Customer Reviews

79 PARK AVENUE

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Story line is following the complicated life of a hooker in the NYC redlight district (Murry Hill neighborhood has changed considerably.)

I read this book 35 years ago. I was only 15 and I had to read it a paragraph at a time as I sneaked it out from under my brother's mattress. Spell bound and eyes gluded to the pages, I made it to the end. Thus, my first experience with a truly erotic story.

I later found out that EVERYONE had or eventually would read this book. It had only been out about 9 years at that time (1970) and had already shaped -- or rather open the eyes of American Youth more than the Kinsey Report.

This book is a classic (even though purists may label it trash.) It is well written, sensitive and highly erotic, even compared with today's explicit standards. I recommond it to anyone wanting to enjoy a good read or delve into the history of what helped cause a generation to change it's intire code of morals in one direction while moveing ethics in the opposite. It is books like this; aimed at the masses - that move people to revolution, change, and growth.

LOVE THE BOOK SAW THE MINISERIES AS A TEEN THE UNFORTUNATE EVENTS IN MARJA'S LIFE MADE HER THE BEAUTIFUL WOMEN SHE BECAME. I'LL PAY A WEEKS SALARY FOR THE VIDEO TAPE

Fantastically written book with many twists and turns and an AMAZING surprise ending. I agree with the "READER FROM HOUSTON", I'D REALLY LOVE TO SEE A MOVIE OF THIS ONE!!!

I read 79 Park Av. long time ago. And although I read many others since (also by Robbins), I still think it is one of the best books I've ever read. And certainly, one of the best of Robbins. No wonder it made it into the tv miniseries.

I quite liked how Robbins described the characters and their relationships. The plot is good, so real as the life comes at them with full strenght, putting them through lots of struggle, pain, but also through passion and love. On the other hand, he had still used enough of imagination in storytelling to keep you focused all the way through. If you like Robbins' books, you will love this one.

I did not read it...I gave it as a gift with other Harold Robbins books. It came on time and in the condition described.

I read 79 Park Avenue in college and was impressed. You couldn't call me a complete blockhead, because I was an Ivy League English major. Am planning to go back to Robbins but will probably start with one of his best known works, such as the Carpetbaggers. Another author I enjoy is Ian Fleming.

is one of the best books I ever read. I think is wonderful, sorry that is discontinue, I don't understand it.

It was good considering I don't really read books of his genre. I was entertained.

[...]Harold Robbins' "79 Park Avenue" is the single worst book I've ever read, and I read a lot of books. It was so stupid, so hateful, and so without any redeeming features such as humor or eroticism or even just interesting use of language that I often felt that merely to pick it up I should be wearing a haz mat suit.

I didn't read it for pleasure. I read it as part of long-term study of images of Polish people in American popular culture. The books contains gems like the following:

"The ash-blond Polack hair that feel like shimmering gold around her face, the wild wide mouth slashed sensually with scarlet, the slightly parted lips and white teeth just showing beneath their shadows" (page 10).

And this:

"The hot Polack blood is still runnin' around inside yuh, and yuh can't change that" (page 194).

Robbins can't even manage to spell the simplest of Polish words. "Fluudjincki," his character's last name, doesn't exist in Polish, or in any other language, for that matter.

But to call Harold Robbins' Marja Fluudjincki a character would be like calling a blow-up doll a human being. Robbins moves his pen on the page, not to give life to real people and real issues, although he'd have you believe that.

Rather, he wrote of a large breasted (you're reminded on almost every page), long legged, white blond Polack female who is relentlessly tormented by a world full of men who are eager to hurt her, and do. Robbins' creation is molested by a shop keeper, molested by a school chum, raped by her stepfather, screwed over by the criminal justice system, molested by a guard, forced to put on lesbian performances, betrayed by several fiances, her child is kidnapped and threatened . . . no need to continue. You get the idea. She is *not,* though, tied to a train track.

Please don't get the idea that this is a sexy book. It very much is not. There are no descriptions of humans engaging in sexual activity. None. The fewest number of words possible are used to inform the reader that Marja is about to be raped again, or has just been raped again. The only activity described in any detail are kisses, and these descriptions are flat and complete in four or five words.

Of course, the book offers zero verisimilitude. Robbins' inability to so much as find one believable Polish name for his character is reflective of a complete lack of reality on every page of the book.

Robbins repeatedly calls Marja "intelligent," or even, redundantly, "bright and intelligent" (page 10), savvy, and worldly wise beyond her years. Then, when he wants her, again, to be raped or mistreated or involved in some idiotic, easily cleared up misunderstanding that ruins her life, he gives Marja the IQ of an ashtray.

That's right. Though he tells us again and again how "bright and intelligent" this girl is, he never, in 406 pages of torments, gives her even the most basic IQ necessary to escape from the many torments he throws her way. This "character" who, in the previous paragraph, had displayed a wisdom of the world that mature adults might envy, appears to have had her entire brain erased, and she becomes the helpless, squirming, all too female female, ripe to be tormented again.

When it is convenient for Robbins to wrap up the book with a happy ending, again, he completely rejects any concept of verisimilitude and uses a crow bar to force a completely unbelievable happy ending into a text that, previously, had consisted solely of scenes of the humiliation and abuse of his heroine.

That Harold Robbins did very well, financially, writing this garbage speaks volumes. There are millions of people who will pay money to read empty, misogynist accounts of a beautiful "woman" being raped and tormented on page after page after page.

That nothing erotic ever happens in this book also speaks volumes. The erotic thrill Robbins provides and readers get has nothing to do with human pleasure; rather, it has everything to do with images of a helpless, squirming woman humiliated, disempowered, disappointed, and in pain.

The pivotal event that spirals young Marja's life into complete catastrophe, and removes her from her lifelines to any decency or hope, and the "nice guy" who loves her, is her rape and impregnation by her stepfather, an unemployed, lazy Polack drunk. Immediately after being impregnated by this rape, Marja is incarcerated, thus preventing her from terminating the pregnancy. It is this pregnancy, the book lets us know, that turns Marja from a teen tease who will probably settle down and marry her "nice guy" boyfriend into a full bore whore.

This episode, in this book, speaks volumes. For some, removing women from control over their own bodies and their own reproductive capacity is the supreme act of sexual sadism and misogyny.

Robbins provides this population with its ultimate sexual fantasy, not a fantasy involving mutual pleasure or life affirming activities, but the control of a woman with too much power, that power being the inappropriate power over men her body gives her.

The ultimate control over female power is to deny her autonomy over her own reproductive capacity. Here, pregnancy is not a blessing, but, rather, enforced pregnancy is the ultimate prison and punishment for an uppity female who is too female for her own good.