Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue: A Novel of Pastry, Guilt, and Music [Hardcover]

Mark Kurlansky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 29, 2005

In his eagerly awaited debut novel, critically acclaimed author Mark Kurlansky entertains readers with a brilliant story bursting with the vivid events and culinary delights–even recipes–that made bestsellers out of his nonfiction works Cod, Salt, and 1968.

Nathan woke up on a Friday morning with the unshakable sense that during this day he would commit a catastrophic error in judgment. Something had been written by the gods, and Nathan Seltzer knew this was one Friday that he would regret. . . .

It’s the boom years of the 1980s, and life is closing in on Nathan Seltzer, who rarely travels beyond his suddenly gentrifying Lower East Side neighborhood. Between paralyzing bouts of claustrophobia, Nathan wonders whether he should cheat on his wife with Karoline, a German pastry maker whose parents may or may not have been Nazis. His father, Harry, is plotting with the 1960s boogaloo star Chow Mein Vega for the comeback of this dance craze. Meanwhile, a homicidal drug addict is terrorizing the neighborhood.

With its cast of unforgettable characters, Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue is a comedy of cultures, of the old and the new, of Latinos, Jews, Sicilians, and Germans. It’s about struggling to hold on to life in a rapidly changing world, about food and sex, and about how our lives are shaped by love and guilt.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The bestselling author of 1968, Salt and Cod makes an uneven transition to fiction in his first novel, an erratic snapshot of the East Village's ethnic melting pot set during the late 1980s. The story opens with a bang when a Jewish restaurant owner is murdered in the first chapter, a tragedy that sends protagonist Nathan Seltzer into spasms of anxiety as he wonders if he should cash in, sell his lucrative property (the Meshugaloo Copy Shop) and leave his drug-riddled neighborhood. But Kurlansky ditches that promising subplot to track Nathan's erotic, pastry-obsessed affair with the daughter of a German baker. Nathan's brother Harry also enters the picture as he engineers his own affair with a hefty, African-American prostitute and junkie named Florence. Unfortunately, there isn't much rhyme or reason to the rest of the novel, which consists mostly of scattershot introductions of wacky secondary characters, including a Latin drug dealer who becomes a successful restaurant owner, a therapist who tries to help Nathan conquer his claustrophobia while passionately rooting for the Mets, and a singer named Chow Mein Vega who incorporates Yiddish influences into his lone dance hit. Occasionally the scenes are funky and entertaining, but the lack of a story line eventually wins out over Kurlansky's obvious love of the neighborhood.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

This novel covers very little territory geographically, but its human characters stretch from the shtetl to Caribbean isles and beyond. These denizens of New York's Lower East Side come from Germany, Italy, Poland, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. Mashed together on very little land, lives collide and combine in a maelstrom of languages, customs, foods, addictions, and violence. The beginnings of neighborhood gentrification foreshadow imminent change. Kurlansky's apt description of all this is meshugaloo, a combination of Yiddish and Spanish words that points to a sort of radical craziness. Amidst all this, Nathan Seltzer tries to fend off Kopy Katz, a predatory chain eager to swallow up his little photocopy shop, which plays a benevolent role in neighborhood life. Meanwhile, Nathan also has his eye on the daughter of the German pastry-shop owner. A mysterious murderer adds a frisson to this melange of foods and funk. Anyone not intimate with both Yiddish and Spanish and the folkways of Manhattan may find some of this story opaque. The author closes with recipes for caponata, bacala, pasteles, and kugelhopf. Based on the popularity of his nonfiction books, including Cod (1997), expect demand. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; First Edition edition (March 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345448189
• ISBN-13: 978-0345448187
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,454,663 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mark Kurlansky is a New York Times bestselling and James A. Beard Award-winning author. He is the recipient of a Bon Appétit American Food and Entertaining Award for Food Writer of the Year, and the Glenfiddich Food and Drink Award for Food Book of the year.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An incredibly sweet novel (in a very good sense), January 8, 2006

By 

James W. Wilson "Consumer of literature" (Manhattan, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue: A Novel of Pastry, Guilt, and Music (Hardcover)

On at least three occasions during my reading of this novel, I found myself in tears. Not from sadness, but from joy at the beauty of Kurlansky's writing. I can't really explain this reaction, except to say that it is a perfect depiction of Manhattan's lower east side, and its inhabitants, at the end of its role as the melting pot of immigrant culture, and the beginning of what it is today- the melting pot of American yuppy transplant culture.

The time frame of this novel is the late Reagan period, when drug sales were an engine of economic development for many striving Caribbean immigrants, and something affecting the previous generation of Jewish immigrants' scions. But this is merely one aspect of this multi-faceted mini-saga. Ultimately, this is, in the Seinfeldian sense, a novel about "nothing". But it's a vastly entertaining and engrossing "nothing".

Not being conversant with Kurlansky's other works, I was slightly shocked at his post-conclusion chapter of recipes for dishes mentioned in the plot. I would normally avoid food-themed novels like the plague. However this one could work with or without the recipes or the loving (and lustful) depictions of pastry-making in the "plot". Foodies can consider this aspect as a lagniappe- non-foodies can stop there, and not miss a thing.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious Slice of New York, January 27, 2006

By 

Staci Beasley "Modern Muse" (Norman, OK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue: A Novel of Pastry, Guilt, and Music (Hardcover)

I read this book and was pleased to find a fantastic jumble of characters, philosophies, and pathos. Each character, even the "bad" ones, is treated humanely by the author. The last moment of the simpatico culture of this New York neighborhood in the late 1980's is captured joyfully.

4.0 out of 5 stars Cultural kaleidoscope of a neighborhood caught on the cusp of conversion, August 21, 2007

By 

Mr. Chips (Columbia, MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue: A Novel of Pastry, Guilt, and Music (Hardcover)

Mark Kurlansky, author of best-selling non-fiction niche histories about Cod, Oysters, and Salt, tackled this fiction work, that integrates his Lower East Side upbringing and love of pastry, early on in his career. My version was an audio rendition, narrated by a Broadway actor whose name I can't recall, who really provided color and atmosphere to the reading.

The story revolves around a middle-aged Jewish man and his family, who have lived in the neighborhood for several generations. It's hard to say exactly what the plot is; as I reflect on it, it seems mostly to deal with the man's guilt-ridden affair with a German baker's daughter. Also prevalent, plot-wise, are: a dilemma about selling the family business as the neighborhood grows and becomes more expensive; the travails of a Dominican (or is it Puerto Rican?) trying to get out of the drug business; a murderer stalking the local ATM machines; an uncle's search for the German baker's nazi past; and more.

I was impressed with Kurlansky's intimate knowledge about the neighborhood's ethnic cultures and characters, many of whom must have been far removed from his own American/European background. I lived in the neighborhood during the same period, and he brought forth here vivid details about people who I saw but interacted with only superficially. This seems to me to be the triumph of this book: its wonderland mix of ethnicity, whose unique apsects Kurlansky makes vivid. Stamaty's chaotic cover really nails this aspect of book, and the virtuoso narrator's uncanny & subtle characterizations in the audio version make it a listerner's delight.

Unfortunately, this may be the book's downfall too, as there are so many characters that I became confused... and with all the plot lines, the book loses any natural trajectory it might have had if Kurlansky had focused on fewer characters and plots. I might not have finished the book had I not gotten the audio version. Still, I enjoyed it, thought it illuminating and interesting, and certainly an accurate and heartfelt portrayal of a neighborhood that has, sadly, greatly changed since the 1980s.