Lots and lots of thanks to El for mentioning City Boy in her review of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. How did I go through all of my life without ever hearing of this book? This is my favorite kind of book! I mean, I've read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn several times. I can see why one book reminded her of the other. They share a soul of bittersweet pain. Like if it hurt too much to fall in love but your days are too long without it and you never stop looking for someone or something else to fill the sharp edges of the bottomless pit. You can't help it. It doesn't matter that it couldn't be returned. The world must work for the pursuit of happiness. Also, fat boys who fall in love a lot and live in the Bronx. City Boy has been out for a long, long time. My grandparents could have read it in their youth (they probably didn't. My grandfather gave me a lot of books and this was not among them). It has been rerereread. Where have you been? What about me?!I wanted a comfort read but it had to be a special kind of comfort read. No Mary-Sues so fantasy was out. If I was going to feel the sting of my inferiority complex it would have to be a hell no. Maybe a sweet pain kind of comfort read like Blue Castle or 'Oscar'. Sometimes I really love this website. I really loved City Boy. I feel like I'm in a young person's world and not as the adult or the kid. Maybe scanning the room for someone to root for, rather than relate to, and there's Herbie Bookbinder. I probably would have hated Herbie if I was one of his class mates. It was enough that he comes from a family with money. I would have resented that. I wouldn't have identified with him as I should, or seen past the front he put up to protect himself. The first time he used his "garbage gang" status to bully me I would have started doing impersonations of him for the class before the bell rang (I was only secretly nice). Think hall monitor or patrols, if you're American. I guess the UK and Oz versions are prefects. It sounds a lot like patrols. Prefects are respected, right? (My UK school knowledge is all due to Harry Potter.) I was a patrol as a last pick for the last term of the school year. Hardly prestigious. I used it to leave class early. I was like Herbie. He used it for freedom in the halls. He was not in the top tier of school authoritative system with the garbage band. He was a laughing stock. He couldn't really bully anyone with his position and tried to do it anyway. So much for the freedom. So I was saying that if he tried to use his pitiful position of litter clean up staff to tell me where I could and couldn't be between classes it would have been over for us. He was also the teacher's pet and can you get worse than that?I guess City Boy does have an air of teacher's pet about it in Wouk's writing. He's the adult that feels pity for poor, fat Herbie. The good kind of pity! Not the kind that is like feeling like shit after you've been caught crying. Wouk sees the longing in his eyes and hopes that things will be better for him some day. The best part about City Boy is that it isn't from Wouk's place and the teacher's pet stuff is mostly in the background. Thankfully it really sucks to be Herbie. We are in Herbie's place. Maybe he's looking at us for something to relate to. He falls in love with a girl he can't have. There's no way that's the end of it. That is going to be his life. Yes! (I'm sadistic. Hey, I told you I have an inferiority complex.) He goes to summer camp and he gets in a lot of trouble. I haaated summer camp (I only went for two and a half days).I loved the lying. I loved the stuff that I would have hated Herbie for when I was a kid. The way he tried to talk himself into the rules of the way things worked. Getting out of trouble, staying ahead. A lot of talking out of and figuring out what works by trying it out. That's the way to live! The sharp edge void living stuff. It's great to see it from that place instead of seeing the swotty fat boy who has rich parents with a high priced lawyer. It'd be easy to squint and picture an adult Herbie I'd hate. But I know he can be so miserable and now I love him because I know he's more than that. If only one could feel like the teacher at the front with the wider view more often (as opposed to the kid caught sneaking around ugh).City Boy gets shit for being too rosy viewed about Jewish life in the Bronx in the 1940s. But we already know life sucks! It's not rosy to take a look at this kid and see the hope and the pain stuff. It's going to be lots and lots of that! Just because it is a happy kind of misery read. It's my kind of comfort read is what it is. You aren't embarrassed because someone saw empathy and I don't know what color that is but it probably isn't rosy.Listen, Herbie has moments like this:He was not seen again that merry morning, for he spent it lying on a flat rock near the shore, hidden by thunderbrush. A lonesome, quiet situation, you might say, yet he had plenty of company. Misery sat at the fat boy's right hand, and Shame at the left; and they made the morning mighty lively for Herbie between them."I'd do my encouraging smile for Herbie now. I hope he fucks up a whole lot more. P.s. Okay, so I don't think it is a good idea to be too hard on Lucille. She's only eleven. The plot blurb is ridiculous. It's not like there weren't boys doing the same thing. There was one in my class who had a different girlfriend every day.P.s.s. I recommend Fat Kid Rules the World if you like City Boy. That book is awesome.
I read an excerpt of this book back in the 1970s in a 7th grade English anthology; late last year I finally made the effort to find out the title and author, so that early this year I could read the whole book. It's a charming story about a boy named Herbie Bookbinder, in 1920s New York. He's a chubby, clumsy fellow, but very smart, and prone to wild crushes; as the book opens, his heart is broken when his teacher marries, but later that day, he falls for a girl at his school, which leads to most of Herbie's later adventures, as he tries to impress Lucille Glass against the competition of the better-looking and more athletic Lennie Krieger, culminating in the last half of the novel, which takes place at the summer camp that all three children attend. Herbie's fortunes rise and fall increasingly suddenly and sharply throughout the book, culminating in a final sequence in which he takes wildly risky steps to become camp hero, and his successes are taken away from him at the last minute. Throughout the book, Wouk satirizes the conventions of summer camp life, especially the well-honed methods the camp director has of maintaining morale at its highest just before the children are likely to report back to their parents, while keeping every cost at its lowest, and compares summer camp to the rest of society (with self-appointed clubs of the "best people," etc.). It's a very funny and very moving book.
Do You like book City Boy (1992)?
I read this as part of my "read everything ever written about the Bronx" kick, but found that it also fit into another one of my favorite subgenres: boy's stories in which the underdog rises above his station and becomes a hero.The big difference, though, is that most authors in this genre are hacks, while Herman Wouk is a great writer. His main character, Herbie Bookbinder is a fantastic creation, and it takes little imagination to make the jump from the bookish Herbie to an imaginary "Hermie" Wouk growing up in a similar situation. Because of this grounding in reality, Herbie's heroics aren't really reliant on deus ex machinae, astounding coincidences, or the like. Rather, they are completely realistic, and all the more enjoyable for that reason.
—Bruce
I can't remember exactly how I came upon this book but I was surfing around on the internet about a week ago and discovered it. I think I had heard of it before because the main character's name, Herbie Bookbinder, sounded familiar to me, but I had never read it. This is the story of the last half of the school year when Herbie is 11 and the summer that follows it when he goes to a summer camp run by his school's pricipal. It takes place in 1928 and is told from Herbie's point of view with observations and explanations by the author. Some have compared it to Tom Sawyer and I see the comparison. Although, I never lived in a big city like New York and I never went to summer camp I was able to relate to Herbie and his adventures and experiences. How many of you remember childhood superstitions and rituals? How many of you guys have been in love with the "cute little girl" and done stupid things to impress her? How many of you have complained the whole time you were participating in something (In Herbie's case summer camp.) and then looked back on it with fondness?Herbie is neither completely the hero nor the villan. That, I think, is why his story is so engaging and so enjoyable. I could not put the book down and felt every joy and every diappointment along with Herbie as the book progressed.
—Todd Cannon
Ein Buch, das am Klappentext als "Klassiker, der sicher irgendwann den Status eines Huckleberry Finn erreich wird" angepriesen wird. Nun, ganz dieser Meinung bin ich nicht. Dennoch bin ich froh dass ich dieses Buch (aufgrund seines nicht so sehr ansprechenden Einbandes und des Alters) nicht ungelesen ausgemustert habe.Denn es ist zum einen eine sehr nett geschriebene Geschichte über den (Ferienlager-)Sommer des 11jährigen Herbie Bookbinder (eine sogenannte "Coming-of-age-story"). Zum anderen ist es eine unglaublich interessante Beschreibung des Lebens in der Bronx in den 20er Jahren (VOR der Weltwirtschaftskrise!). Erstaunt war ich vor allem auch, wie 'modern' es damals schon war. Bis auf die Preise, die für Essen und U-Bahn-Fahrten genannt werden, könnte man leicht glauben, das Buch ist den 50er-60er Jahren angesiedelt. Ich hätte mir gedacht, in den 20ern wäre es noch bedeutend ärmlicher zugegangen. Aufgefallen ist es mir besonders an den vielen Autos, die unterwegs sind, Telefone sind schon verbreitet, U-Bahn-Netz ausgebaut, Kinobesuche und Eissalons sind bereits alltägliche 'Luxusgüter'. Vielleicht waren die USA in diesen Punkten aber auch einfach fortschrittlicher als das alte Europa.Bei Herbie's Geschichte hätte ich mir mehr böse Streiche der anderen Jungs erwartet, aber im Grunde ist sein Sommer doch recht harmlos verlaufen, was ich aber ok fand. Zuviel negative Aufregung löst bei mir immer Mitleid mit den Underdogs aus.Alles in allem also ein betagtes Buch, das man aber durchaus heute noch lesen kann und wo sogar eine (Neu-)Verfilmung angemessen wäre.
—Karschtl
