Customer Reviews

The Mensch: A Novel

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David Weiss's "The Mensch" is about a pivotal day in the life of Leon Roth, a landlord's agent for a group of run-down apartment buildings in the South Bronx. The main action of the novel takes place in his visit to one of the buildings, trying to collect late rent from deadbeat tenants and checking up on the incompetent superintendent, many of whose tasks Leon ends up doing himself.

Leon is continually distracted by memories of his ex-girlfriend Magda, who had suffered some kind of mental breakdown years ago. Despite his best efforts, he was unable to help her, to bring her back from the brink of self-destruction, and even was blamed for her problem by Magda's mother. The apartment building is his redemption. Here he can be what his boss, Mr. Fein, calls a "mensch," that is, a man, a responsible person. He finds satisfaction and deliverance in taking care of this building, filled with destitute, broken people who don't know how to take care of themselves. He is meek and reticent and probably not well suited to dealing with uncooperative and rowdy tenants, but he sticks with the job because he feels he has to prove something to himself; he has to be a mensch.

On this particular day, Mr. Fein has decided to sell the troublesome building to a rival landlord named Hakim, whose negligence for his own slums makes Fein's buildings look like the Waldorf Astoria by comparison. When Leon confronts Fein and Hakim during the closing of the deal, his emotions reach a boiling point when he senses his responsibility, his chance to be a mensch, being taken away from him. Leon's name means "lion," of course, a normally gentle and mellow animal that springs into ferocity when provoked.

This novel is bleak in both its setting and its mood, but the grayness of the story is counterbalanced by Weiss's use of colorful, original similes and metaphors found on every page. It is a unique portrayal of an unhappy young man who is struggling to grow up in his own way (Why is he carrying around the faucet all day? Is it a symbol of the manhood he is trying to assert?) and find value in his existence.