The Jewish Genre Challenge chats with author Lee Matthew Goldberg about his new crime caper The Great Gimmelmans, his recently completed project about subliminal Nazi messaging in 1930s America, and how much sense it actually makes for bank robbery and teshuvah to end up in the same story.
Award-winning author Lee Matthew Goldberg is a prolific writer; his most recent book, The Great Gimmelmans, is his 14th published work. But despite being Jewish himself, The Great Gimmelmans is Goldberg’s first book to feature Jewish main characters. The Jewish Genre Challenge was inspired in part by how uncommon it is for Jewish-authored genre books to feature Jewish characters, so when we learned this from him our curiosity was piqued.
Lee was kind enough to speak with the JGC earlier this spring from his Central Park “office,” the sounds of the city in the background as we talked about what it’s like to both write and read genre fiction while Jewish.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
JGC: I’m curious what went into your decision to include Jewish characters in this book, where you hadn’t in your previous thirteen.
LMG: For me, The Gimmelmans was the first book that required it. I really wanted to explore religion, where I don’t think any of my other books explored religion. I grew up Jewish, both my parents are Jewish, we went to a Conservative Jewish temple, I was Bar Mitzvahed. But I’ve always connected culturally and ethnically to being Jewish while the spirituality never quite meshed for me personally. So [Judaism] was never something I particularly thought to explore in any of my other novels.
"The Gimmelmans is very much about forgiveness and the idea of forgiveness, and I needed to use the Judaism of the characters to explore that."
In all my other novels it would have been an aside if the character was Jewish, it wouldn’t have had any significant impact on the story. Whereas The Gimmelmans is very much about forgiveness and the idea of forgiveness, and I needed to use the Judaism of the characters to explore that. And I think [writing] it helped me explore my own Judaism a lot more. In addition, the [not yet published] book that I just finished writing is about the 1930s and American Naziism, so it’s very much about antisemitism. I almost feel like The Gimmelmans was leading me to this current book where I really explored every facet [of Jewishness] that I was never able to explore before.
JGC: That sounds profound.
LMG: It was a very profound book. It was a lot of research about Nazis and Nazis in America, and something was pulling me to write this book. I don’t think I would have been able to write a book like that at the beginning of my career.
JGC: How come?
LMG: I don’t think I was able to write as serious a book as the current one. The Gimmelmans is quite funny in most parts, though there are moments of very serious aspect to it, as the wheels start to fall off the RV for the family. Some of my other books are serious, too, for example The Ancestor is quite serious and about loss. But I think I wasn’t personally mature enough until this moment to write such a dense book about the 1930s and pre-WWII and what was bubbling on the horizon.
JGC: You said that if a character was Jewish in your other books, it would have been an aside. A lot of your other books have a noir, action-noir, dark underbelly kind of feeling. Did it feel like there’s a certain type of default character, maybe WASP-assumed, in those stories?
LMG: I just don’t think that would have changed the narrative of those books in any way. And maybe because of that noir category where you already have amoral people and then bringing religion and moralistic elements into it would almost be like an antithesis of what the book was. But honestly it didn’t even cross my mind. And I think in this time where we’re in an era of writing what you know, where you come from, that also led me to say maybe it’s time now to focus on more Jewish protagonists.
"It might have been an unconscious thing of mine to not write a Jewish book early in my career and then have that be the box that I’m lumped into. Now with the breadth of what I’ve done, I do want it to be a part of my career."
My career has been all over the place always. It might have been an unconscious thing of mine to not write a Jewish book early in my career and then have that be the box that I’m lumped into. Now with the breadth of what I’ve done, I do want it to be a part of my career. But something definitely changed with the new book I just finished, and The Gimmelmans, too. I’ve connected in a deeper way to my heritage through both of those books.
JGC: Part of why I created the Jewish genre challenge is that I wanted to pick up escapist-type books that weren’t “Jewish books” but still happened to have Jewish characters. And then I think there’s the potential for another layer, which is what you did with The Great Gimmelmans, where the book is within a genre format but also the Jewishness of it is essential to the story.
LMG: Yes, I think The Gimmelmans has wide appeal for everyone. If you’re down for a semi-thriller about a family of bank robbers, regardless of what religion you are, you’re in. And I do think that for a reader who grew up Jewish and culturally identifies with it, there is that extra bit that you would get from it. And that was my intention. I never would want to isolate people and have them say, “Well, it’s too much, I don’t understand it. It’s not the world I’m familiar with.”
"To me that’s the best thing that you can get from a book, that it appeals widely and then also for certain people it really hits home even more."
I think The Gimmelmans perfectly crosses both lines, where anybody could relate to the characters and what’s going on. Maybe [a reader] with a large family, with siblings, who was alive in the 1980s. And I have heard from people who are Jewish that they understood some of the deeper meanings, the cultural meanings, that I was able to explore. And to me that’s the best thing that you can get from a book, that it appeals widely and then also for certain people it really hits home even more.
JGC: Yes, that was absolutely my experience with it. One of the things I loved about the book is that even though the family all start out secular, it could not have been the story that it was without that being a Jewish family. Because the idea of teshuvah is so particular, it’s not like the Christian idea of forgiveness, and, you know, we say repentance at Yom Kippur but it’s not the Christian idea of repentance. It’s the [Jewish idea of] return.
LMG: Yes, yes.
JGC: You mention teshuvah several times throughout the book but it wasn’t until the epilogue when Aaron is explaining it to his son that I realized how deeply woven all of the returns were in the whole story. So even as a Jewish reader, who might be expected to catch on to that more quickly, it was that last appearance of it that was the unlocking moment for me, too.
LMG: Thank you, that’s a big compliment. Sometimes things happen just organically. Maybe because it’s my fourteenth book that I don’t even have to think about themes now, themes just show up as I’m writing. This was my COVID book so I wrote it in 2020 and 2021. It was obviously a strange time and the book became my outlet for escaping the world. I would go to Central Park every day and there would be nobody outside and I would just work on this book. And I think those themes just wound up playing naturally into the story as I wrote.
When I had started to do research for the book, I was at a High Holy Day over Zoom and they were talking about teshuvah and it was like the universe was saying, “This is what you need to put into your book to bring everything together.” If you really think about it, I don’t think any of the characters themselves would have been able to put that into words until you get to almost the epilogue of the book. They aren’t far enough along in their own exploration. I think if it had come in earlier it would have felt inorganic to the characters’ own linear timeline and what they were experiencing.
"It was like the universe was saying, 'This is what you need to put into your book to bring everything together."
A fun fact to add: the book never originally had a prologue and an epilogue. Right before my agent was going to send it out to editors, he asked, “Is there a way we could ground [the story] in the present?” I was staying at a friend’s place on the beach that weekend, smack in the middle of COVID, and over a weekend I just wrote the prologue and epilogue, sitting by a pool. Again it was like it was meant to be. Those parts pretty much stayed just as I wrote them. It’s funny because a lot of the feedback I’m getting is that people loved the epilogue.
JGC: And me as well.
LMG: It was almost like I had to write the whole thing to be able to write the beginning and the end.
JGC: I love that, I get chills. When that thing happens where it’s like, “I didn’t design the theme, it just came into my work, because I’m a creator.” I love it.
LMG: Often a book is marinating in my head for a long time. The Gimmelmans was in my head for a couple of years before I started it. A lot of times that’s when the themes are already building and then when I start to write the process becomes organic.
JGC: Was the family Jewish from the start or was that something you discovered along the way?
LMG: No, originally [the family] didn’t have the name Gimmelman, it was going to be about a family in the 1930s during the Great Depression that loses all their money and starts robbing banks. Then when COVID happened I didn’t want to write a depressing book about the Depression. I was listening to a lot of 80s music and the book just became set in the 1980s.
"Once I was writing about an 11 year old in 1989… I was 11 in 1989. It just became natural to make [the family] Jewish, to remember what it was like to be that age."
Then once I was writing about an 11 year old in 1989… I was 11 in 1989. So [having the family be Jewish] was a way of accessing Aaron, culturally, a lot of the humor. He’s the closest character to me that I’ve ever written. I had a wonderful upbringing and my parents were amazing. [Ed. As opposed to the drug-addled crime spree parents of the book.] But [Aaron’s] humor, the way he operates, was basically me at that age. It just became natural to make them Jewish, to remember what it was like to be that age.
JGC: Once you knew that this family would be Jewish, when you were writing, did you feel like you needed to consider whether the characters would feed into stereotypes?
LMG: I think the only character that I wanted to make sure wasn’t a stereotype was Grandma Bernice because she’s so over the top, with all her Yiddishisms. Her initial sketch was even more over the top, but she’s the comic foil in the book so she needed to be a little bit over the top.
JGC: I really appreciated with Grandma Bernice that you had the prologue, because in the prologue you tell us that Bernice is going to end up being an anchor for Aaron. So when she first appears in the main story and it’s like, “This person is both not nice and super over the top,” the whole time I was thinking, “But eventually this is going to be where Aaron comes home to.”
LMG: Grandma Bernice really becomes, of everyone, the hero.
JGC: I want to ask you about the new book you’ve mentioned, the one you just finished writing. You said it focuses on antisemitism, can you say more about that, and what that has been like given what’s happening right now?
LMG: The book is set in the 30s. It’s about a man who starts working at a burgeoning Madison Avenue advertising agency and he’s the only Jewish person there. At work he deals with antisemitism, very polite antisemitism of the moment and of the time. And then he starts noticing what he thinks is subliminal Nazi messaging in the adverts. He doesn’t know if it’s actually run by Nazis or in his head. And he uses his brother-in-law who’s in with the Italian mob to fight back.
"This is based on things that actually happened in real life. The Italian mob and the Jewish mob in the 1930s busted up the Nazis in New York. As bad as the mob was, the mob was only about money, it wasn’t about hate."
This is based on things that actually happened in real life. The Italian mob and the Jewish mob in the 1930s busted up the Nazis in New York. As bad as the mob was, the mob was only about money, it wasn’t about hate. And I think the Italian mob and the Jewish mob had both experienced their own type of prejudices so they were able to join forces in these little moments. To go up to Yorkville together, where at the time there were rallies and beer halls of five hundred Nazis getting together.
I was very much affected when October 7th happened, because I had spent my whole year in a world of the threat of Nazis. It was not a good moment for me personally and I had to really step away from the news and find my own ways like reiki and things like that to calm myself in those moments because I was already so fraught.
JGC: Switching gears a bit, I’m curious about you as a reader. What are your preferred genres to read, and how do you feel when you encounter a Jewish main character?
LMG: I would say I write literary thrillers so that’s my wheelhouse of my favorite books. I love anything noir. I’ll read some science fiction. I have a young adult series so sometimes I’ll read some young adult. And I’ll read a literary book if somebody is like, “This is the great literary book of the moment, check it out.” But I used to read more literary and I’ve noticed my tastes have moved away from that.
"I hardly ever see Jewish characters in genre books, so I do think my ears perk up and I’m a little bit more invested."
I hardly ever see Jewish characters in genre books, especially in the thriller vein, so I do think my ears perk up and I’m a little bit more invested. I would like to see more of it. I think there definitely is an audience and voices that should be explored in different genres related to Jewish themes.
JGC: Thank you so much for talking with me today. I loved The Great Gimmelmans. I’ve been describing it to people as “Schitt’s Creek crossed with The Goldfinch” and that description has gotten a bunch of people interested to read it.
LMG: We pitched it as “The Coen Brothers meets Little Miss Sunshine.” There’s some movie stuff on a very early level happening, I can’t really say more about, but we’ve started exploring that with somebody. So I was very much thinking [about describing the book] in a movie way. But on a literary level, The Goldfinch and Schitt’s Creek – both things I’m a fan of, that’s a great mash-up.
"On a literary level, The Goldfinch and Schitt’s Creek – both things I’m a fan of, that [description is] a great mash-up."
JGC: It has that feeling of a blurry, adolescent time of trying to find yourself, but it’s also happening in the middle of intense trauma. I loved that in The Goldfinch and I loved that in The Great Gimmelmans.
M: Thank you, and I think as far as Schitt’s Creek – the book is very funny. It was nominated for a Left Coast Crime Award for humor, and it’s my first ever humor nomination, and I think it’s because the book is really funny. There have been moments when I’ve been on tour where the whole room has been laughing.
Lee Matthew Goldberg is the Anthony, Lefty, and Prix du Polar nominated author of fourteen novels including THE ANCESTOR, THE MENTOR, and THE GREAT GIMMELMANS, along with his five-book DESIRE CARD series. His YA series RUNAWAY TRAIN is currently in development with actress Raegan Revord from Young Sheldon attached to develop his original written pilot. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, Lee has been published in multiple languages and his writing has also appeared as a contributor in CrimeReads, Pipeline Artists, LitHub, Chicago Quarterly Review, Electric Literature, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Jewish Book Council, The Millions, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, LitReactor, Mystery Tribune, The Nerd Daily, Monkeybicycle, Fiction Writers Review, Cagibi, Necessary Fiction, the anthology Dirty Boulevard, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, The New Plains Review, Maudlin House and others. His pilots and screenplays have been finalists in Script Pipeline, Book Pipeline, Stage 32, We Screenplay, the New York Screenplay, Screencraft, and the Hollywood Screenplay contests. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series and lives in New York City. Follow him at LeeMatthewGoldberg.com
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