SOURCE: "David Levinsky: Modern Man as Orphan," in TSE: Tulane Studies in English, Vol. 23, 1978, pp. 85-93.

In the following essay, Lyons examines The Rise of David Levinsky 's broader impact as a novel of modern alienation.

Those who have acclaimed Abraham Cahan's last novel, The Rise of David Levinsky, as a great immigrant novel, as an exemplary business novel, or as the novel of the Diaspora Jew have all stressed single, usually parochial aspects of the novel and thus pigeon-holed it within a limited genre. Indeed, the novel is deeply grounded in realistic specifics about typical greenhorn experiences, coat manufacturing, and Jewish rituals—about pirated cloak designs, steerage passage to America, and Talmud scholars. But this first person confession of a wealthy unhappy Jewish businessman transcends these specifics; the various strands are united and subsumed in a more universal theme: modern man as spiritual "orphan" in search of...