Even though I’ve moved on to writing novels and short stories, this book is very close to me. I had a chance to have it reprinted with new photographs and I really am proud of it. It should have won an award, but that wasn’t meant to be. Still, for a how-to, it has its literary merit as a memoir as well.
Mom (at right) was an English major in college and we had bookshelves of classics in our house when I was a kid. I guess something rubbed off on me. Now, about to have my first novel published (The Martin Luther King Mitzvah, from Fitzroy Books in 2018), I look back on my early days of reading the great master Hemingway. Maybe some of his talent rubbed of on me as well. I hope so.
Music plays a large role in my novel The Martin Luther King Mitzvah. My main character Adam Jacobs listens to his local AM radio station and he hears all of the Top 40 hits as they are presented during the timeframe of the story, from the autumn of 1966 through the spring of 1967. I myself was a twelve year-old in 1966, and the songs in that year that I heard on the radio were probably the best ever in the Top 40. So when I wrote my book, I decided to include a “soundtrack” to the story, which I’ve never seen before in novels. We all listen to the radio, but writers seem to ignore these musical elements of our childhood when they write stories, as if songs never existed. But what would life be without music? Of course, movies have soundtracks, so why not a book?
Well, Adam carries around his transistor radio, so he hears these songs all the time; he also listens to them late at night, under the covers, so his parents can’t hear the radio. In this blog, I’ll focus on the “love songs” that Adam hears (in chronological order as they appear in the book, and as they did on the radio in real life). These songs (as they did for every young boy in 1966) enhanced Adam’s romantic feelings toward the object of his affection, in this case his classmate Sally.
How about “Walk Away Renee” by The Left Banke, probably the prettiest single ever? Adam thinks about walking away from his sweetheart Sally when he hears this song, but he decides to hang in there and try to get closer to her. “Cherish” by The Association was another love song from my childhood that made you think about whatever girl you had a crush on whenever you heard the song. If only she heard the same song and felt the same way about you!
In the book, Adam hears “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys and thinks about the way the sunlight plays on Sally’s blonde hair; and he listens to “I’m a Believer” by the Monkees when he’s in dancing class, just like I did when I was a kid. If you were in love with a girl in 1966, listening to “I’m a Believer” just confirmed it for you. No more needed to be said, you were a believer. And how can we forget about “Happy Together” by the Turtles. Adam is happy together with Sally, believe me. It’s hard to believe that all of these great songs came out in the same year, and there were so many more on the radio when I was twelve and thirteen years-old.
Near the end of the book, Adam and Sally hear “Groovin’” by the Young Rascals on Adam’s transistor radio, while they are groovin’ together at Manor Park on the Long Island Sound; then Franki Valli releases the classic “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” and Adam ponders over his inability to take his eyes off of Sally; and when he and Sally hear “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” by Scott McKenzie, Sally tells Adam that if she ever goes to San Francisco, she already wears flowers in her hair (that is one of her most charming traits.)
As I was writing The Martin Luther King Mitzvah, I listened to all of these songs, and they brought back great memories of my childhood. The music from AM radio in 1966 and 1967 sounds just as good today as it did back then. I hope by including these tunes in my novel, it adds some flavor to the story and makes the readers feel as if they are going along for the ride with my characters during the great days of the 1960s.
I took a literature class from Jesse at the University of Rochester during my senior year and it really impacted my decision to become a writer. He was working on THE RAIDER while he was teaching us. Jesse is a lot like Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor. He’s one of the greats. Some of Jesse’s other books, and a book about him, lie on the table.
In his book A Curious Mind, movie producer Brian Grazer writes about trying to sell his movie Splash to the movie studios, and about how he kept getting the answer no. The problem was that he had been pitching it as a story about a mermaid. Nobody wanted to make a movie about a mermaid. Then he changed his approach and pitched it as a love story between a man and a mermaid, and he sold the movie to Disney and the film became a big hit.
When I read this story in Brian’s book, a light bulb went off in my head. I’ve been describing The Martin Luther King Mitzvah (Fitzroy Books, 2018) as a story about two kids and Martin Luther King, and that’s the not the best way to describe this novel. Here’s a better way. It’s a love story between Adam, a twelve year-old Jewish boy (who is the victim of anti-Semitism in his hometown), and a twelve year-old Catholic girl named Sally (whose older brother bullies Adam because the latter is Jewish); and through their social and political awakening through meeting Martin Luther King, Adam and Sally form a bond with each other that blossoms into love, and they eventually bring the fictional town of Beachmont together to overcome anti-Semitism and to protest against the war in Vietnam.
Therefore, as with Grazer’s mermaid experience, Martin Luther King is an important part of the story, but it is not the main story. The primary story is the relationship between Adam and Sally, and how this young boy is drawn out of his shell by his interactions not only with Sally but with the other people in his life, such as the blacklisted author Gladys McKinley; his grandfather named Grappa; Gladys’ housekeeper named Honey; Cousin Louie, the disc jockey who puts Adam and Sally on the radio; editor Jack Williams, who publishes Adam’s photographs of musician Pete Seeger and Martin Luther King in the Beachmont Times; and Adam’s sidekick, the dyslexic Jimmy Robbins. Through Adam’s growth, he is even able to bring his father Eugene (who is a holocaust survivor) out of his own shell; and as Eugene is embraced by the community, Adam can only bask in his father’s glory.
Every story (and movie) should have an “arc,” a narrative during which the characters evolve from one state of being to another. Nobody wants to read (or watch) a story about characters that never change. What’s the fun of that?
So thank you, Brian Grazer, for pointing out the way to pitch a movie (or a novel) by recognizing the timeless emotional elements that will connect your story with an audience. The next time I see Brian (to whom I was introduced recently), I will thank him and describe The Martin Luther King Mitzvah the way I have explained it here, and I will share with him how much I learned from his Splash experience.
Text © Copyright Mathew Tekulsky
Photographs © Copyright Leo Fish
In my book The Martin Luther King Mitzvah, Adam Jacobs visits his grandfather (named Grappa) at Grappa’s house during the winter of 1966 and the spring of 1967. In the novel, Grappa gives Adam his Leica camera and he also teaches Adam how to make black-and-white photographs in a darkroom, which he has in his basement. Adam’s grandfather is an inspiration as Grappa puts an anti-war bumper sticker on his car, while the Vietnam War is raging on.
In real life, I had my own Grappa, my mother’s father. His name was Leo Fish, and outside of my father, he was the greatest guy I ever knew. In real life, Grappa was a photographer and he had a darkroom in his basement, as does his character in the novel. When I was young, I remember being in the darkroom and smelling the chemicals, but I don’t recall actually seeing Grappa making a photographic print. (He had moved on to color slides by then.) In the novel, Adam becomes much more involved in the printing process, as he and Grappa develop photographs of Adam’s twelve year-old friend Sally Fletcher; his older friend, the blacklisted author named Gladys McKinley; Gladys’ housekeeper named Honey; as well as legendary musician Pete Seeger and Martin Luther King, Jr.
I have a collection of my real grandfather’s photographs, and here are three of them. Photo 1 and Photo 2 show his house in Larchmont, New York, in the wintertime, where the fictional Adam would have gone to visit his Grappa. Photo 3 shows my real Grappa at the Duck Pond, where I used to skate when I was a kid in the 1960s. (I have an important scene at the Duck Pond in The Martin Luther King Mitzvah.) Grappa’s photographs were taken in the 1930s and 1940s, and they bring back great memories of what it was like to grow up and live in Larchmont, which in the novel is the fictional town of Beachmont.
Oh, and in real life, Grappa did put a bumper sticker on his car to protest against the war in Vietnam. As I said, he was quite a guy.
