Out of Babylon: Ghosts of Grossinger's (Paperback)

~ (Author) "THE SUMMER AFTER revealed himself to be my father, Uncle Paul arranged for me to visit him at Grossinger's..." (more)
Key Phrases: planet medicine, nya nya, italicized section, New York, Aunt Bunny, North Atlantic (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Grossinger (The Night Sky, 1981; Embryogenesis, 1985), an anthropologist by training, a cultural rebel by inclination, and supposed heir apparent to the great, eponymous Catskill resort by birth, presents an intense, personal story in the form of a ``nonfiction novel.'' (He is also the publisher of offbeat material, including this text.) Here's the first line of his coming-of-age memoir: ``The summer after he revealed himself to be my father, Uncle Paul arranged for me to visit him at Grossinger's.'' That revelation- -which was not necessarily true--is part of life as the scion of a truly dysfunctional family, at one time the Royal Family of the Borscht Belt. There is, perforce, a quick history of the rise and fall of the Versailles in the Catskills as the hotel gained land, lakes, and tummelers only to eventually lose everything. But there is more brooding angst and self-absorption in what evolves into the writer's ``vision-quest'' for a father, spiritual as well as genetic. Grossinger seems to have remembered or imagined every painful or instructive discourse in his life. He recounts old dreams, lists every college course in which he enrolled, and enumerates the courses he taught. Then there's the tarot, tai chi, and homeopathic studies; the poets and baseball heroes; the shamans and Edgar Cayce; the UFOs and monuments on Mars. There's a mean mother and a painfully troubled brother. Also recalled are multiple fathers and a phalanx of counterculture colleagues. Sometimes it seems like a conflation of I.B. Singer and Dickens. Often it sounds like a transcript from an analyst's couch. This isn't the memoir, full of schmaltz and rye bread, one might expect from the grandson of Jennie Grossinger. Still, it is a well-written personal story, ultimately sad and disquieting because it rings true. (illustrations) (Author tour; radio satellite tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

"A strange and remarkable self-evaluation in the form of a novel - illuminating, tender, moving, evocative ... any number of adjectives of praise would be appropriate." - George Plimpton. "The story of Grossinger's Hotel - and the Grossinger family - is a Biblical epic that happens to be an essential place in the variegated puzzle of United States cultural history. Who better to parse the past and reveal and/or revile the secrets of the present than the gifted social anthropologist Richard Grossinger, himself an intimate devourer and divulger of details. Richard is an inveterate, compulsive story-teller, and this is his opus maximus, an analytical cride coeur of the first order." -- Barry Gifford

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Product Details

• Paperback: 600 pages
• Publisher: Frog Books; First Printing edition (October 30, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883319579
• ISBN-13: 978-1883319571
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #794,095 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars American Library Association Booklist review, January 20, 1998

By A Customer

Grossinger, a teacher, writer, and publisher, opens the journey of his life to us in this huge, sprawling tangle of threads and tales. He is--and is not--of the Grossinger family that founded and lost the famed Catskills resort, and he writes compellingly of it rise and fall, rich with memories for New York Jews and others whose childhoods and families were inextricably bound to the resort. He writes of marriage, children, and university life in the `60s and `70s, painting a darker picture than some might remember but capturing its elusive, cannabis-scented texture. He chronicles his extended family and its enormous secrets and terrible demons, probing with relentless attention his haunted brother and, especially, his beautiful and quite monstrous mother. He does all of this more or less simultaneously, so the reader moves from one to another of these stories in wonder at their inevitable links and segues. It is rich in the evocation of New York and the Catskills in the '50s, New England and the Bay Area in the `60s and `70s, and amazement of watching your own children become people, and the sustaining pleasures of baseball, especially the Mets. Somehow it not only hangs together but is actually richer for is energy: one doesn't wish to deconstruct it into the many books it could have been. Exhausting, exhilarating, extraordinary. --GraceAnne A. DeCandido

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ah, the 60s!, January 14, 2009

By	Thomist Reader "Bob" (Ocala, Florida) - See all my reviews

Let me tell you my own creds about the issue. I went to high school in Liberty, NY: home of Grossingers. Richard Grossinger's cousin was a classmate of mine. Our senior prom was at Grossinger's and I had several ocassions to go there, though I never worked that resort. We locals, of course, never actually STAYED at these places, though we all found summer and holiday work at Grossinger's or one of the hundred of smaller places.

I've been reading up the Catskills and came upon this book. It covers a much larger topic than the resort--and is a mash up of Richard's autobiography and a biography of his troubled brother--neither of whom lived extensively at Grossingers, though Richard is quite familiar with the people, the history and the Catskill culture. However, the bulk of the books discusses Richard's life in Manhattan, in New England and in the San Francisco Bay area. Ultimately, apart from being about Richard G, it is about America in the late 50s and 60s. The canvas is large but the painter is excellent and his experiences echo if not my own, many of my friends'. This is the sort of book that goes along side of something by Kerouac or Kesey. The writing is compelling, the characters interesting, and the drama sufficient for me to have enjoyed the whole book, although I started it ONLY because of my interest in the Catskill Scene.
I recommend it.