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The House of Moses All-Stars
When Aaron Steiner, a former college basketball star, falls on bad times during the Depression, he accepts an offer to join an all-Jewish traveling basketball team, confronting the prejudices of the nation that rebuffs them. Reprint.
462 pages, Paperback
First published November 5, 1996
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About the author
Charley Rosen
32 books8 followersCharles Elliot Rosen is an American author and former basketball player and basketball coach. Rosen has been selected for induction into the NYC Basketball Hall of Fame with the Class of 2024.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 26, 2023
I wanted this to be good.
First, it’s a Jewish tough guy novel, and that’s often my jam.
Second, it’s a basketball novel, and I’m working on an independent study with a student (shout out to Lucas) on that genre.
Spoiler alert: despite moments competence and color, this isn’t very good. To get that verdict out of the way quickly, it’s a road trip novel with little sense of pacing. Each chapter is a day in the experience of the barnstorming basketball team. One day they run into racist Oklahoma cops, another to the only Jewish colonel on a military base. Sometimes they’re running from mobsters, and sometimes they’re communing with Native Americans. Every day is a drama, more or less distinct to itself, with the result that very little builds up.
Even within that awkward structure, there are pacing problems. I almost started a drinking game for every time Rosen describes what a particular waitress is like in whatever place they’ve stopped. It would be one thing if these women came back into the plot, but they’re just passing scenery. In a novel trying to do so much, it seems a gratuitous waste of focus and description.
And then much of the interior drama of each of the seven teammates seems largely unearned . Everyone’s story gets wrapped up in the final chapter, some with almost no earlier development.
But the real disappointment comes from the basketball – or lack thereof. Rosen was a high-level player himself, and I first heard of him because Phil Jackson is friends with him. He knows the game, and I figured that would show.
It doesn’t.
Most of the in-game drama here deals with point-shaving or win/loss. There are glimpses of battles under the boards for positioning and rebounds, but there’s nowhere near enough. I won’t question Rosen’s knowledge – although the late Depression 1930s setting means he doesn’t know this version of basketball first-hand – but I wish he’d shared more of it. I want to know what it’s like to pay high-level basketball.
So, all this leads to a lingering question/observation: why has no one ever – anywhere? – written a good basketball novel.
I’m meditating an answer.
There are a lot of good – and a handful of great – baseball novels. I think that’s likely because baseball lends itself to metaphor (as I understand it, Bernard Malamud didn’t even know that much about baseball when he wrote The Natural) or maybe because we have learned how to employ some collectively determined metaphors.
There are some fun football novels – the best I know of is Billie Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, though that’s more about the spectacle than the sport. At the very least, I’m sure that Lucas and I could find a couple worth studying if we were doing a football novel tutorial.
The ideal basketball novel, I imagine, would recognize the nature of teamwork – of five players like the fingers on a hand – and with the nature of applied geometry. The game’s at its most beautiful when players recognize angles and cuts, when each player learns to see the others as both teammates and essential moving pieces.
It boggles me to think that no one has yet written such a novel. Edward Hirsch has a terrific poem – “Fast Break” – that does it. And I think there are some memoirs worth exploring – John Edgar Wideman’s Hoop Roots or Jim Carroll’s Basketball Diaries – but where are the novels?
Lucas and I are going to keep looking, but I’d be grateful for suggestions that anyone might have.
There has to be better than this.
First, it’s a Jewish tough guy novel, and that’s often my jam.
Second, it’s a basketball novel, and I’m working on an independent study with a student (shout out to Lucas) on that genre.
Spoiler alert: despite moments competence and color, this isn’t very good. To get that verdict out of the way quickly, it’s a road trip novel with little sense of pacing. Each chapter is a day in the experience of the barnstorming basketball team. One day they run into racist Oklahoma cops, another to the only Jewish colonel on a military base. Sometimes they’re running from mobsters, and sometimes they’re communing with Native Americans. Every day is a drama, more or less distinct to itself, with the result that very little builds up.
Even within that awkward structure, there are pacing problems. I almost started a drinking game for every time Rosen describes what a particular waitress is like in whatever place they’ve stopped. It would be one thing if these women came back into the plot, but they’re just passing scenery. In a novel trying to do so much, it seems a gratuitous waste of focus and description.
And then much of the interior drama of each of the seven teammates seems largely unearned . Everyone’s story gets wrapped up in the final chapter, some with almost no earlier development.
But the real disappointment comes from the basketball – or lack thereof. Rosen was a high-level player himself, and I first heard of him because Phil Jackson is friends with him. He knows the game, and I figured that would show.
It doesn’t.
Most of the in-game drama here deals with point-shaving or win/loss. There are glimpses of battles under the boards for positioning and rebounds, but there’s nowhere near enough. I won’t question Rosen’s knowledge – although the late Depression 1930s setting means he doesn’t know this version of basketball first-hand – but I wish he’d shared more of it. I want to know what it’s like to pay high-level basketball.
So, all this leads to a lingering question/observation: why has no one ever – anywhere? – written a good basketball novel.
I’m meditating an answer.
There are a lot of good – and a handful of great – baseball novels. I think that’s likely because baseball lends itself to metaphor (as I understand it, Bernard Malamud didn’t even know that much about baseball when he wrote The Natural) or maybe because we have learned how to employ some collectively determined metaphors.
There are some fun football novels – the best I know of is Billie Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, though that’s more about the spectacle than the sport. At the very least, I’m sure that Lucas and I could find a couple worth studying if we were doing a football novel tutorial.
The ideal basketball novel, I imagine, would recognize the nature of teamwork – of five players like the fingers on a hand – and with the nature of applied geometry. The game’s at its most beautiful when players recognize angles and cuts, when each player learns to see the others as both teammates and essential moving pieces.
It boggles me to think that no one has yet written such a novel. Edward Hirsch has a terrific poem – “Fast Break” – that does it. And I think there are some memoirs worth exploring – John Edgar Wideman’s Hoop Roots or Jim Carroll’s Basketball Diaries – but where are the novels?
Lucas and I are going to keep looking, but I’d be grateful for suggestions that anyone might have.
There has to be better than this.
January 3, 2024
3.49 stars.
Quirky as hell, but with some bite to the social commentary. Would love to see a more modern version of this, still set in the mid-30's but written with a bit more historical perspective. An interesting read and fairly fast-paced, but a few chapters do drag.
Quirky as hell, but with some bite to the social commentary. Would love to see a more modern version of this, still set in the mid-30's but written with a bit more historical perspective. An interesting read and fairly fast-paced, but a few chapters do drag.
June 3, 2012
I'll round up to four stars on this one, though if I could break it down more granularly I'd go with a slightly lower grade.
The House of Moses All-Stars are a Jewish basketball team traveling the United States in a converted hearse to make money playing games during the Depression. There are seven players, six Jews and one Irish-American who just wants to play. They grow long beards to play up their part, which only invites more hatred and incivility in the places they visit.
Each man is running from something, with an end destination of Los Angeles, at least for the trip, though several of them want to keep rambling on after the tour ends. Rosen does a nice job of individualizing each man; they all have their own stories and personalities, though the book is told in first person through the eyes of Aaron Steiner. Steiner's marriage is crumbling in the wake of the loss of a daughter, who died three days after birth due to serious medical issues which would have made her life miserable. He's unhappy enough with his wife that he has an affair with one of his high school students. Though he doesn't love her either, he invites her to join him in LA when the trip ends. It's yet another poor decision in a long list of them.
Though each player is flawed, they also each have redeeming qualities and you do root for them to do well or at least do the right thing. They face prejudice at every turn, with more than their share of misadventure, including one horribly depressing event that I won't give away, but you'll know it when you hit it.
One of the strong themes of the book is prejudice and how ugly and pervasive it is in society. I'll guess most Jews have it easier now in America than they did in 1936, but there's still plenty of prejudice in this country to make this message all too relevant.
The biggest fault I found with the book was Rosen's habit of getting a little heavy-handed with that message. There were several episodes that felt manufactured, such as Aaron's conversation with a black player after a game, his completely random visit with a hermit in an ice-fishing tent, the Jewish general on the army base they visit in Colorado, and maybe a couple others. There's enough hatred being thrown at these guys throughout their journey that these contrived conversations don't really further that message, and in a book that's nearly 500 pages long, some of these seem like they could have been tightened right out of the book.
I read a lot of baseball books and always appreciate when the baseball parts are realistic, to the point where bad/unrealistic portrayals ruin a book for me. I'll give Rosen credit here for keeping the basketball portions very realistic and well written.
The House of Moses All-Stars are a Jewish basketball team traveling the United States in a converted hearse to make money playing games during the Depression. There are seven players, six Jews and one Irish-American who just wants to play. They grow long beards to play up their part, which only invites more hatred and incivility in the places they visit.
Each man is running from something, with an end destination of Los Angeles, at least for the trip, though several of them want to keep rambling on after the tour ends. Rosen does a nice job of individualizing each man; they all have their own stories and personalities, though the book is told in first person through the eyes of Aaron Steiner. Steiner's marriage is crumbling in the wake of the loss of a daughter, who died three days after birth due to serious medical issues which would have made her life miserable. He's unhappy enough with his wife that he has an affair with one of his high school students. Though he doesn't love her either, he invites her to join him in LA when the trip ends. It's yet another poor decision in a long list of them.
Though each player is flawed, they also each have redeeming qualities and you do root for them to do well or at least do the right thing. They face prejudice at every turn, with more than their share of misadventure, including one horribly depressing event that I won't give away, but you'll know it when you hit it.
One of the strong themes of the book is prejudice and how ugly and pervasive it is in society. I'll guess most Jews have it easier now in America than they did in 1936, but there's still plenty of prejudice in this country to make this message all too relevant.
The biggest fault I found with the book was Rosen's habit of getting a little heavy-handed with that message. There were several episodes that felt manufactured, such as Aaron's conversation with a black player after a game, his completely random visit with a hermit in an ice-fishing tent, the Jewish general on the army base they visit in Colorado, and maybe a couple others. There's enough hatred being thrown at these guys throughout their journey that these contrived conversations don't really further that message, and in a book that's nearly 500 pages long, some of these seem like they could have been tightened right out of the book.
I read a lot of baseball books and always appreciate when the baseball parts are realistic, to the point where bad/unrealistic portrayals ruin a book for me. I'll give Rosen credit here for keeping the basketball portions very realistic and well written.
November 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews