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Rating: 
Summary: Holocaust
Review: Alan Kaufman is a writer who now lives in San Francisco. He grew up in the Bronx in the 1950's. He was involved in some important publications and was one of the people who brought Spoken Word to the public's attention. While traveling all over the world, Kaufman found time to join the Israeli Army. At the same time his writing has always been very important to his life. He was involved with many journals and was known as the editor of the Jewish theme magazine Davka. He also edited most importantly The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. This is an anthology that traces all outlaw movements in poetry from Whitman to Slam. It is one of the best-known anthologies. Even though Kaufman spent most of his time in New York City, in 1990 he came to San Francisco to join forces with the San Francisco spoken word scene that revolved around Cafe Babar. Kaufman published a book of poems American Cruiser that was one of the highlights of the new scene. As media attention came unwillingly to spoken word and freedom of speech in 1993 during the San Francisco Poets strike, Kaufman was one of the people at the center of the storm. Along with Gary Glazner, Kaufman helped put San Francisco on the map in terms of poetry slams, activism, and MTV culture. As Kaufman made a place for himself in the literary world, he brought American poets on tour abroad, spreading Spoken Word to Europe and helped many new voices get heard by organizing several readings locally and nationally. Most notable of these was Wordland. At the same time he was dissatisfied. Secretly he worked for years on what would soon become a memoir. Jew Boy is a book about growing up in New York City and being the son of a Holocaust survivor. It is a brilliant book. It is a confession. It reads like a novel of growing up and learning life's lessons, through the eyes of a poet. Jew Boy is an important book for any time, and especially right now, in the world that we find ourselves in after 9-11.
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Summary: Courageous Convictions
Review: I applaud Mr Kaufman for having the courage to expose the paranoia, racial distrust and cultural instability associated with Post Holocaust Judaism. My own childhood was similar. Though my parents were never in any concentration camp, they ascribed to a similar type of cultural victimology and I was compelled to be a good example for "my people". I empathize with his bewilderment and fear at doing anything which might rekindle his mother's sense of insecurity and marvel at how he managed to extricate himself from such a traumatic background and restructure his life without guilt. I congratulate the author for having finally escaped a self destructive cycle.
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Summary: When the Bronx was partly jewish
Review: I really enjoyed reading the book. It is a wonderful story, that reads like a novel rather than a memoir. I work today in the same neighborhood were the author spent his childhood, it is amazing to realize how much it changed, but you see also the same ethnic conflicts, and the struggle of different immigrant groups to set a foothold in their new country. I highly recommend the book, it illustrates the journey of a young man to find a path for his life, which he finally finds it in the written word.
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Summary: Extraordinary and one of a kind!
Review: In this era of memoir writing, Kaufman's Jew Boy is in a class by itself. An incendiary powerhouse of a book and written by a poet whose choice of language is a thrilling experience for the reader, Jew Boy also refuses to avert itself from much controversial ground. Not unlike the beginning of Henry Miller's literary career, Kaufman will probably have a hard road to tow in various establishment acceptance categories, not unlike the careers of Alan Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski. It already appears that the major review centers are not going to give their space to this brilliant explosion of a book. It will probably take on the position of an underground classic and a best seller in 2-3 foreign countries before our critics will jump on the bandwagon. We've seen it before, and we'll see it again. However, noting the attention to all fine literature expressed by Amazon.com's democratic command of the internet, I see much immediate success for Kaufman's fabulous book. Buy it now, and be part of the vanguard witnessing the birth of who soon will become one of our great literary figures.
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Summary: Jew Boy Is a Brilliant Masterpiece!
Review: Jewish literature has at last found its Jean Jacques Rousseau! Alan Kaufman's Jew Boy breaks the lock-step of modern literature and takes the reader, Jew and non-Jew alike, into a new world! I have never read a book as visionary as Alan Kaufman' Jew Boy. His language is sizzling, his insights razor-edged, his honesty a revelation in this age of knee-jerk political correctness. The author, who is definitely a rebel in the lineage of D.H.Lawrence,Henry Miller, Genet, has made a pioneering effort to create from a Jewish standpoint an authentic autobiographical narrative of self that transcends the culturally indoctrinated, the dutifully historic, the memoiristically ethnic, in favor of a heart-pounding, gut-wrenching, mind-illuminating tale of such profound wonder and tragically hilarious truth that the reader--me--put down "Jew Boy" feeling forever transformed, braver and more joyful for having dared to enter this man's astonishing world.
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Summary: bravo! - Ernest Hemmingway has returned.
Review: Mr. Kaufman's new book, Jew Boy, is one of the most gripping memoirs I have read in the past few years. His tale is told without bathos, retains it's emotional and factual truths yet never comes off as reportorial. The stories of children of Holocaust survivors are still, for the most part, to be written. Mr. Kaufman provides excellent leadership for these authors. I sincerely hope that he will shortly be on the JCC/YMHA book tour circuit!
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Summary: A Childhood Survived(Barely)
Review: Mr. Kaufman's new book, Jew Boy, is one of the most gripping memoirs I have read in the past few years. His tale is told without bathos, retains it's emotional and factual truths yet never comes off as reportorial. The stories of children of Holocaust survivors are still, for the most part, to be written. Mr. Kaufman provides excellent leadership for these authors. I sincerely hope that he will shortly be on the JCC/YMHA book tour circuit!
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Summary: Runs completely out of steam
Review: Pardon me for saying this but this book had no business being published. The writing was facile, the story boring (who cares about this mans life? certainly not me) And when the book became interesting after his cartoonishly horrible childhood he shifts gears and writes about his becoming an adult as a footnote to the rest of the novel. The shift in style is too obvious by the end and one can only wonder whether or not Mr. Kaufman had simply run out of ideas.
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Summary: A boy and his angst
Review: This book was both fascinating and repellant. It gave me a window into a very male world, and made me ever more grateful that I was born female. Kaufman comes across as unlikable, whiny, arrogant, violent, unstable, rude, and very self-centered. It is of course this focus on himself that made this brutal self-revelation possible; most people would be far too embarrassed to reveal so much about themselves. I found myself wondering how anyone could really be this disgusting and end up a productive, creative, and respected poet--as he has. Obviously, there was more to his life than this memoir tells us. But Kaufman has chosen to skip over the "normal" parts of his life and has given us those which make us think, "I sure don't like this person." Perhaps he is challenging the reader to separate his work from his person (which is pretty interesting, considering he castigates those who do that with anti-Semites Ezra Pound and Ernest Hemingway). And boy, can he write! His description of playing football, for example, was remarkable poetry-capturing the intensity, the violence, the absurdity, and the fascination of a quintessentially male experience.
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