http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/365470892

O My America! : a Novel

A delightfully funny and moving novel about the singular life of a cantankerous Jewish-American writer and anarchist troublemaker, as remembered by his daughter In 1972, sixty-four-year-old Ezra Slavin & rsquo;s heart gives out at an anti-war rally. A contentious and irascible Jewish-American writer, anarchist, and inadvertent guru to discontented youth, he leaves behind a large extended family of ex-wives, lovers, and children, most of whom had cut all ties with the infuriating intellectual provocateur years earlier. Out of the entire family, only one daughter, Merry, a journalist, can remember her father with her own critical, conflicted understanding, a saddened sympathy approaching love. As the day of his memorial approaches, she attempts to make sense of the puzzle of Ezra & rsquo;s life before all of its disparate, discordant elements come crashing together at the service. The award-winning author of Other People & rsquo;s Lives, Johanna Kaplan creates a vivid cast of unforgettable characters who reveal the disparity between Ezra & rsquo;s long-suffering, neglected family, his admiring friends, and the youthful hangers-on & mdash;and, most notably, in the outrageously enigmatic Ezra himself. At once hilarious and poignant, O My America! offers a fascinating evocation of a time and place in America, a satiric history of the immigrant Jewish experience, and a wonderful portrait of an exasperating yet endearing anti-hero pursuing his unique vision of the American dream.

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