Crazy Man*
He Is an Idealist
The Story. Selma Thallinger, New York shopgirl, supplements her daily earnings by teaching every evening in the "Merry Grotto," an East Side dance-hall which provides partners for unattached men, under the guise of giving them "dancing lessons." According to the author, she is "innocent" in spite of the fact that she is the mistress of both Pete Ravanni, the proprietor, and Max Lisenco, his assistant. But she is discontent with this lot and decides to throw them both over. The very evening she does this, "Crazy Man" appears.
He is John Carley, ex-convict and professional thief, who decides, under the pressure of reading he has done in the prison library, to become "an intellectual Christ." He robs department stores in the day, and in the evening he gives away sealed envelopes containing one hundred dollar bills.
This evening, however, he craves a new experience. So he tries entering the Merry Grotto in workingman's clothes. He is thrown down the stairs by Ravanni, Lisenco and Mike Scolleri, a bruiser who runs the cloak room of the establishment. He comes back again, is again thrown out. This happens six times. As he mounts the stairs for a seventh time, he discovers that the defense has been worn out by his persistence. By this time he is an enthusiastically worshipped hero. Especially to Selma, who sees in him an ally to her own determinations.
Naturally enough, a love story ensues in which this curious idealist of the underworld plays opposite the shopgirl, who dimly feels something beyond the flesh, but who can understand clearly only when the flesh is speaking. They quarrel because she cannot comprehend his idealism. They separate. They rejoin again, and for a while it seems as if her way of living triumphs. But in the end it is Carley's ideal that wins. And when he is sent to an insane asylum as a criminal paranoic it is indicated that she understands his attitude. At any rate, she agrees to live as he directs her. And to visit him annually in his asylum.
The Significance. Obviously, the foundation on which this body is constructed is irony. The implication over and over again is that—perhaps —very possibly—relatively speaking, at least, "Crazy Man" is not totally insane. His lunacy is consistently idealistic. And for that reason, Crazy Man, the novel, more than once or twice during its 200-odd pages comes so close to the ridiculous as to border on the sublime. After all, Carley is a paranoic—whether or not he is an intellectual Christ. But for all that, it is an original, vivid novel. In detail, its realism fails occasionally— especially in dialogue—but the total effect of its realism is good. It is not to be recommended to the Victorian-minded. Its subject, honestly treated, precludes that.
The Critics, The Literary Review. "A complete monomaniac, nothing really interests Bodenheim unless it relates somehow to his ruling intellectual passion. . . . Ultimately he can be no more than a minor though highly interesting literary phenomenon, but his flavor, acrid and pungent, is distinct and lasting."