Saint Mazie: A Novel, by Jami Attenberg
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Saint Mazie: A Novel, by Jami Attenberg
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Meet Mazie Phillips: big-hearted and bawdy, she's the truth-telling proprietress of The Venice, the famed New York City movie theater. It's the Jazz Age, with romance and booze aplenty--even when Prohibition kicks in--and Mazie never turns down a night on the town. But her high spirits mask a childhood rooted in poverty, and her diary, always close at hand, holds her dearest secrets.When the Great Depression hits, Mazie's life is on the brink of transformation. Addicts and bums roam the Bowery; homelessness is rampant. If Mazie won't help them, then who? When she opens the doors of The Venice to those in need, this ticket taking, fun-time girl becomes the beating heart of the Lower East Side, and in defining one neighborhood helps define the city.Then, more than ninety years after Mazie began her diary, it's discovered by a documentarian in search of a good story. Who was Mazie Phillips, really? A chorus of voices from the past and present fill in some of the mysterious blanks of her adventurous life.Inspired by the life of a woman who was profiled in Joseph Mitchell's classic Up in the Old Hotel, SAINT MAZIE is infused with Jami Attenberg's signature wit, bravery, and heart. Mazie's rise to "sainthood"--and her irrepressible spirit--is unforgettable.
Saint Mazie: A Novel, by Jami Attenberg - Amazon Sales Rank: #105709 in Books
- Brand: Attenberg, Jami
- Published on: 2015-06-02
- Released on: 2015-06-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.75" h x 1.25" w x 6.00" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 336 pages
Saint Mazie: A Novel, by Jami Attenberg Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of June 2015: Jami Attenberg’s Saint Mazie couldn’t be more different from her popular The Middlesteins, in that it is a) historical not contemporary, b) loosely based on a real woman who lived in early 20th century New York City instead of on an all-too-real fictional character in suburban Chicago and c) told as an oral history instead of as a traditional narrative. Still, this novel exhibits the same kind of wit and depth and heart of the earlier one. Mazie Phillips was a depression-era movie-theater-owner in New York during the Depression; she was big-hearted and bawdy, enough of a neighborhood figure that she became the subject of a 1940 New Yorker profile by the journalist Joseph Mitchell. Starting with his observations—“Mazie has a genuine fondness for bums and undoubtedly knows more bums than any other person in the city”—Attenberg weaves an astonishingly heartfelt story of poverty and loss (one of Mazie’s beloved, orphaned sisters moves to California to become a dancer and is essentially lost to her forever), unconventionality (there’s a lot of socially “inappropriate” sex and love in this book) and, to use a word from that era, “moxie.” With all her tough talk and bootstrap-pulling, Mazie could grow into a cliché – the loose woman with a heart of gold – but Attenberg never lets her, preferring instead to take Mitchell’s sketch and draw all over it with fictional interviews and diaries until Mazie becomes a complex and irresistible real-life woman. She may have lived in a very specific era, but thanks to Attenberg, she has become a character for the ages. --Sara Nelson
Review "Full of love and drink and dirty sex and nobility.... Attenberg takes Mitchell's witty, colorful piece and spins it into something equally lively and new."―New York Times Book Review"Tender-hearted and loose-living, Mazie is the unlikely guardian angel of New York City's Depression-Era down-and-outs. You'll love this smart, touching novel that brings her world to life."―People"Boisterous and compassionate."―O Magazine"Delightful . . . [an] often ebullient tale about the simple pleasures of a working life. . . . Thanks to the wonderful Jami Attenberg (with an assist from the legendary Joseph Mitchell) Mazie does live on, an actual 20th century New York City saint."―NPR"Attenberg is a nimble and inventive storyteller with a particular knack for getting at the heart of outsized characters. . . . [she] proves her chops as a historical novelist by perfectly capturing Mazie's jazz-age voice, which ranges from clipped and vulgar to melancholy and lyrical. Attenberg also sidesteps many of the pitfalls of the form: no day-by-day plodding through the decades, no unedited research notes masquerading as dialogue. She resists any plot twist or final revelation to provide a tidy psychological explanation for Mazie Phillips-Gordon sainthood."―Washington Post"[F]resh and witty... SAINT MAZIE looks deep into the spirit of generosity. Jami Attenberg's Mazie lives a very big life in a very small space, turning her darkest experiences into something inspiring."―Wall Street Journal"Attenberg captures Mazie's voice so vividly you can close the book and still hear her talking. She is a tremendous achievement. ...[A] bold, magnificent book about family, altruism, women and freedom, as well as a love letter to New York and a timely social manifesto for the 21st century."―The Guardian"Attenberg's style, at turns lyrical and blunt, is a strong match for Mazie. . . .This voice-pleasantly tinged with jazz age argot, refreshingly modern in its honesty, and always intimate-is Attenberg's great achievement in SAINT MAZIE. ...[A] boisterous, deep, provocative book."―Boston Globe"A winning novel and a lovely tribute to a New Yorker whose only claim to fame is her outsized kindness. Her Mazie is richly imagined and three-dimensional, and in these pages she lives forever."―Los Angeles Times"Attenberg has an impressive ability to capture unique voices and make these characters authentic and distinctive... the voices in Saint Mazie ring out and linger, bringing to life this specific place and time in New York-and American-history."―Dallas Morning News"[I]ngeniously constructed.... An attentive character study that also happens to be rich in city lore and period detail, SAINT MAZIE is an edifying, companionable and moving novel."―Kansas City Star"[Attenberg] nails Mazie's irresistible combination of sweet and seedy, tough and tender."―Miami Herald"A funny, touching novel."―Vanity Fair"An exuberant portrait of an unforgettable woman and the city she loves." ―BBC.com"Impressive . . . Attenberg excels at developing Mazie's voice as she grows from an impetuous, witty girl, into a shrewd-yet-selfless character. But the book is largely about the silent tragedies of womanhood, and the different forms love and loneliness can take . . . What Saint Mazie is most concerned with: how to be a human being."―Bust Magazine"The hugely talented Jami Attenberg, most recently author of The Middlesteins, has built a novel based on an imagined diary of Mazie Phillips, a Bowery movie-theater proprietress."―New York Magazine"The real-life Mazie first appeared in a 1940 New Yorker profile by Joseph Mitchell and later again in his seminal collection, "Up in the Old Hotel." Now Mazie's latest, and perhaps more powerful incarnation, is in the novel "Saint Mazie" by Jami Attenberg. Here Mazie continues to grab the lapels and hearts of readers - and we are all the more glad for the shake-up she gives us . . . Achieves immortality in the minds and hearts of readers."―Milwaukee Journal Sentinel"The Middlesteins author Jami Attenberg has traded writing about the Midwest for Jazz Age New York-and, oh, what a glorious swap it is. If you love historical stories with bold language that vividly paint a picture of another era, you'll be so happy to spend your summer days alongside Mazie Phillips, the real-life proprietress of a downtown NYC movie theater called The Venice. Take a peek inside Mazie's diary, and get swept away."―Bustle, "The 17 Best Books of Summer""Entertaining . . . A fascinating portrait of early 20th-century New York and of an unlikely champion of the dispossessed."―BookPage"This follow-up to Attenberg's beloved novel The Middlesteins shares many of that book's hallmarks: unflinching examinations of some of people's more unflattering qualities, compassion for the same, and a clear love and respect for the journeys we all must go on . . . her work has the same sense of bonhomie and joy as did the original 'Saint' Mazie." ―The L Magazine, #1 on the "50 Books You'll Want to Read This Spring and Summer" list"I loved it to pieces . . . Through an incredible cast of voices, Attenberg gives us the story of Mazie Phillips, the bawdy, brassy broad who runs a New York theater from the Jazz Age through Prohibition and into the Great Depression. Mazie never marries but has admirers aplenty, and she grows from party girl into community fixture as she devotes her time to caring for the homeless and hungry. The frame and structure Attenberg gives her story are as interesting as the story itself, and the whole experience is a delight. Highly recommended!"―Rebecca Joines Schinsky, Book Riot"SAINT MAZIE is a love letter to a New York City that doesn't exist anymore-the gritty, working-class Lower East Side and Coney Island that your grandparents might remember...genuine and relatable."―Condé Nast Traveler"A raw, boisterous, generous novel with a heroine to match and New York in its soul, Saint Mazie offers proof again that Jami Attenberg is a brilliant, lion-hearted storyteller."―Maggie Shipstead, author of Astonish Me and Seating Arrangements"With SAINT MAZIE, Jami Attenberg has crafted a tale that is somehow both a love song and a gut punch at once, and will leave you all the better for having read it. When I finished reading, I wanted to start all over again."―Therese Anne Fowler, author of Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald"Jami Attenberg is a master at creating complex and compelling characters. She did it with Edie Middlestein of The Middlesteins, and she's done it again with Mazie Phillips-Gordon of SAINT MAZIE. While Mazie is an actual historical figure, in Attenberg's adept hands, she blossoms as a multidimensional woman who helped the down-and-out in New York City during and after the Depression, while stirring up her own mischief and bad behavior. A wonderful and thoughtful read, as relevant then as it is today, SAINT MAZIE is not to be missed."―B.A. Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author of The Art Forger"SAINT MAZIE is a novel with as much style and moxie as its titular character. I missed Mazie Gordon-Phillips and her family when I was finished reading, but I missed New York, too. By telling this one woman's story, Jami Attenberg has managed to write an ode to New Yorkers of every generation. She is a true poet of the city."―Gabrielle Zevin, author of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry"I'd love to be Jami Attenberg for a day to see what she sees. The next best thing is to read the touching, funny, and wise SAINT MAZIE, which is as difficult to categorize as the hard-living, heart-breaking, soul-saving ticket taker it is about."―Charlotte Rogan, author of The Lifeboat"SAINT MAZIE moves with joy and wonder through the past. This book has such brio, warmth, intelligence and personality it seems a wonder it is made of mere words."―Rebecca Lee, author of Bobcat & Other Stories"A terrific novel--touching, funny, big-hearted, just like Mazie herself. It's written with great verve and brio, and I loved the way we circle around and then dig deeper into Mazie's life through the multiple voices and sources. It's Mazie herself, though, who shines the brightest, and who lingers on in the mind and heart, a real diamond in the rough." ―Monica Ali, author of Brick Lane and Untold Story "Jami Attenberg is a beautiful, humane, and extremely funny writer, and SAINT MAZIE-the story of a flawed, spiky, golden-hearted, broken-hearted broad, a kind of personification of the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the first years of the 20th century-is a glorious book."―Louisa Young, author of My Dear I Wanted to Tell You
About the Author Jami Attenberg is the author of a story collection, Instant Love, and three novels, The Kept Man, The Melting Season, and The Middlesteins, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. It will be published in nine countries. She has contributed essays and criticism to The New York Times, Real Simple, Elle, The Washington Post, and many other publications. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Most helpful customer reviews
57 of 62 people found the following review helpful. Some very good characters, but ... By JLee I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. The real Mazie must have been an incredible person. This fictionalized account is part hit and part miss. It tells Mazie’s story through numerous sources – in fact, a few too numerous for my taste. Most of this story is told in the form of entries in Mazie’s diary, started when she was a child, with excerpts from Mazie’s unpublished autobiography and interviews with people who knew Mazie directly or indirectly.The real-life Mazie was famous for helping bums and drunks during the Depression, but that part of her life comes very late in the book. Until then, we keep hearing what a colorful character she was, a real good-time gal, living during a tumultuous time in world history: the first World War, the Jazz Age, Prohibition, the Depression. Unfortunately, when it comes to Mazie, there is too much saying and too little showing or doing. I was expecting a free spirit, a Jazz Baby, a flapper. No. She’s a snooze.She seems to spend most of her adult life working and drinking -- stagnating. She’s stuck, at an early age, in a dead-end job, living with her sister and her sister’s husband; sitting in a ticket booth (her “cage”) all day long at his theater. She complains about life passing her by, but she never does anything about it. This at a time when women have achieved the vote and are out in the work force, driving cars, experimenting with life. I kept wondering why she didn’t just leave or at least get a different job. I never felt I knew her or understood her, and I did not find her very interesting or likeable – or colorful -- and I couldn’t figure out why everyone in the book keeps saying how wonderful she was.The secondary characters, however, are wonderful. I was so intrigued by Rudy, the theater manager; the Captain, Mazie’s long-time, but occasional, love; Mazie’s younger sister, Jeannie, the two Flicker men; and Lou, the husband of Mazie’s older sister. These are great characters. Oddly enough, the men are so very much more interesting than the women. Only for a moment here or there does a woman seem to have a thought in her head. For instance, Mazie observes the consequences of war, political bombings, union fights, Prohibition, and so on, but seldom seems to have an opinion.I was also a little put off by Mazie’s constant desire to help men during the Depression. I cannot just fault the author here. We constantly hear about men in bread lines, men looking for work, men sleeping on park benches, men bumming money so they can get drunk and forget their problems. And why are these the people Mazie helps? What happened to city women during the Depression? Did they just evaporate? Temporarily move to another planet? Where were they? Who cared about them? They don’t seem to have entered Mazie’s or the author’s consciousness.So, all in all, I liked many parts of the book, but I was less than thrilled with the main character. The book is interesting for its view on life in New York during an incredible time period and for its secondary characters.
73 of 82 people found the following review helpful. Mazie Doats (and Dozie...) By enubrius If this weren't based on a true story and an actual human type person, you would swear it was the hokiest of fiction.Not only that, but a fiction from the 1930s/40s when people like Frank Capra or Preston Sturges were making movies.And make no mistake, this reads like one of those great movies of that era... only much, much, betterI fell in love with Mazie by page 3, and I'm a cynic.You will love her by page 2; you'll love the book forever; and, trust me, you'll REALLY love the style, talent, and grace of Jane Attenberg a voice like no other, today
48 of 53 people found the following review helpful. A modern-day saint? By Jill Meyer In 1940, Joseph Mitchell, a writer for "The New Yorker", wrote a series of essays about New York City. One featured a woman named Mazie Phillips Gordon, who was known throughout the poorer parts of the city as "Saint Mazie". She spent the Depression-era years helping the down-and-out, those poor men who slept in the streets and begged for food and drink. She'd pay for them to sleep in shelters and pass out money for them to buy food. She'd call the ambulances when they were sick or dying. Mazie Gordon gave poor men - "bums", as others called them - some dignity in their lives. The "New Yorker" article was real, the men were real, and Mazie Gordon was real. But, who was she? And what were her motives for helping as she did?Author Jami Attenberg has taken the bare facts of Mazie Gordon's life and has written a novel based upon those facts. She has added her own interpretation of Mazie's life and extrapolated a story. How much of the story is true is unclear, past the basic facts. But Attenberg - whose latest novel was "The Middlesteins" - has created a woman who, both in her own words in diary form and those of relatives and friends, is someone you won't soon forget. She was the owner of a theater and she worked the box office. Facing the street, she saw the rough and real life of Depression-era New York City and felt compelled to help those she could. But she had her own life, too, and it was filled with interesting people who she loved and who loved her.I finished the book a bit curious about why Jami Attenberg chose to write a fictional account of the life of Mazie Gordon, rather than a non-fictional one. I suppose I would have preferred reading a biography of this fascinating woman who helped so many needy. I hope that someone will write a bio of Mazie. Until then, I'm satisfied with this excellent novel.
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