Pagan Days [Paperback]

Michael Rumaker (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1891592106 | ISBN-13: 978-1891592102 | Publication Date: May 1998

Pagan Days is a semi-autobiographical novel based on Michael Rumaker's early life in Philadelphia and South Jersey during the 1930s. Told from the point of view of Mickey Lithwak, a sensitive young boy growing up in a poor, working class Catholic family. Pagan Days contains many of the themes found in Rumaker's earlier work.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Rumaker's characters breathe like Rodin's figures—they are alive, real, sinewy, torn, ecstatic, transformative. Pagan Days enriches our literature... -- Jeffrey Beam

About the Author

Michael Rumaker was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1932. A graduate of Black Mountain College in North Carolina and Columbia University in New York City, he teaches at City University of New York.

Product Details

• Paperback: 621 pages
• Publisher: Circumstantial Productions Pub (May 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1891592106
• ISBN-13: 978-1891592102
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,619,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars PAGAN DAYS: A Literary Masterpiece, December 29, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Pagan Days (Paperback)

PAGAN DAYS
Michael Rumaker

PAGAN DAYS by Michael Rumaker is a great novel in the tradition of Leo Tolstoy's ANNA KARENINA, Theodore Dreiser's AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY and especially Marcel Proust's REMENBRANCES OF THINGS PAST.

I make this statement with no sense of exaggeration, and with a sense that this novel by one of America's major literary talents is, in fact, a literary masterpiece.

My novel reading began in the 1920s when I first read Tolstoy, Dreiser and Proust and other classic novelists. My family was friends of the Knopf publishing family, Alfred and Blanche. The Knopfs introduced me to my late husband, the literary historian and critic, Maxwell Geismar.

As Max's wife, I came to know the work of many of the literary stars of the 20th century. My husband's essays and books, including WRITERS IN CRISIS and AMERICAN MODERNS, helped establish and define the literary careers of Dreiser, Wolfe, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Crane, Lardner, Dos Passos, Algren, Styron, Mailer and man, many others.

For many years, when Max chaired the Pulitzer Prize Committee for fiction, I read the novels being considered for that award. In all those years, I never read a better novel than Michael Rumaker's PAGAN DAYS. It is truly a world-class novel.

PAGAN DAYS begins with a birth scene that is so realistic, so beautifully written I felt all my senses being touched as I read it. From this beginning the narrator, Mickey Lithwak, talks on and on about himself and his world.

Mickey's world is working-class Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and South Jersey during the depression years of the 1930s. Through Mickey's remarkable voice, we learn of his family's struggle to survive. Their struggle includes poverty, the erratic behavior of an alcoholic father and Mickey's experiences with the Catholic priests in the Lithwak's neighborhood parishes.

Mickey seems to see and hear everything, revealing as he does, Michael Rumaker's amazing abilities as a novelist. Rumaker has a wonderful eye for realistic detail and an exceptional ear for dialogue. His ability to create realistic American characters living in 20th century America rivals any American novelist I have ever read.

PAGAN DAYS is one of the best novels I've read in a lifetime of reading. Michael Rumaker is a working-class Marcel Proust, a great novelist, inspired by memory to write this truly memorable novel.

ANNE GEISMAR

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GREAT BOOK, April 12, 2004

By 

Philip Hopbell (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Pagan Days (Paperback)

This is a wonderful story by an awesome writer.