Big Man (1966) by Jay Neugeboren

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Big Man (1966)

by Jay Neugeboren

Brooklyn, New York

Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island: 18/26

New York: 95/103

 

   Again, I was left wondering why Susan Straight left The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll off the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list when I was reading Big Man, about the aftermath of the 1950-1951 point shaving scandal that rocked organized basketball.  Mack Davis, the narrator, is working at a car-wash in Brooklyn five years after he was banned for life (but not imprisoned) for agreeing to shave points.  Big Man is the second book in the New York chapter written from the perspective of an African American but written by a white man. It's almost impossible to imagine a similar book being published today but it seems like it was accepted practice at least through the 1960's. 

   Mack Davis is recognizable as an alienated young person from the 1950's.  Perhaps because of the trans-racial authorship, Mack seems less concerned with the disabilities of race then just getting by- living with his Mom in Brooklyn, working at the carwash.  The extremely low-stakes plot involves Mack signing up as a ringer in a B'nai B'rith fundraising game where he is playing opposite another banned player who has embraced a life of organized crime whole-heartedly.  Meanwhile, a local journalist tries to enlist him in a scheme to sue the NBA for illegally banning him via the "blacklist."  Mack isn't exactly a dim-bulb narrator- his virtuosity on the basketball court elevates those portions beyond the hum drum of an impoverished Brooklyn existence circa the mid 1950's, but he isn't exactly a paragon of light and virtue.

  There's a love interest in the form of a single mom who is herself a surprisingly good player and a host of minor New Yorker stock-types, including the journalist, who I'm presuming represents the author, since he is a middle-aged Jewish guy.