Summertime Jews

by Mark Swartz

It's 1986, and the Wisconsin summer air is filled with mosquitoes and Aqua Net. When the beautiful, reckless daughter of a multimillionaire vanishes from a Jewish overnight camp, junior counselor and wannabe songwriter Eric Weintraub summons the courage to investigate. John Hughes meets Philip Roth in this coming-of-age tale laced with as much profanity as profundity.Mark Swartz is the author of "Instant Karma" (City Lights, 2002), which Booklist called “a first novel of remarkable compression, lithe satirical humor, impressive intellectual dimension, and sly provocation.” The Chicago Tribune review stated: “Adept at deadpan humor and fluent in high-tone irony, Swartz guides his misanthropic diarist and pseudo-Talmudic scholar to the works of a mishmash of tantalizing thinkers.”Swartz's H2O (Soft Skull, 2006) was hailed in Bookforum as "a deft vision of America's postindustrial future in the stylized guise of noir fiction.... At once fantastic and eerily plausible." Jeff VanderMeer wrote, "Savagely precise, clever but not shallow, Swartz's writing lacerates even as it's deeply, disturbingly funny.”

127 pages, Paperback

Published October 12, 2018

Reviews

[Doug Stotland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Felt like I was there even though I never went to Jewish kid camp in Sconi. I found myself wishing I had a highlighter to mark a few of the many sublime phrases that delighted me with a nod of recognition and smile of amusement from the cleverness. Thre characters felt real and absurd beyond belief at other times which I found engaging.

If they made a Netflix min series of SJ I’d definitely watch.

[Barry Mann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun to reminisce about my Jewish summer camp days at OSRUI!