than I did. I would have done well and saved myself a lot of trouble if I had listened to him, because he had it straight from the very beginning.”) Mother dies after long battle with breast cancer. In autumn Sol enrolls at University of Chicago, following Rosenfeld’s lead. (“[Isaac’s] color was generally poor, yellowish. At the University of Chicago during the Thirties, this was the preferred intellectual complexion.”) Rents furnished room at Hyde Park boardinghouse.
     
    1934 Abram, now owner and manager of the Carroll Coal Company, remarries. Sol and friend Herb Passin ride the rails as far as New York and Montreal. Both briefly arrested in Detroit.
     
    1935 Family faces financial reversals. Abram can no longer send Sol to University of Chicago. Transfers to Northwestern; studies English literature; also anthropology under Melville J. Herskovits, influential social scientist of the day. (“I learned that what was right among the African Masai was wrong with the Eskimos. Later I saw that this was a treacherous