Paul M. Levitt - Böcker

Vaudeville Humor: The Collected Jokes, Routines, and Skits of Ed Lowry contains vaudeville jokes, skits, and routines from the first three decades of the twentieth century originally compiled by comedian Ed Lowry (1896-1983). Although occasionally found in bits and pieces in anthologies and in some period dramatic comedies, vaudeville humor has never before been available in one collection - performers rarely if eve kept a record of their jokes and routines. Fortunately Ed Lowry was an inveterate collector. He kept copious notebooks of jokes and routines that he not only commissioned but also stole from other comics, clipped from newspapers, and copied from now defunct popular magazines of the day.

As Stalin lies dying, this novel records his last thoughts, which he renders as a movie about the people he believes envenomed his life, namely, Lenin and certain women. (A film devotee, Stalin so loved movies that some scholars have even suggested that he governed the Soviet empire by cinematocracy, rule by cinema.) He has suffered a stroke but will linger for three days before dying. As in a film, he revisits scenes and old arguments with Lenin, and then endures a trial over his charge that women have poisoned his life. At the conclusion of the trial, Stalin’s mind screen returns to V.I. Lenin. What follows then is Stalin’s concluding mockery and denunciation of Lenin; Lenin’s final assessment of Stalin; and the end of the novel: Stalin’s dying words.

Avraham Bahar leaves debt-ridden and depressed Albania to seek a better life in, ironically, Stalinist Russia. A professional barber, he curries favor with the Communist regime, ultimately being invited to become Stalin’s personal barber at the Kremlin, where he is entitled to live in a government house with other Soviet dignitaries. In the intrigue that follows, Avraham, now known as Razan, is not only barber to Stalin but also to the many Stalin look-alikes that the paranoid dictator circulates to thwart possible assassination attempts—including one from Razan himself.

Denunciation became so commonplace under Stalin that people regarded it as their patriotic duty to spy on others and even expose members of their own family. The original Bolsheviks, for reasons of ideological purity, put great store in transparency. But under Stalin, transparency evolved into a state of constant surveillance. In the late 1930s, a young man named Sasha Parsky kills two soldiers who come to arrest his parents as kulaks. He escapes arrest—though not suspicion. Sasha, now under greater scrutiny, is asked by Boris Filatov, the chief of the local secret police, to take a position as the head of a small boys’ school with the condition that Sasha spy on the previous director, who was dismissed for political reasons. As Sasha’s visits to the exiled man turn into discussions on politics and Sasha begins making changes at the school, it is only a matter of time before anonymous letters denouncing him begin to appear on Filatov’s desk. But even more ominous is the appearance of two men from the past who have the knowledge to do Sasha great harm. Caught between Filatov and the fear of exposure, Sasha risks everything by testing the fidelity of a loved one.

Wherever stories are told, in whatever language, life and death hold center stage, along with pain and glee, mystery and magic, fools and foes, deceit and decency. This book has them all. Here, in embellishments upon the folklore of Native American tribes from the Pacific Northwest, are tales that seek to explain the world, dispel its darkness, and celebrate its light.So, meet a sorcerer whose magic can turn a horse into a loon, a man who becomes a bush-tailed rat, a girl whose sons were born as puppies, and a Native American tribe that sought the power of shamans to escape white men bent on destroying them.

When the classical scholar Phineas Ort, Bogus U.’s first choice for president, disappears, the search committee decides to recruit a hit man to keep the fractious faculty in line. Phineas has been abducted by the Robaccia gang, who aim to install their own candidate in the president’s office to cash in on Bogus U.’s well-known corruption.Christy Mahon, a former member of the Robaccia gang, now on the lam for having crossed its boss, Brooklyn Benny, has landed a job at Bogus U. as a janitor. Listening through a heating vent, he overhears the search committee’s deliberations and decides to interview for the job, which he ultimately lands in a funny and subversive chain of events.Laura Favoloso, who has her own ties to the mob, works at Bogus U. and provides Christy with an insider’s view of its inner workings and lower depths. Under Laura’s influence and tutelage, Christy reluctantly begins to transform into a new man, and tries to institute rigorous academic standards, raising the ire and exciting the violent tendencies of the student population. But the student body is not the only quarter from which Christy must guard himself from mortal harm—a hit has been ordered on Christy, and he must use his old street smarts as well as his newly acquired political savvy to survive and protect his legacy.

Set during the Great Depression, when fascism was looking increasingly attractive to many, Paul M. Levitt’s latest novel surrounds attempts to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the counterforces at work: the American Nazi Party, Avery Brundage, a German assassin, and those American athletes—eighteen of whom were the first black athletes hoping to compete—wishing to show the world their superb talents. When a young woman in the employ of Abner “Longie” Zwillman, the Don of New Jersey, goes missing, Jay Klug and his friend T-Bone Searle try to find her before she falls victim to a brutal Nazi killer. Their journey leads them to the man who reputedly killed the famous gangster Arnold Rothstein (the Big Bankroll), to Jean Harlow, Dreamland, Cape May, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Amarillo, and even Los Angeles.

Set in Hungamon (aka Bogalusa), Louisiana 1988-89, Provenance takes the reader through progressive historical discoveries to the sources of a Hungarian painting that escaped the grasping fingers of Nazis and Communists, and to the secrets of two families, one Jewish, the owners of the Hungarian painting, and the other gentile, the owners of an American painting, which hides a dark tale.