Saint Mazie by Jami Attenberg
My rating: 4/5 cats
If you can’t see the beauty in the dirt then I feel sorry for you. And if you can’t see why these streets are special, then just go home already.
jami attenberg has written historical fiction!!
and it’s a brassy, sassy novel full of heart and humor but also some really lovely vulnerable moments. saint mazie is an unforgettable character who, ironically, is based on a real-life person who was nearly forgotten. although joseph mitchell wrote about this “queen of the bowery” in one of the pieces from Up in the Old Hotel, mazie’s supposed intentions to write her own memoirs never came to pass, so attenberg had to create them herself, giving her a life and a voice through an imagined diary and a chorus of other characters; people whose lives she touched, who were fascinated by her, who loved or envied or hated her. people who knew her as a person and people who only knew her through her words. the mazie that emerges as a result is multifaceted, complicated, contradictory, and ultimately very human.
No one is so special in this life. We all lose sometimes. Life’s plenty easy when you’re winning. It’s what you do when you’re down. That’s the real test.
I said: I used to think I was special.
He said: I know.
I wanted him to tell me I still was. I would have eaten my left pinky to hear it. Torn it off with my teeth. But you can’t ask someone to tell you that.
mazie phillips-gordon was a woman who came to new york in the twenties when she was ten years old. a jewish girl crammed into the tenements on the lower east side where whole families lived in single rooms, mazie had it better than many, but she also understood how precarious circumstances could be and how quickly luck could turn. she and her sister jeanie were removed from the care of their abusive father and helpless mother by their older sister rosie and her husband louis and brought to new york where mazie fell in love with the pulse of the city and all the opportunities, including the opportunities for trouble. she grew from a rough-and-tumble little girl into a “good-time girl,” smoking and drinking and disappointing the much more conservative rosie, who objected to mazie’s tendency to come home at dawn, still drunk and rumpled from her encounters with the sailors she loved.
rosie is blind to the romance of the city that makes mazie feel alive. (cue musical accompaniment)
Rosie doesn’t understand what it’s like to love the streets. She doesn’t see the shimmering cobblestones in the moonlight, she just wonders why the city won’t put in another street lamp already. She doesn’t see floozies trying to sweet-talk their customers, earning every nickel they get, working as hard as the rest of us. She just sees crime. She doesn’t see the nuns and the Chinamen and the sailors and barkeeps – the whole world full of such different people. It’s just crowds to her, blocking her way. She sees a taxi whisking by and she thinks, what’s the hurry? And I think, where’s the party?
That’s what I want to tell her! There’s a party.
mazie’s party days come to a halt when she is put to work at the movie theater louis owns in the bowery, stuck in a ticket booth like a beautiful bird in a cage, where she can observe the goings-on of the city while remaining frustratingly apart. however, even a caged bird can make itself known, and mazie eventually becomes a force in the neighborhood, bearing witness to the struggles and suffering of its inhabitants through prohibition, the depression and war, and she begins to walk the streets at night, giving money and blankets to the “bums” with nowhere to go, calling ambulances and performing charitable deeds, lending a hand, a shoulder, an ear for no reason other than the fact that she can.
she has her own (mis)adventures along the way, and meets a colorful cast of characters who shine up offa the page in rollicking technicolor. it’s historical fiction, but it’s also not. this is more pure character study where the history provides the backdrop and the stage upon which the marvelous mazie struts, but she’s the only thing we’re looking at.
mazie is a dynamic force. she’s irreverent and kind, stubborn and thoughtful. she’s not a good girl in terms of the rigid gender politics of her times, but she is a good person – timelessly, inherently good. she’s all heart and she’s the very embodiment of new york – loud and tough and unexpectedly protective, taking life’s blows and rising back up defiantly, refusing to be beaten.
We all fall apart no matter what, obviously, but some of what we consume leaves a more vivid trail behind than others.
and mazie is herself a vivid trail.
it’s a real sparkle of a book, and despite being a period piece, it’s also incredibly relevant. as mazie watches her city change over the years, her observations are not too far off from ones that could be made today, in the everchanging chameleon new york will always be.
big heart, big boobs, big fun.
big love for this book.
