The Rise of David Levinsky (Magill’s Choice: American Ethnic Writers)
At a glance:
- Author: Abraham Cahan
- First Published: 1917
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: 1865-1915
- Setting: Czarist Russia and New York City
- Principal Characters: David Levinsky, Matilda Minsker, Max Margolis, Dora, Meyer Nodelman, Fanny Kaplan, Abraham Tevkin, Anna Tevkin
- Genres: Long fiction, Social realism
- Subjects: Immigration or emigration, Jews or Jewish life, Acculturation, Industry, Materialism, Russia or Russian people
- Locales: New York, NY, Russia
The Novel
In 1913, in response to a request from the popular McClure’s magazine for articles describing the success of East European immigrants in the U.S. garment trade, Abraham Cahan, editor of the Jewish Daily Forward and also a successful English-language novelist, wrote several short stories instead. Subsequently published as a novel, these pieces of fiction permitted Cahan to explore problematic aspects of the process of Americanization, produce vignettes of immigrant Jewish life, and describe the development of a major American industry.
The...
[The entire page is 2112 words long]
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