MOVIE BRATS

a novella by B.Z. Niditch


PRELUDE

I, Victor Nitkin, am an orphan born to genius. My parents left Leningad during its revolutionary metamorphosis from St. Petersburg, fleeing first to Warsaw, then to Weimar Germany.

My mother was a concert pianist and my PhD father wrote articles on "humanism" until Jews became out of fashion in the National Socialist era. So, between Bolshevism and fascism I was born and then borne away to the New World. My mother and father were lost to the camps in which I was conceived only to be displaced.

Adopted by my mother's three starstruck sisters, formerly from the pale of Russia, I am brought to Boston mid-century. Stalin and McCarthy's voices booms in the capital of the West. With one ear listening to the radio broadcast, I eat an orange and try not to day dream about the atom's mushroom cloud.

I do not realize that "genius" is a commodity in the New World. My own talent is relentlessly musical playing "The Moonlight Sonata" while other children toy with "Twinkle, Twinkle,Little Star."


Chapter One

OUR VICTOR'S DEBUT

I live on Commonwealth Avenue where young couples wheel their new baby carriages on green lawns and the Boston Terriers are holding football practice. On the baby grand, I am vigorously practicing Chopin and Beethoven etudes. Eugene Goldensohn, my only friend from Latin School has been invited over for my recital. Aunt Vera calls him the "prol soul" and refuses to understand our friendship. Vera considers herself my stage mother and keeps her vigilant eye on my melodious career. What can I do about it. Just about the same as my circumcision.

What am I being groomed for,anyway. It sounds momentous,almost
miraculous! Aunt Vera wants me to play in the Hollywood Bowl, that Hollywood is better than the Borscht Belt, but is it really American success? I am going to realize it is Hollywood which forms us in its own image and likeness, vasts more of us and governs us.

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In this novella, B.Z. Niditch takes a serio-comic look at the tumultuous world of Hollywood and beyond during an era of political, sexual and religious uprisings.

Meet Victor Nitkin, progeny of a concert pianist and humanist father; his Leftist friend Eugene, his stage mother Aunt Vera; and the ever present movie director Slobodkin, who documents Victor's story.

A playwright and poet, as well as short story writer and novelist,
B.Z. Niditch brings his distinctive vision and style to a work that
is sure to entertain and provoke. Critics have compared B.Z.'s absurdist fiction to the Russian Daniil Kharms.

MOVIE BRATS, published  in 2002 by Four-Sep publishers, is available from the author.