The Novel Menzo

Notes about the novel Menzo:

1. The main character of the novel is Menzo, who sells vegetables from a stand in downtown Utica in 1949. He is based upon an actual person who sold peanuts near the hotel in Utica New York in the late fifties.

2. A secondary character is a Mrs. Potlatch, referred to as Anya. Mrs Potlatch is patterned on a certain Mrs. Potash, who was an old Jewish tailor woman who had a shop around the corner from the Hotel Utica in the fifties.

3. The novel describes Menzo's attempt to deal with the fact that he can no longer keep his stand at its traditional location because of traffic changes.

4. From page one where we meet Menzo on his way to the bathroom in the hotel, until the climax of the story about a week later, the action moves with a metronome like cadence, and the reader never loses track of his location, his thoughts and his actions.

THE INFLUENCE OF OTHER WRITERS ON THE NOVEL "MENZO"

1. There is an obvious reference in both the tone, the actions, and the characters to "The Overcoat", by Nikolai Gogol. In The Overcoat", the relationship of an old man and his tailor is central to the story. The problems that bring the man to the tailor are the same ones that lead to the climax of the story line. In Menzo the structure is very similar, but the characters are not models extrapolated from Gogol but two individuals who actually existed, and were known to the writer.

2. Readers familiar with Dostoevsky will find many elements which have a clear reference to that great writer. This influence is not limited to tone and approach only, but sometimes specific details or descriptions have been employed. One example is the following, in the description of a room:

Sonia's room in "Crime and Punishment": Sonia's room looked like a barn; it was a very irregular quadrangle and this gave it a grotesque appearance. A wall with three windows looking out on to the canal ran aslant so that one corner formed a very acute angle, and it was difficult to see in it without very strong light. The other corner was disproportionately obtuse.

Menzo's room in "Menzo": His home consisted of one room, sort of a large shed, that had been built in the space between two barns. The barns were not at right angles to each other which gave to Menzo’s shed a curious shape. One corner was oddly too wide, and the other was extremely acute so that the far corner ended in obscure, gloomy shadow.

The wording is different, and the situation is also different, but the purpose of the detail is to connect the uncomfortable architecture of the rooms to the unsettled life of the resident.

"Menzo, Utica 1949" is available from Barnes and Noble as a Nook download. And from Amazon, as a download for Kindle.

Hard copies will be available in September.

More notes to follow...