Book Description
In an almost hysterical account, Sidney Brichto probes the psychological makeup, which enabled a physically and emotional dysfunctional child to overcome the assaults of an alien world. Walking the 'tightrope over a cesspool', he explains how he was able to keep his aplomb as he kept falling off. Dealt a bad hand of cards at birth, he reveals how a skinny, poor and maladroit Jewish kid used his wits and chutzpah to survive.
The reader participates in the author's escape from his narrow and myopic orthodox Jewish life to the freedom of the Western world. He never loses his awareness that whatever disadvantages there were to being born poor Jewish, it was the pride in his heroic biblical ancestors and brilliant talmudic grandfather that kept him grounded.
The reader participates in the author's escape from his narrow and myopic orthodox Jewish life to the freedom of the Western world. He never loses his awareness that whatever disadvantages there were to being born poor Jewish, it was the pride in his heroic biblical ancestors and brilliant talmudic grandfather that kept him grounded.
Sidney Brichto describes what it was like to grow up in America, the son of Jewish economic refugees from the Holy Land. Through the eyes of an unusually perceptive child we appreciate American life during World War II and the 50s.
Whether it is in describing the moral dilemma of being pushed along the Atlantic City Boardwalk in a rolling chair by a black man, the awkwardness of explaining that his father was a ritual slaughterer, the embarrassment of wet dreams or the self-induced nervous breakdown brought about by the precocious reading of Professor Freud's works, the author's sense of humour keeps us laughing, even though tears would appear to be a more appropriate response.
