Haunch Paunch and Jowl

Long out of print, Samuel Ornitz's Haunch, Paunch, & Jowl (1923) deserves the renewed attention it has received as a lost classic of modernist Jewish-American literature. The novel provides a panorama of the first generation of Jewish immigrant life on New York's Lower East Side through a cohort of young men: the struggles between religion and secular success, socialism and capitalism, tradition and modernity, manufacturers and labor unions. Originally marketed as an autobiography, the novel became a best-seller as an expose of corruption. It was the first work by author Samuel Ornitz, a lifelong reformer later blacklisted as one of the Hollywood Ten during the McCarthyist era. Ornitz intended for his narrator, Meyer Hirsch, to be a negative example of assimilation, yet Meyer Hirsch's savvy voice still speaks contemporary American truths about poverty, social mobility, corruption, ethnic politics, and the costs of social mobility.