SECOND GENERATION

FICTION:  SECOND GENERATION – Howard Fast/Dell – 1978

I found a yellow, brittle paperback copy of SECOND GENERATION in the 48-cent bin.  It was so old that the cover broke off a few pages in.  I found out that this was a follow up to a novel called THE IMMIGRANTS.

Fast was known as a prolific writer of historical fiction and a man who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era, but continued to write under a couple of pseudonyms.

SECOND GENERATION is one of those sweeping sagas, encompassing several characters in the San Francisco area from 1935 to 1946.  The main character is Barbara Lavette, the child of Dan and Jean Lavette.  Barbara’s parents are divorced and Dan has given up his fortune to marry his lover, a Chinese-American woman.  They have a son who is Barbara’s half brother.  Jean is now married to John Whittier and combined with her family’s banking fortune and Whittier’s money and ambition, the Whittiers are one of the wealthiest, most aristocratic families in the Bay area.  Another son from Jean’s marriage to Dan Lavette, has not spoken to his father for 15 years, preferring Whittier as his role model.

Barbara goes off to Sarah Lawrence for a couple of semesters but decides not to return.  She is hungry for some meaning in her life.  Although Whittier practically owns the San Francisco waterfront, she has done some writing for the local paper and is assigned to cover a strike on the Embarcadero, is very taken with the passion of the strikers and decides to volunteer her services to the cause, selling her possessions to bring food to the workers.  Of course, Whittier is unhappy at her defection and the embarrassment it causes him when she is photographed during a bloody confrontation between the strikers, the scabs and the cops.

She needs to get away from San Francisco and find herself and also reconnect with Lavette and his wife, May Ling and their son, Joseph.  She stops off in Los Angeles and then decides to go to Paris, where she meets the love of her life, Marcel.  They live together and Barbara enjoys the stimulation of Marcel’s friends, mostly left-leaning journalists.  Marcel goes off to fight in the Spanish Civil War, is injured and rescued by another soldier there, Bernie Cohen.  Marcel is returned to the States but eventually dies of complications from his injuries. Still in Paris, she meets Bernie Cohen and is profoundly affected by their one-night get together.  Barbara has been writing for the newspaper and then is picked up by a sophisticated magazine (which is not named as THE NEW YORKER but certainly seems to be along the same lines.)

After several years in Paris, she returns to San Francisco, still lonely and dissatisfied and eager to continue to find herself.  She is asked to go to Berlin to interview a German professor.  She is frightened but goes anyway.  She feels she is being followed as she approaches the professor’s apartment.  On the street, she sees an unusual sight:  sanitation workers are directing a group of elderly Jews to clean up a sewer spill in the street.  One man balks at the horrible job and Barbara steps in to stop the mistreatment.  She is taken to the police station and barely leaves Berlin in one piece.  Again, she goes home, writes a book and is earning her own way.  Still, she yearns to do more.

As the United States gets into World War II, she is asked to cover stories from the Pacific.  She is maturing and finding herself.  She wants nothing to do with the fortune she will be inheriting and when she becomes of age, she divests herself of the money by forming a charitable foundation.

There are other threads and other characters, that involve her parents and then herself and the long road that has created who and what they are.

This book held me to the end, but I felt its style of sweeping family saga was as dated as a miniseries.  Like the Woody Allen film, ZELIG, Barbara and Company kept winding up as part of the historic events of the time, including Pearl Harbor.  It felt contrived.  If I found THE IMMIGRANTS, I might glance at it, but not with great enthusiasm.