I Pity the Poor Immigrant

February 3, 2014
The notorious gangster Meyer Lansky is the ostensible subject of this complex novel. Lazar uses some details from Lansky’s real life (as a Jew, he sought refuge from American law enforcement in Israel, but was eventually extradited) to explore the nature of history itself, mixing fact and fiction as he did in his 2011 novel, Sway. Journalist Hannah Groff writes a story about the murder of an Israeli poet named David Bellen, who had written a book “in which the biblical King David is presented in the guise of a 20th-century gangster.” Groff’s article leads her to Gila Konig, who says she was Lansky’s mistress in Israel (now living in New York). The book moves back and forth in time, point of view, and even genre (large chunks are written in the New Journalism style, mixing the personal with the factual). Lazar juggles the elliptical and fragmented narrative effectively; he is also an excellent stylist, cleverly mimicking multiple forms. The author ambitiously makes a point about history—public and personal—and how it can lead to unexpected byways. As Groff notes, “Against our deepest wishes, we become suddenly, inexplicably, committed to a path we had avoided, a line of thought we’d had no interest in.” An interesting and challenging novel.

February 1, 2014
A complex tale involving Meyer Lansky, Las Vegas, an investigative reporter and the murder of an Israeli poet. Lazar (Evening's Empire, 2009, etc.) brings all these elements--and more--together as he jumps across decades and intercalates different narrators. At the center of the novel is Meyer Lansky, not the brash young gangster but, rather, the elderly, frail and even pathetic figure who petitions the government of Israel, where he wants to live out his last years, for citizenship. His request is denied, and he's returned to the United States. We learn about Lansky's relationship with his mistress Gila Konig, a cocktail waitress, and Lazar also gives us tantalizing glimpses into Lansky's connections to Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano. Back in New York, Gila becomes a Hebrew teacher but quits after an ugly confrontation regarding her experience in Bergen-Belsen. One of her students, Hannah Groff, eventually grows up, becomes a reporter and goes to Israel to investigate the death of writer David Bellen, who was both a poet and a belletrist. One of his long essays, like the novel entitled Pity the Poor Immigrant, is an extended meditation on several books involving Las Vegas and Jewish gangsters, specifically Meyer Lansky. (It's a sign of Lazar's verisimilitude that the books his fictitious poet reviews are in fact real books.) Hannah both develops and pursues an interest in Gila, who, it turns out, had a relationship with Hannah's father. The connections Lazar makes here are complex and artful, though at times bewildering even to discerning readers.

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Starred review from April 1, 2014

When investigative crime reporter Hannah Groff decides to write about the murder of Israeli poet David Bellen, she has no idea what she will uncover. Soon she is learning about the 1972 attempt by American Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky to gain Israeli citizenship. She meets Bellen's son, Eliav, a recovering drug addict; learns that her Hebrew school teacher Gila Konig had an affair with Meyer Lansky and also with Hannah's father; and she reads Bellen's depiction of King David as a biblical thug. As various stories converge, the reader is taken on a dizzying ride through the crimes of the Jewish mob in the 1920s and 1930s, through the mind of an antiestablishment Israeli poet, through the lives of the women who service these men, and eventually to a challenging definition of Jewish identity. VERDICT Lazar, whose novel Sway brought together Charles Manson's horrific crimes, the life of filmmaker Kenneth Anger, and the rise of the Rolling Stones, is a master of combining disparate stories into one complicated revealing narrative. In this novel, he has again succeeded in taking the reader through various seemingly unconnected lives and demonstrating how we are all immigrants striving for some inexplicable dream.--Andrea Kempf, formerly with Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2014
Weaving together the threads of many stories, Lazar starts with Jewish American mobster Meyer Lansky, who walked away from his 1972 trial free but was denied his wish to become an Israeli citizen. In between doling out tidbits of Lansky's personal life and early years, Lazar crafts masterful fictional characters who seem as genuine as the real-life mobsters: Gila Konig, Lansky's mistress and a Holocaust survivor; David Bellen, murdered Israeli poet; and Hannah Groff, an American journalist who finds herself deeply wrapped up in Lansky's story, even though she has never met the man. Blending fact and fiction freely, Lazar insightfully examines the importance of whether the myths we tell ourselves and each other can become their own kind of truth in the end. Pair this with Eric Dezenhall's The Devil Himself (2011), also about Lansky's later life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)