“Lost Books” is a weekly series highlighting forgotten books through the prism of Tablet Magazine’s and Nextbook.org’s archives. So blow the dust off the cover, and begin!
Myron Brinig, whose much-acclaimed 1929 debut novel Singermann told the story of a Romanian émigré with five kids in a Western mining town and bore many similarities to Brinig’s own childhood in Butte, Montana, has been long forgotten in the literary world. Born December 22, 1896, Brinig left for New York in 1914 to attend college (NYU and then Columbia) and looked back only through his work.
As Margy Rochlin wrote in 2007, upon the publication of The Taos Truth Game, a fictionalized account of Brinig’s life, the gay writer—who featured gay sons in Singermann—was perhaps too far ahead of his time to reach widespread, and lasting, acceptance. “An American Jew, writing in the late 1920s and 1930s from experience as far removed from Jewish culture as Butte, Brinig was an entity unto himself,” Rochlin wrote. “Unable to classify him, most literary scholars simply forgot him.” Don’t make their mistake!
Read Westward Expansion, by Margy Rochlin
Click here for access to comments
COMMENTING CHARGES
Daily rate: $2
Monthly rate: $18
Yearly rate: $180
WAIT, WHY DO I HAVE TO PAY TO COMMENT?
Tablet is committed to bringing you the best, smartest, most enlightening and entertaining reporting and writing on Jewish life, all free of charge. We take pride in our community of readers, and are thrilled that you choose to engage with us in a way that is both thoughtful and thought-provoking. But the Internet, for all of its wonders, poses challenges to civilized and constructive discussion, allowing vocal—and, often, anonymous—minorities to drag it down with invective (and worse). Starting today, then, we are asking people who'd like to post comments on the site to pay a nominal fee—less a paywall than a gesture of your own commitment to the cause of great conversation. All proceeds go to helping us bring you the ambitious journalism that brought you here in the first place.
I NEED TO BE HEARD! BUT I DONT WANT TO PAY.
Readers can still interact with us free of charge via Facebook, Twitter, and our other social media channels, or write to us at letters@tabletmag.com. Each week, we’ll select the best letters and publish them in a new letters to the editor feature on the Scroll.
We hope this new largely symbolic measure will help us create a more pleasant and cultivated environment for all of our readers, and, as always, we thank you deeply for your support.