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Emancipation

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

David Samuel
Levinson has
written a gripping,
insightful and darkly
funny family drama,
centered around a
Passover seder.

D

avid Samuel Levinson
recalls family seders
in his home city of San
Antonio, where some 35 guests
gathered around a table “to
laugh and sing and drink and
celebrate Judaism.”
His experience bears no
resemblance to the tone of the
Passover being planned in his
new novel, Tell Me How This
Ends Well (Hogarth; $27). In
it, three grown siblings come
together to plot the murder of
their father, as they believe their
long-abusive father is plotting
against their mother.
The storyline, taking place in
a futuristic 2022 with extensive
expressions of anti-Semitism,
has been defined as a satiric
dark comedy.
“When I was writing the
book, I had no idea that anti-
Semitism was going to rise as
quickly as it has,” says Levinson,
on a speaking tour to explore
his subject matter. “I’m looking
forward to hearing what people
think and sparking some dis-
cussions about anti-Semitism in
America.”
The novel has set up the
premise that Israel has been
taken over by adjoining coun-
tries, forcing a mass movement
by Jewish citizens to the United
States.
Levinson believes the idea
for the book developed from an
essay he wrote to reflect upon
facing discrimination in Texas.
He says the characters in the
fictional Jacobson family are an
exaggerated conglomeration of
dozens of Jewish families he has
encountered over the years.
“I don’t know anyone who
has ever expressed these kinds
of feelings about a father, but
I’m fascinated by crime and
the psychology behind certain

minds,” he says.
“I wanted to delve deeply into
what it would be like to plot
the murder of a parent. I took
everything to the most extreme
point I could take it, and the
most extreme point is the death
of another human being.
“There are lots of parallels in
the family and the wider sphere
of the world that I was hoping
people would react to and get.”
Levinson’s earlier writing
projects include the novel
Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence
and the story collection Most of
Us Are Here Against Our Will. He
also has been published in The
New Penguin Book of Gay Short
Stories, The Brooklyn Review and
The Toronto Quarterly.
“My first memory of wanting
to be a writer was when I was
8 years old,” Levinson says. “I
wrote a little play called The
Toy Box. There was a store in
San Antonio called the Toy Box,
and I wrote a play about what
would happen if the toys there
came to life. The PTA put it on,
and I acted in it and directed it.
Since then, that’s all I wanted
to do.”
Levinson majored in
English literature at Columbia
University in New York before
receiving his master’s degree
in creative writing nearby
at the New School for Social
Research. He worked as a copy
editor and proofreader before
doing adjunct teaching at New
York University and serving
as a fellow in fiction at Emory
University in Atlanta.
The Brooklyn resident, 47 and
single, was a finalist in Write a
House, a juried Detroit program
that offers free homes to writers
agreeing to restore dilapidated
residences in the city. As part of
the program, winners get train-

David Samuel Levinson

ing on how to complete repairs.
Having written about a fam-
ily presented in some ways
as beyond repair, Levinson
expresses great interest in
reaching the Jewish commu-
nity in a way he has not done
with other projects that have
included the presence of Jewish
characters.
“Readers have to understand
that these kids in the story were
abused beyond belief,” he says.
“Emotional abuse actually hap-
pens, and that’s something else
that my novel takes issue with.
“It’s been a family secret, and
I think that’s partly why the
kids have had enough. No one
believes them.”
Levinson, while living and
writing in Berlin for a couple
of years, traveled to Vienna to
look up family forebears. That

jn

experience infused sections of
the novel.
“In some way, the holiday
mirrors the Jacobsons’ experi-
ence,” says Levinson, finished
with a draft for another work of
fiction. “The siblings are trying
to emancipate themselves from
their father once and for all as
the Jews tried to emancipate
themselves from the Egyptians
once and for all, and that brings
layers to the book.
“I’ve never explored my own
religion in such a way, and I
really loved it. I’m going to
continue to do that. It awak-
ened my pride in being Jewish,
and I’m reading a lot of Jewish
books. Though I always was
proud of being Jewish, this has
galvanized me in ways I never
thought it would.” •

April 6 • 2017

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