Two Cents Plain: My Brooklyn Boyhood [Hardcover]

Martin Lemelman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 31, 2010

Martin Lemelman's elegiac and bittersweet graphic memoir Two Cents Plain collects the memories and artifacts of the author's childhood in Brooklyn. The son of Holocaust survivors, Lemelman grew up in the back of his family's candy store in Brownsville during the 1950s and '60s, as the neighborhood, and much of the city, moved into a period of deep decline. In Two Cents Plain, Lemelman pieces together the fragments of his past in an effort to come to terms with a childhood that was marked by struggle both in and outside of the home. But his was not a childhood wholly without its pleasures. Lemelman's Brooklyn is also the nostalgic place of egg creams and comic books, malteds and novelty toys, where the voices of Brownsville's denizens—the deli man, the fish man, and the fruit man—all come to vivid life. Between the lingering strains of the Holocaust and the increasing violence on the city's streets, Two Cents Plain reaches its dramatic climax in 1968, as Lemelman's worlds explode, forcing him and his family to re-create their lives. Through his stirring narrative and richly rendered black-and-white drawings, family photographs, and found objects, Lemelman creates a lush, layered view of a long-lost time and place, the chronicle of a family and a city in crisis. Two Cents Plain is a wholly unique memoir and a reading experience not soon forgotten.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Lemelman's memoir of his childhood in 1950s Brooklyn gets off to a promising start, with his parents recounting their travails as Jews trying to survive in Nazi-occupied Poland (a story told fully in his earlier Mendel's Daughter). After meeting in a German displaced persons camp, the pair soon headed to America, where they promptly had two sons. And here the trouble begins. Once Lemelman becomes a character in his own childhood, potentially engrossing stories about growing up in a thriving Jewish neighborhood peter out or meander due to poor pacing and a lack of focus. The ostensible anchor is his father Tovia's shop, Teddy's Candy Store, but even the tales of Tovia's eccentric customers seem little more than impressions. The same can be said about Lemelman's pencils, which sometimes court vivid life only to give way to muddy, poorly conceived blobs. Lemelman's episodic remembrances are all mood, all era, and little story; the bittersweet nostalgia connects, but even the most skilled storyteller shouldn't take readers' indulgence for granted. (Sept.) (c)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“Memory comes alive in this compelling amalgam of drawing, narrative and archival photography ...Though there's an innocence to [Lemelman's] tales...this was not an idyllic childhood, nor is it rendered sentimentally... The family chronicle unfolds against the backdrop of a tumultuous era... A book that is both a celebration and an affirmation of life.” —Kirkus Reviews, Best Memoirs of 2010

 

"Like a two-cent seltzer water, this graphic memoir is an unassuming treat, whether sipped a story at a time, or quaffed in one satisfying sitting" —A.V. Club

 

"This is literary territory familiar to fans of Mordecai Richler and Saul Bellow; what Lemelman brings to it is artistry featuring a fine eye for detail, penmanship nuanced but never watery, and a stylistic fearlessness that can stuff pop art tropes, photography, and naturalism onto the same page.” —Boston Globe

 

“Two Cents Plain takes the cutting edge form of a graphic novel, but it’s a classic coming of age story set in Brooklyn in the 1950s and ’60s. Lemelman’s detailed pencil drawings, sprinkled with Yiddish sayings and dialogue capturing the colorful, broken English of his immigrant parents, tell the story of his hard-working parents fleeing the Holocaust after WWII and setting up shop in Teddy’s Candy Store, selling ice cream, cigarettes, sodas, egg creams, newspapers, and toys.”—San Francisco Book Review

 

"[A] rich graphic memoir... Through Lemelman's strong narrative voice and spare images, Two Cents Plain is a haunting and unforgettable black and white encounter with the past." —Jewish Book World

 

"Lemelman captures the challenges, tastes, and smells of a particularly nostalgic time and place for many immigrants through is compelling illustrations. Two Cents Plain offers a firsthand account of the first generation American's experience as the structure of the 1950s evolved into the freeform 1960s."

—Miami New Times

 

“[A] rich sketch- and scrap-book of sorts – a compelling compendium of expressively-rendered anecdotes and black-and-white drawings, documents, photos, and artifacts... The storyline of Two Cents Plain, all wit and woe, is variously made up of piecemeal fragments and extended sweeps. As much as we come to know friends and local denizens – the fish man, the fruit man, the deli man – increasing strains of changing times, demographics, and violence...are vividly portrayed, too.”

—Gordon Hauptfleisch, Blogcritics.org

 

“Amazing…Author Martin Lemelman mixes nostalgia and realism, bringing in period touches such as drawings of vintage toys and candy but never shying away from the grittier details such as his parents' anger, their poverty and the rats that swarmed through their apartment.” —Comic Book Resources.com, Top 100 Comics of 2010

 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; First Edition. 1 in number line edition (August 31, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1608190048
• ISBN-13: 978-1608190041
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #334,280 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Priceless, April 3, 2011

By 

Ernest Friedman-Hill "JavaRanch Sheriff" (Gaithersburg, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Two Cents Plain: My Brooklyn Boyhood (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

This is an immersive visit to the author's Brooklyn childhood, depicted over a backdrop of history. From his parents' exodus from post-war Poland to his family's exodus from a beloved but forever changed Brooklyn, Martin Lemmelman takes us into a fascinating past from a child's point of view. The omnipresent nostalgia of this work is tempered with brutal honesty. For every fond reminisce there is the depiction of a painful memory to balance it. But the warm and affectionate artwork paints a picture of a fleeting, bygone era, in which the author clearly feels lucky, on balance, to have played a part, despite the pain and trauma he experienced.

Apart from feelings, there is invaluable information about the Yiddish culture prevalent in the author's boyhood home town. If you read Hebrew, you'll appreciate the signage and newspapers depicted in backgrounds.

I loved this book, and suspect I'll read it again before long. It's a good yarn and a fascinating read. Recommended for adults and teens with any interest in Jewish or American history.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poignant Childhood Memoir, March 24, 2011

By 

Marysz "Marysz" (NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Two Cents Plain: My Brooklyn Boyhood (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Martin Lemelman tells the story of his childhood in Brooklyn in the form of a truly creative graphic novel. The child of holocaust survivors who owned a candy store in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Lemelman's parents had not only to deal with the trauma of World War II, they also had to endure the disintegration of their close-knit Brooklyn neighborhood during the urban turmoil of the nineteen-sixties. I was reminded of two other books while reading "Two Cents Plain": Alfred Kazin's "Walker in the City," a beautifully written reminiscence about his childhood in Brownsville and Art Speigelman's "Maus," a graphic novel about his father's experience during the Holocaust. Lemelman's book really holds its own; it's totally engrossing. Lemelman uses his artistic talent to re-create the world of his childhood during the fifties and sixties, a world that's gone forever. His loving, humorous and astute portrait of his hard-working parents is original and engrossing.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Jewish-American Coming of Age Story, September 8, 2010

By 

D. Danziger "Book Guy" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Two Cents Plain: My Brooklyn Boyhood (Hardcover)

Two Cents Plain, My Brooklyn Boyhood is an unforgettable book and deserves a place on the bookshelf alongside some of the great Jewish coming of age/awakening novels such as Henry Roth's Call It Sleep, Philip Roth's Good-bye Columbus and Bernard Malamud's The Assistant. For anyone interested in what it was like to grow up Jewish in America in the 50s and 60s, this book is a must. Also a must read for history buffs, as well as for readers who are interested in Holocaust survivors and what became of them when they settled in the USA. Mr. Melman's drawings are as beautiful and detailed and memorable as his writing. I know it's a cliche, but I couldn't put this book down. Weeks after reading this memoir, many of its images and lines replay in my mind. Not only a great book, but a heck of a Hanukkah present for someone you love. Buy it. Share it. You'll be glad you did.