SOURCE: "The Lonely New Americans of Abraham Cahan," in American Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 2, Part 1, Summer, 1968, pp. 196-210.

In the following essay, Marovitz argues that Cahan's characters fail to achieve healthy personal relationships because they abandon their faith for materialism.

William Dean Howells, impressed with a short story which his wife had pointed out to him, called on its author in the bustling ghetto district of New York's Lower East Side. Abraham Cahan was not home, but Howells left his card, and not long afterward his call was returned. The result of this interview in 1895 was Cahan's first novel, Yekl; A Tale of the New York Ghetto, which was published the following year, and which drew from Howells a very favorable review. In 1898 Cahan brought out his second book, The Imported Bridegroom and Other Tales of the New York Ghetto, a collection of five stories which Howells also greeted...