The culture of the Catskills—the wide range of hotels, bungalows, rooming houses and elaborate resorts in the mountains in New York State that catered to a mainly Jewish clientele—has become, in the broadest sense, American culture: Danny Kaye, Milton Berle, Joey Adams, Mel Brooks, Sid Caesar, Jerry Lewis, Tony Curtis and many others got their start there. This anthology of 34 essays, memoirs, fictions and songs (illustrated with wonderful, evocative photographs) conveys some of the religious, social, historic, sexual and ethnic complexity that "the mountains," as it was called, embodied. Brown (Catskill Culture: A Mountain Rat's Memoirs of the Great Jewish Resort Area) has been the unofficial historian of this part of the Jewish-American experience, and this anthology gives a nice, if superficial, taste of the literature. There are engaging popular memoirs (like an excerpt from Joey Adams's 1966 autobiography, The Borscht Belt, and surprising fiction pieces, such as one from Abraham Cahan's classic 1927 novel, The Rise of David Levinsky, as well as the lyrics of the 1941 song "Shoot the Shtrudel to Me Yudel!" which was dedicated to Yudel Slutzsky, owner of the Arrowhead Lodge. While Brown reprints some fascinating historical material, such as Abraham Lavender and Clarence Steinberg's "Jewish Farmers of the Catskills," which charts the start of the Jewish presence in the area and the beginnings of the resort culture, many of the pieces—a chapter from Herman Wouk's Marjorie Morningstar
and one from Allegra Goodman's Kaaterskill Falls—are easily available and add little. This is a great look at the history of Catskill culture for readers new to the material, but those looking for more depth will be disappointed. (July)
