- Paperback: 672 pages
- Publisher: Harper Perennial (Sep 19 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0060934808
- ISBN-13: 978-0060934804
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.5 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 513 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,479,958 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Kevin Baker's Dreamland is the kind of novel that begins with a two-page list of characters and ends with a nine-page glossary. In between, this vast, sprawling carnival of a book takes in Coney Island and the Lower East Side, midgets and gangsters, Bowery bars and opium dens, even Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. It is, in short, a novel as big, lively, and ambitious as Gotham itself, and if you can stomach some of the more garish local color, it's every bit as much fun. Set at the turn of the century, in a New York as polyglot as any city on earth, Dreamland opens with an act of misplaced--and very stupid--compassion. Eastern European immigrant Kid Twist intervenes when villainous gangster Gyp the Blood is on the verge of murdering a young newsboy for sport. But surprise: that's no street urchin--that's Trick the Dwarf, self-proclaimed Mayor of Little City and a Coney Island tout, who dresses up as a boy, he says, as "a way I had of leaving myself behind." Trick hides Kid Twist in the hind parts of the Tin Elephant Hotel; Kid Twist meets Esther Abramowitz, impoverished seamstress and labor agitator, then falls in love; Trick woos Mad Carlotta, a three-foot beauty who thinks she's the Empress of Mexico; and Freud and Jung sail for America, where they squabble about psychoanalysis. There are also a few subplots involving police corruption, Tammany Hall, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire--but who's counting? Suffice to say that it all really does come together in the end, and you won't be bored for one step of the way. Baker served as chief historical researcher for Harold Evans's The American Century, and it's clear that he put his time there to good use; Dreamland is full of vivid historical detail, from Lower East Side slang to the lyrics of popular songs. If this is middlebrow entertainment, it's middlebrow in the same way as Dickens: extravagantly plotted, elegantly written, and compassionate to the core. --Mary Park
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Taking place in turn-of-the-century New York City, Baker's splashy novel features gangsters, midgets, feminist strikers, the Lower East Side, Coney Island, Freud's trip to America and the infamous Triangle Factory fire. It's a powerful, deeply moving epic, an earthier, rowdier, more inclusive Ragtime that rings beautiful changes on the familiar themes of the immigrant experience and the unfulfilled promise of the American Dream. Baker juggles subplots that reflect different ethnic and cultural realities: resilient, independent-minded sweatshop seamstress Esther Abramowitz rebels against her caustic Russian-Jewish ex-rabbi father to become a union organizer; Irish-American state senator Big Tim Sullivan, a corrupt Tammany Hall boss, rules the city through bribes, gangs and cops on the take; hoodlum Gyp the Blood (aka Lazar Abramowitz), who is Esther's estranged brother, puts out a hit on her boyfriend, Kid Twist (Josef Kolyika), an Eastern European refugee who arrived as a stowaway on the same ocean liner that, in this scenario, brings Freud and Jung to New York on a trip to promote psychoanalysis. Meanwhile, over in Dreamland, the vast Coney Island amusement park, the philosophically minded Trick the Dwarf courts another sideshow attraction, Mad Carlotta, a midget who thinks she's the Empress of Mexico. Baker, author of the baseball novel Sometimes You See It Coming and chief researcher on Harry Evans's The American Century, gives readers amazingly vivid renderings of the criminal underworld, prostitution, machine politics, Jewish immigrant life, the nascent women's rights and labor movements. Cultured Old World elitism comically collides with raucous democratic America as Freud gets lost in Harlem, has bizarre erotic dreams, falls out with Jung and has a nasty adventure in Dreamland. The churning subplots do get creaky (e.g., Esther's implausible love for a gangster), the colorful seediness often seems like gratuitous crowd-pleasing and the novel walks a tightrope between romantic sentimental fantasy and hard-boiled realism. Nevertheless, one is tempted to call this grandly entertaining saga some kind of populist masterpiece, as Baker gauges the myth of the egalitarian American melting-pot against the corruption, economic exploitation and racism of a cutthroat society. 100,000 first printing; $300,000 ad/promo; audio to HarperAudio; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not bad, but...,
By Bookmama (Mattapoisett, MA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Dreamland: A Novel (Paperback)
I couldn't make up my mind if it had no plot or too many plots. As a series of character studies or a glimpse into New York City history, it was a great book. I could've done without Jung and Freud visit America, and still am not sure what they added to the story, but I really got caught up in Esther's story. I have seen the "Coney Island" program by Ric Burns that was mentioned in the sources section, and this kept bringing me back to memories of that show.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dream a little Dream of....a plot.,
By
This review is from: Dreamland: A Novel (Paperback)
Dreamland is a bit of a paradox for me...I liked it and didn't like it...was intrigued, and bored...so many contradictions, I don't know what to think....Dreamland starts in a dark, hypnotic swirl of smoke, promising shadows and magic...and quickly becomes something else...something more...real. Kid Twist, immigrant and self-appointed savoir of children running free in the streets rescues a dwarf disguised as a newsboy and a a young man in danger of having his back broken by the dreadful Gyp the Blood, extortionist and pimp, by brandishing a shovel which he uses to knock Gyp out cold, and then runs, knowing he has incurred the wrath of a dangerous and powerful enemy. His flight takes him into the arms of...Gyp's sister, Esther...a proud seamstress who is torn between duty to her family and a desire to stand up for herself. Her affair with Kid Twist; carried on in the hindquarters of a Tin Elephant hotel, quickly confirms for Esther her burgeoning womanhood, and the fact that it is time for her to start living as such, despite the protests of her father. Add in an American visit by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, plenty of political intrigue, and numerous glimpses into the world of Coney Island at the turn of the 20th century...this novel is chock full of content. So why only four starts? Because throughout the 500+ pages..I failed to find a centralized plot line, other than the danger of Esther and Kid Twist's affair being discovered by her brother. Kevin Baker delivers a very well realized portrait of blue collar people, circus freaks, and Bowery Bullies, but fails to pull all of them together tightly enough to really wow me. Worth the read to explore the world of Coney Island that will never be again....I hope that future novels of Kevin Baker will have a better realized plot.
4.0 out of 5 stars
New York in microcosm,
By
This review is from: Dreamland (Mass Market Paperback)
I've seen several movies and read several books about life in New York around this time, but none of them are as full of life and wonder as Kevin Baker's "Dreamland".Baker's description of turn of the century New York and Brooklyn, as well as the people who populate them, is full of color, intrigue, and emotion. All of the people he describes are fully realized individuals, from Trick the Dwarf and Gyp the Blood (don't you love those names?) down to Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, who did indeed visit the US around that time for a series of lectures. My personal favorite in Baker's collection of characters is Big Tim Sullivan, one of the high muckety-mucks in New York's Tammany Hall political machine - and boy, does he have character. To be sure, Baker's description of him is full of a lot of the old Irish stereotypes - but you still can't help liking the guy, for the simple reason that his heart is in the right place (well, most of the time, anyway). The only flaw in Baker's tale is his description, toward the end of the book, of the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. That lacked much of the emotion and punch of the rest of his story. I'm eagerly looking forward to Baker's next book.
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