T. V. LoCicero
Autor von Murder in the Synagogue
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- T.V. LoCicero has been writing both fiction and non-fiction across five decades. He's the author of the true crime books Murder in the Synagogue (Prentice-Hall), on the assassination of Rabbi Morris Adler, and Squelched: The Suppression of Murder in the Synagogue. His novels include The Car Bomb and Admission of Guilt, the first two books in The detroit im dyin Trilogy, and The Obsession and The Disappearance, the first two in The Truth Beauty Trilogy. Seven of his shorter works are now available as ebooks. These are among the stories and essays he has published in various periodicals, including Commentary, Ms. and The University Review, and in the hard-cover collections Best Magazine Articles, The Norton Reader and The Third Coast.
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There is a certain kind of moral and intellectual grandiosity which has in many respects been the salient characteristic of the culture of the American republic since its founding, This tendency has given us everyone from Patrick Henry, the Virginia slave owner who famously said, in speech in March, 1775, “…give me liberty or give me death,” to Joel Osteen, the wealthy televangelist who professes Christianity, but lives as did the greediest Roman emperors. One might also include the shrill, self-righteous and arguably infantile rhetoric of a 1960s radical like Bernadine Dorhn. For thoughtful people, there is little appeal in any of this. But moral and intellectual grandiosity are undeniably a thread in the fabric of our national culture here in the United States.
Clinical mental illnesses, it presumably goes without saying, are a tragedy for both their sufferers and the families and loved ones of those sufferers. Certain of these illnesses, like paranoid schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, often afflict those dealing with them with a similar sort of intellectual and moral grandiosity as well. Psychotic delusions often afflict mentally ill persons with misconceived or misplaced notions of personal greatness, uniqueness, and even superiority to others.
Both of these issues—a sense of moral and intellectual grandiosity, and clinical mental illness—intersected in the sad and short life of Richard Wishnetsky. On February 12, 1966, Richard rose from his seat among the congregants of Temple Shaarey Zedek in Detroit, Michigan, and shot Rabbi Morris Adler, its leader. Richard then turned his gun on himself. He died four days later at the age of 23; Rabbi Adler died 27 days later, several days short of his sixtieth birthday.
Rabbi Adler was of national prominence in the Jewish Community, and his death, and its manner, occasioned national remark. A little less than four months after Rabbi Adler was shot, a Detroit writer by the name of T.V. LoCicero published an article in the intellectual journal Commentary on the event and its aftermath.
Later, Mr. LoCicero expanded his article into a book called Murder in the Synagogue (with its obvious allusion to T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral) which chronicles Richard Wishnetsky’s life in painstaking detail. Mr. LoCicero brings the same perspicacity and sympathy one finds in his fictions as he tracks Richard’s life from his birth up to the day he murdered Rabbi Adler.
Richard (as Mr. LoCicero calls him, thereby humanizing him and accentuating the tragedy of this story, as well as supplying a stylistic affectation to which I have helped myself) took up, as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, topics in social, political, and ethical philosophy. He quickly proved himself a star student in the field: he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, graduated in the top one percent of his class, and was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship for graduate study—which remains a considerable distinction for scholars. A couple of Ivy League schools accepted him, as did the University of Chicago.
For some reason, though, Richard opted to attend The University of Detroit, a second- tier institution when held up in comparison to the other universities that accepted him. This choice baffled a number of people in Richard’s life, not the least of whom were various of his academic advisors. Moreover, at first, Richard was disallowed from using his Wilson Fellowship money at the University of Detroit, though later he secured permission to do so.
Richard’s institutional choices are the first indication, in Mr. LoCicero’s narrative, that he might not have been thinking rationally as he neared his college graduation. As the book progresses, the reader is exposed to a young man, evidently, in the thrall of Neoplatonism, particularly the kind of political and moral certainty and superiority of Plato’s philosopher-king, as well as in the throes of a nascent clinical mental illness. Mr. LoCicero examines the minutia of Richard’s life, particularly in the crucial period leading up to that fateful and fatal February day. At times the detail seems excruciating but that’s because it’s supposed to be: formally speaking, we are guided through the events, and their oddly contrasted tedium and excitement (much like Richard’s apparent emotional state at the time), of the last years, then days, of Richard’s life. In retrospect, there is nary a wasted word in this narrative.
All of that detail is paid for with Mr. LoCicero’s elegant epilogue. He wisely invokes W.H. Auden’s “Age of Anxiety” to help his readers understand the objective state of the world in Richard’s lifetime, and the effect it too may have had on Richard’s mental state. We see Richard’s fragmented self as a reflection of the fragmented world; indeed, Richard’s disintegration augurs poorly for the integration of the world. The superb epilogue to Murder in the Synagogue is therefore very much of its time—the malaise that afflicted a not entirely blameless American culture and society in the 1960s and 1970s and found its expression in the life and acts of Richard Wishnetsky.
… (mehr)
T.V. LoCicero’s prose, for me, is like the lure a fish knows isn’t real, but hits anyway. Artifice, of course, is the basis of fiction, and the best fiction—like that found in this brief but potent collection—takes a reader places he or she wouldn’t otherwise go. As the old saw goes, there are no boring subjects, only boring writers. So here, at last, is a collection of Mr. LoCicero’s short fiction and journalism, and much of this is first-rate stuff. Indeed, the first story, “Fixed” combines gambling compulsion with fatherhood in a way that sounds like it could have come from the pen of Bruce Jay Friedman; it really is that mordantly ironic and funny. The third story, “Shrunk,” I found surprisingly absorbing given its romantic elements, something I usually avoid like the plague. These are the high spots of the seven short stories contained in this volume. I generally avoid short fiction, mostly because I prefer novels (Mr. LoCicero’s are quite good, incidentally), so I’m a bit out of my depth writing about these stories. I simply don’t read enough short fiction to comment perceptively on it.
The non-fiction pieces in this book are the standouts. As I’ve written elsewhere about Mr. LoCicero’s prose, his exposition is his strength. Unsurprisingly, then, when writing expository prose he is at his best. The first essay on the non-fiction side of this book is a simple act of self-historical documentation, “Why I’m Here.” This is an elegant piece of writing whose brevity complements its prose. “The Lessons of Sport,” about Detroit sports teams in general, and basketball legend Dave DeBrusscher in particular, also serves as a notable example of the greatest strengths of Mr. LoCicero’s writing. I am a longtime agnostic where sports are concerned; I don’t know much about sports, and other than watching an occasional baseball game, I don’t care to. But I couldn’t put this piece of writing aside, which says a great deal about the interest in a subject Mr. LoCicero can generate for the otherwise uninterested.
Just on the strength of the pieces I’ve mentioned above, this book merits the price of admission. However, if you do need to justify the price to yourself, consider the fact that the non-fiction side of the book contains a roughly nine-thousand-word interview with the late, Detroit-based master of crime fiction, Elmore Leonard—one of the last he gave before his death in August of 2013. His influence on the genre is estimable, yet in his interview, Mr. Leonard is humble, voluble, and gives credit where credit is due—to wit, to Hemingway and Graham Greene, but also to the little known but highly esteemed American writer Richard Bissell. If you are an Elmore Leonard fan, don’t miss this piece.
Post Scriptum: After posting this review yesterday, I realized I neglected to mention another standout in this collection, "Selling the Bison." The Bison, for the uninitiated, is (or was; I assume that Mr. LoCicero is using a pseudonym for this product--in any case I can find no mention of it on the Internet) a "Home Maintenance System." I too have a story about interviewing for a job selling vacuum cleaners, at a time, like Mr. LoCicero, when my career prospects were dim. Unfortunately for me, I could never tell that story with the kind of wry good humor that this story projects.… (mehr)
The non-fiction pieces in this book are the standouts. As I’ve written elsewhere about Mr. LoCicero’s prose, his exposition is his strength. Unsurprisingly, then, when writing expository prose he is at his best. The first essay on the non-fiction side of this book is a simple act of self-historical documentation, “Why I’m Here.” This is an elegant piece of writing whose brevity complements its prose. “The Lessons of Sport,” about Detroit sports teams in general, and basketball legend Dave DeBrusscher in particular, also serves as a notable example of the greatest strengths of Mr. LoCicero’s writing. I am a longtime agnostic where sports are concerned; I don’t know much about sports, and other than watching an occasional baseball game, I don’t care to. But I couldn’t put this piece of writing aside, which says a great deal about the interest in a subject Mr. LoCicero can generate for the otherwise uninterested.
Just on the strength of the pieces I’ve mentioned above, this book merits the price of admission. However, if you do need to justify the price to yourself, consider the fact that the non-fiction side of the book contains a roughly nine-thousand-word interview with the late, Detroit-based master of crime fiction, Elmore Leonard—one of the last he gave before his death in August of 2013. His influence on the genre is estimable, yet in his interview, Mr. Leonard is humble, voluble, and gives credit where credit is due—to wit, to Hemingway and Graham Greene, but also to the little known but highly esteemed American writer Richard Bissell. If you are an Elmore Leonard fan, don’t miss this piece.
Post Scriptum: After posting this review yesterday, I realized I neglected to mention another standout in this collection, "Selling the Bison." The Bison, for the uninitiated, is (or was; I assume that Mr. LoCicero is using a pseudonym for this product--in any case I can find no mention of it on the Internet) a "Home Maintenance System." I too have a story about interviewing for a job selling vacuum cleaners, at a time, like Mr. LoCicero, when my career prospects were dim. Unfortunately for me, I could never tell that story with the kind of wry good humor that this story projects.… (mehr)
If you've read T.V. LoCicero's gritty detroit im dyin trilogy, then please be advised that The Obsession markedly departs from those novels. This novel is apparently the first of another trilogy, but there the resemblance ends. Mr. LoCicero mashes up a variety of genres in this book, though perceptive readers will recognize a predominance of conventions from thrillers and romance novels.
Yet there is another genre present here, that of the novel of academic manners. In some respects, especially in those parts of the book set at the fictional St. Thomas College, this book takes many of its cues from books like Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim, Mary McCarthy's The Groves of Academe, and even Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson. Without giving too much of the plot away, I can say that the petty scholarly battles for which academia is justly famous, and which are thoughtfully represented in this book, pale in comparison to the acts of the novel's principal characters.
As I've said about other of Mr. LoCicero's books, I can't help but wonder what the support of a major publisher would do for his them. That's a polite way of saying that self-publishing as he does robs Mr. LoCicero, I think, of the opportunity to work with a talented and perceptive editor--indeed, one thing I've learned unequivocally while reading Mr. LoCicero's books is the importance of an editor to the creation of any book in any genre.
Nonetheless, if you're a fan of the romance or mystery genre (I'm more an aficionado of the latter than the former), you'll find much to like in this fast-paced, highly readable book.… (mehr)
Yet there is another genre present here, that of the novel of academic manners. In some respects, especially in those parts of the book set at the fictional St. Thomas College, this book takes many of its cues from books like Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim, Mary McCarthy's The Groves of Academe, and even Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson. Without giving too much of the plot away, I can say that the petty scholarly battles for which academia is justly famous, and which are thoughtfully represented in this book, pale in comparison to the acts of the novel's principal characters.
As I've said about other of Mr. LoCicero's books, I can't help but wonder what the support of a major publisher would do for his them. That's a polite way of saying that self-publishing as he does robs Mr. LoCicero, I think, of the opportunity to work with a talented and perceptive editor--indeed, one thing I've learned unequivocally while reading Mr. LoCicero's books is the importance of an editor to the creation of any book in any genre.
Nonetheless, if you're a fan of the romance or mystery genre (I'm more an aficionado of the latter than the former), you'll find much to like in this fast-paced, highly readable book.… (mehr)
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- #139,413
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- 4.1
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- 17
Murder in the Synagogue, which I have reviewed elsewhere on this website, tells the story of the 1966 murder of Rabbi Morris Adler by Richard Wishnetsky, one of the rabbi’s congregants at the Shaarey Zedek Synagogue in Detroit. Mr. Wishnetsky’s story is amply and ably told in Murder in the Synagogue. Suffice to say that he was a young man whose star was very much in ascendance when a clinical mental illness brought him crashing to earth, and compelled him to commit this Dostoevskian murder.
As a young writer in Detroit, Mr. LoCicero fell into this story. On the strength of an article he published in the journal Commentary, he secured a contract to write a book on the murder, and particularly on Richard Wishnetsky’s motive for murdering Rabbi Adler. Given the enormous changes in American society underway in the 1960s, this book would endeavor to explain Mr. Wishnetsky in the context of his political, intellectual, and social milieu. Many of the principals, including Rabbi Adler’s wife, Goldie Adler, were cooperative and encouraging, so Mr. LoCicero proceeded with his research, confident that he would not besmirch Detroit’s Jewish community—which he painstakingly sought to avoid doing.
Before Prentice-Hall, the publisher of Murder in the Synagogue, could even ship the book, however, there were problems in its editorial process. The book’s editors balked at its length, at the minutia of the biographical portrait of Richard Wishnetsky (one of the great strengths of the book), and other issues that commonly attend the editorial process leading up to the production of a book. When I received my copy of the book, I was surprised indeed to see the Prentice-Hall imprint on its spine; I’ve always associated Prentice-Hall with textbooks, so the company struck me, even across the time and distance since its publication, as an odd choice for a book of this sort. Nonetheless, it was a publisher with national and international reach which paid Mr. LoCicero a handsome advance, so its commitment to Murder in the Synagogue appeared genuine. Therefore, the editorial issues seemed as bumps in the road.
However, during the production process, Mr. LoCicero received information that Max Martin Fisher, a wealthy, powerful Detroiter, and a member of Shaarey Zedek, had boasted at a social gathering of successfully suppressing Murder in the Synagogue. He had, he told those in attendance--one of whom would later contact Mr. LoCicero with this story--successfully "squelched" the story of Richard Wishnetsky's murder of Rabbi Adler.
Squelched follows this story through the eyes of the author as he seeks facts to confirm what remains, maddeningly, a rumor. Mr. LoCicero uses the device of the third person—he identifies himself as “L” throughout the narrative. At first, I found this a tad precious, but as the narrative unfolded, I became more sympathetic to the strategy; in fact, I arrived at the conclusion that avoiding the first person was really the only way to write a book such as this. The use of the upright pronoun would have turned this book, as one character in it warns, into a "woe-is-me wheeze." As L pursues the story, he meets numerous dead ends. Because he is evidently not conspiratorially-minded, one of the questions that L considers is whether or not the fate of his book is due to the machinations of one wealthy and powerful man, of the bureaucratic lassitude and incompetence of the representatives of one of the nation’s largest publishers. Given the consequences—a book suppressed—I suppose in the final analysis it doesn’t matter.
Because much of the evidence is circumstantial, it remains difficult to prove either case. To his credit, Mr. LoCicero never categorically asserts that his book was suppressed. He builds a strong case in Squelched, but recognizes it is insufficient to prove the suppression of Murder in the Synagogue beyond a reasonable doubt. Under these circumstances, I cannot imagine this was an easy book to write. Not many people set out to read a book without a clear resolution; one of the reasons one reads is to see real world problems solved—even if those problems are solved fictionally. I imagine even fewer writers set out to compose and publish a book without a clear resolution, as that could likely become be a book without readers.
Mr. LoCicero remedies this lapse with a stately epilogue. In this finale, the reader is privy to an older man speaking to his younger self, chiding him for the folly of his pride in pursuing his investigation into the suppression of Murder in the Synagogue, but also congratulating him for his willingness to fight a good fight (and there are few better fights than opposing censorship), and for preventing his book from simply falling prey to the whims of the wealthy and powerful.
In the case of Murder in the Synagogue man named Max Martin Fisher, sought the silencing of a single book. Dangerous though such conduct is in an open, civil society with constitutional guarantees of free speech, it pales in comparison to Ajit Pai’s attempt to restrict the flow on information in the digital commons that makes possible the delivery of information. Either way, the public is impoverished by these censors.… (mehr)