Max Baer and the Star of David

When Jay Neugeboren’s first novel, Big Man, was published, James Michener called it “as good a sports novel as has ever been written.” Now, nearly a half century later, Neugeboren is publishing Max Baer and the Star of David, his 22nd book—a remarkable novel that is centered on the life of the world heavyweight champion Max Baer. In 1933 Baer—who was one-quarter Jewish and wore a Star of David on his boxing trunks—won the greatest fight of his career, defeating Nazi Germany’s heavyweight champion, Max Schmeling, before a crowd of 60,000 fans. A year later, he earned the heavyweight title defeating Primo Carnera in 1934 in front of 50,000 fans at Madison Square Garden Bowl. Baer was a flashy performer and showman who entertained America during the Great Depression. At the height of his fame, he starred in more than a dozen movies, played the vaudeville circuits, and was romantically linked to innumerable starlets, show girls, socialites, and Broadway actresses. As E. L. Doctorow did in Ragtime, in Max Baer and the Star of David Neugeboren has created fictional characters that interact with a real historical character, the boxing champion Max Baer. At the heart of this novel are two mysterious and memorable fictional creations, Max Baer’s constant companions, Horace and Joleen Littlejohn, who present themselves to the world as husband and wife, but are, in fact, brother and sister. They become best friends and sometime lovers to Max in this dazzling story about the world of boxing, and about Max’s life in and out of the ring. The narrator is Horace, and Neugeboren has given him a distinctive and compelling voice in what is, among other things, a strange and affecting interracial love story like no other, where love and violence lie down beside one another in astonishing ways.

Jay Neugeboren is the author of award-winning novels (The Stolen Jew, Before My Life Began, 1940, The American Sun & Wind Moving Picture Company, and Poli); nonfiction (Imagining Robert, Transforming Madness); and four collections of prize-winning stories. His essays and stories have appeared widely—in the New York Review of Books, the Atlantic Monthly, the American Scholar, Psychiatric Services, Black Clock, Ploughshares, Commonweal, Moment, Hadassah, and the New York Times—and have been reprinted in more than 50 anthologies, including Best American Stories and O. Henry Prize Stories. The recipient of numerous awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he was a professor and writer-in-residence for many years at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and has also taught at Stanford, Columbia, and the State University of New York at Old Westbury. He now lives and writes in New York City.OTHER BOOKS BY AUTHOR: Award-winning novels: The Stolen Jew, Before My Life Began, 1940, The American Sun & Wind Moving Picture Company, and Poli Award Winning Nonfiction: Imagining Robert, Transforming Madness