The Amboy Dukes

I was in junior high school outside New York City when this book made the rounds. (I'm now in my early 70's.) It was a paperback with a racy cover. The word was out in my school: "Wow, this is a great, dirty book." In those days, even George Orwell's "1984" was considered on the border of being racy; so obviously, times were far different then. Kids who got the book (including me) kept it hidden from their parents. I think there may even have been allegations that there was some communist conspiracy behind the book, because it showed the gritty and harsh world of youth gangs in New York--not a flattering picture of America. And it ended tragically. (In those days of the McCarthy hearings and blacklisting, anything that showed anything American in a bad light was believed to somehow be mixed up in communism--at least that's my recollection today of the way things were then.) I still remember, 60 years later, the horrifying last paragraph of the book--but will not divulge it here in case some plan to read the novel. I kept my copy hidden in my closet, always fearful that my parents might discover it and raise hell with me for reading such "smut." Kids who took the book to school had it confiscated by the faculty. That fact alone increased the desirability of the book--much as the old 'banned by the Catholic Church' or 'banned in Boston' boosted sales of novels and movie tickets. Amboy Dukes appealed to the sexual interests of we then-adolescent boys who read it. The characters routinely "felt up" their girlfriends and occasionally had sex--much as we hoped to do when we were a little older. Of course, the social implications were lost on most of us kids. We were more interested in the sexual capers of these 1940's gangbangers. It is only in retrospect, and on reading the earlier reviewer's commentary, that I now see the book in terms of what author Shulman was trying to show us. By the way, the 1949 film "City Across the River" was based on the book. In the credits at the beginning of the film, it says: "Introducing Mr. Anthony Curtis." This was Tony Curtis' first substantial role in a movie! I was not aware when I read the book that the Amboy Dukes was a Jewish gang, nor that kids joined gangs for protection against other ethnic groups in impoverished, tough areas of New York City and Brooklyn. (I grew up in a solidly middle-class town where there were no gangs.) I plan to purchase a copy of Amboy Dukes to read again--60 years later--for an understanding of it's social messages (versus my first reading, where I was interested in the sexual passages.)

In 1945, teenagers were visible as individuals but not as a group. The subculture would come later, with rock and roll, Elvis, and portable radios. Meanwhile there was a depression to work through and a big war to win. Small wonder that kids of that era passed quickly from adolescence to adulthood with hardly time for a coke along the way. The Amboy Dukes is a milestone youth novel of that era. Though not as self-consciously literary as its middle-class competitor Catcher in the Rye, Dukes vividly dramatizes urban despair in a crowded working-class precinct of New York City, and its effect on the Jewish youth gangs spawned there. It was then and remains a classically gritty tale of modern America.Because Shulman portrays the sexual escapades and pot smoking in candid fashion, it's easy for critics to stigmatize Dukes as a trashy novel. That however neglects the many dimensions to the book, including some very fine writing by the author. Instead, I take it as an honest depiction of what Shulman knew and chose to set out in unusually forceful and unpatronizing terms. Coveted by teenagers of the time for its daring assault on censorship, the language and events may seem tame compared with today's non-existent standards. Yet Shulman's characters and their dramatic narrative remain as fresh and timely as ever, the murder of the teacher standing, in retrospect, as an opening shot in the youth rebellion to come. Substitute Latino or Black for the Jewish Dukes, add a level of drug trafficking, and the story (including the awful conditions that spawned them) remains essentially unchanged from then to now.Also, author Shulman goes into vivid detail describing the youth fashions and moral behavior of the day, or what kids then considered 'cool'. More important, however, is his sharply drawn slice of class realities, as experienced by pivotal characters Frank Goldberg and his 11-year old sister Alice. Their two wrenching tours through the tonier parts of the city are among the book's memorable highlights. In fact, it is the easily overlooked Alice, and not the more melodramatic gangbangers, who remains the book's most pivotal and sympathetic character. For it is she who's being propelled into a new post-war era with all the sadness and growing sense of entrapment that bedevils the working poor. It is through her youthful enthusiasm slowly succumbing to despair that the book touches a universal chord, as we experience with her the poignancy of a crushing loss of hope. It is here, far from the prurience and rawness of the rest of the book, that Shulman achieves his finest, most revealing moments. I like to think that in the coming years, low-interest loans, Levittowns, and other now much derided assisstance programs redeemed at least some of her innocent dreams. (There's also a glimpse in these passages of the rational basis of consumerism.)Because of its questionable content, The Amboy Dukes continues to lead an underground existence, overshadowed by the more