A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories

Me giving a book one star does not happen very often. Don't get me wrong - the art is spectacular, but it doesn't outweigh my distaste of two of the four stories. All the spoilers will be hidden.

I don't know what those stories are supposed to be read as. I expected to see how people lived in New York in the 30s, and in a way, I got a glimpse of it, but not much more. Is there some deeper meaning I'm not getting? Is this one of those “you'll understand it when you're older” kind of works? I don't know. But I feel like I didn't get anything out of this book other confusion and annoyance. Was that the purpose? Was I supposed to be annoyed?

THE STORIES I DIDN'T HATE, BUT DIDN'T FIND VERY INTERESTING

A Contract with God

This is the first story of the four, centered around a man who made a contract with God, where he would do good deeds in exchange for God's protection. The hole story is framed like a story-with-a-moral one could find in holly scripture of Abrahamic religions.

I think this story is the best in the whole book simply because it seems to have a reasons behind the main character's behavior. I might not agree with those reasons, but they're there. I also think the moral of the story is dubious, but this one's a SPOILER:

If I understood correctly, the moral is that Frimme should've never made demands of God and he got punished for his arrogance. But I think the conclusion he jumped to (the idea that he can make a contract with God in the first place), stems from the fact that you are always promised rewards or punishment for different behavior in the Abrahamic religions. Yes, many people of faith will argue that it's not the right interpretation of the holly scriptures. But that's the problem! Their meaning strongly depends on interpretation! I personally hate the fact that the Abrahamic God allows himself to punish people for "bad deeds" when he does not give humans full information about the universe (and himself) in the grand scheme and relies on obedience based on blind faith. The promise of rewards for good deeds is not any better, either. It warps the reasoning behind being decent to other people and falsely places Abrahamic religions as the source of human morality.My point is this - Abrahamic God is an authoritarian who has no right to murder people for acting out of ignorance in a framework he himself set up that gives people little to no solid information and heavily relies on blind faith and emotional dependence upon that said God.

END SPOILER

The Street Singer

A story about a man who sings in alleys for change. The story is unpleasant to read, yet easy to forget afterwards (I had completely forgotten about it, before opening the book again to write this review). On the other hand –

SPOILER
You can already see the theme of how a man treats a woman like shit, remains unpunished, in this case - even forgiven, and the "punishment" the plot offers is an "oh well" kind of missed opportunity, that doesn't seem to upset the guy. The woman's punishment? Living in poverty with an abusing husband.

END SPOILER

THE STORIES I HATED

The Super

This story centers around the maintenance chief of the building. It's pointlessly nasty with no redeeming elements. I want to seem mature and say this story was annoying, but honestly? It made me very angry.

SPOILER
The guy is unpleasant, so everybody hates him. Do they talk to him about it? Do they tell him how his behavior is upsetting and alienating? No, the plot decides to punish him. He gets seduced by a ten year old girl who offers to show him her panties for a nickel. He gets distracted, she poisons his dog (the only creature he loved), robs him and runs away. He gets understandably upset and angry, runs after her - but it's too late! They're in the courtyard of the building where everyone can see them and what they see is an angry man "harassing" a little girl. They call the police, the guy shoots himself. No one gives a f*ck. The end. *deep sigh*I really hope that the moral of the story is not that the girl is an "immoral evil slut", because she's 10 and has very possibly either been molested before, or exposed to sexual context too early in life, because what she does is clearly learned behavior.

END SPOILER

Cookalein

This one's a longer story that started innocent, but got really disgusting toward the end. It's about a country house which is a popular holiday destination for poor people. Some people, however, want to stay in a fancier place: a woman, who wants to marry a rich man, and a man, who wants to marry a rich woman. This story involves a Nice Guy and there's also rape, so I find it to be the worst of the four. A fitting end to this book.

SPOILER
So the woman comes to the fancy place and a guy who plays saxophone at the event likes her and starts flirting with her. He pulls a complete nice guy act, from trying to help her with her luggage, to telling her that he found her name in the hotel's register, which is beyond creepy! She tells him she's not interested, and he gets offended, and the reader is supposed to sympathize with him, because (1) he's a man and he likes her, and we all know his feelings are more important than hers; (2) she seems to dislike him simply because he's poor and unattractive, and not because he's a creep she barely knows who is hitting on her and getting upset at her 'no'. I was hoping that had been the worst of it, but then she sees the poor guy who came here to marry a rich girl. Both she and him are pretending to be rich. I'll call the guy Piece of Sh*t, if that's ok, and trust me, he deserves it. So Main Girl and Piece of Sh*t get together and he keeps trying to force her to have sex with him. Main girl refuses, saying that they'll get married anyway and then they can have sex. At some point Piece of Sh*t confesses that he's not rich, and then Main Girl laughs and says - what a coincidence! Neither am I! Once he learns that, Piece of Sh*t gets angry and rapes her. She runs back to the house, Nice Guy brings her to his room and comforts her. She's crying that she's a "ruined woman" and now no one's gonna marry her, but Nice Guy says he doesn't care. Now Main Girl likes him and they decide to get married. THIS WHOLE THING SPANS A SINGLE DAY. Nice Guy confronts Piece of Sh*t, but mostly to tell him to leave Main Girl alone from now on. Because the past was great for women, nothing is done about the rape. Piece of Sh*t seduces some other girl and gets married into a rich family. That's his "punishment". Main Girl gets to marry Nice Guy - the guy she didn't want to marry in the first place. That's her "reward". Yay. We can see how women's opinions and feeling truly matter in this book.