by Meyer Levin
Judd Steiner and Artie Straus have it all: wealth, intelligence, and the world at their feet as part of the elite, upper-crust Jewish community of 1920s Chicago. Artie is handsome, athletic, and popular, but he possesses a hidden, powerful sadistic streak and a desire to dominate. Judd is a weedy introvert, a genius who longs for a companion whom he can idolize and worship. Obsessed with Nietzsche's idea of the superhuman, both boys decide to prove that they are above the laws of man by arbitrarily picking and murdering a Jewish boy in their neighborhood.
This new edition of Meyer Levin's classic literary thriller Compulsion reintroduces the fictionalized case of Leopold and Loeb – once considered the "crime of the century" – to a new generation. This incisive psychological portrait of two young murderers seized the imagination of an era and is generally recognized as paving the way for the first non-fiction novel. Compulsion forces us to ask what drives some further into darkness, and some to seek redemption.
Heartbreaking as it is gripping, Compulsion is written with a tense and penetrating force that led the Los Angeles Times to call Levin, “the most significant Jewish writer of his times."
Judd Steiner and Artie Straus have it all: wealth, intelligence, and the world at their feet as part of the elite, upper-crust Jewish community of 1920s Chicago. Artie is handsome, athletic, and popular, but he possesses a hidden, powerful sadistic streak and a desire to dominate. Judd is a weedy introvert, a genius who longs for a companion whom he can idolize and worship. Obsessed with Nietzsche's idea of the superhuman, both boys decide to prove that they are above the laws of man by arbitrarily picking and murdering a Jewish boy in their neighborhood.
This new edition of Meyer Levin's classic literary thriller Compulsion reintroduces the fictionalized case of Leopold and Loeb – once considered the "crime of the century" – to a new generation. This incisive psychological portrait of two young murderers seized the imagination of an era and is generally recognized as paving the way for the first non-fiction novel. Compulsion forces us to ask what drives some further into darkness, and some to seek redemption.
Heartbreaking as it is gripping, Compulsion is written with a tense and penetrating force that led the Los Angeles Times to call Levin, “the most significant Jewish writer of his times."
Reviews-
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February 23, 2015
The horrific murder in 1924 of 14-year-old Bobby Franks in Chicago by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb inspired this acclaimed roman à clef, originally published in 1956. Levin, who was 18 at the time, covered the case for the Chicago Daily News. Thinly disguised as reporter Sid Silver, he narrates the tale of thrill killers Judd Steiner and Artie Straus. Steiner and Straus, acting as perverted Nietzschean supermen, abducted and murdered 13-year-old Paulie Kessler, the son of a pawnbroker. Thirty years later, Steiner is eligible for parole and Silver’s editor asks him to interview the prisoner, which frames the journalist’s recollection of the crime, its detection, and the trial. Levin (Citizens) makes the senseless brutality of the murderers palpable, as well as the suffering of the survivors, who include Steiner’s devastated father, unable to comprehend how his child could become a killer. The psychiatry feels dated, but otherwise this holds up as a landmark legal thriller. -
Publishers Weekly
An "acclaimed roman à clef" that "holds up as a landmark legal thriller."
- Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal "Meyer Levin's astonishingly good novel....As psychological thriller and as courtroom drama, [Compulsion] has few peers; it ascends to a Dostoyevskian level."
- Adam Kirsch, Tablet Magazine "In many ways, Compulsion is a period piece, but its ability to communicate the horror of this famous crime gives it a lasting power."
- Mary Lignor, Suspense Magazine An "unforgettable, heart-wrenching story of murder."
- Midwest Book Review "Paying close attention to historical detail, Compulsion is a deftly crafted novel that documents author Meyer Levin as a particularly gifted storyteller that will keep his readers total engaged from beginning to end."
- JTA "Nearly a century after this 'crime of the century,' Levin's tale -- in this new edition, with a foreword by O.J. prosecutor-turned-novelist Marcia Clark -- is no less gripping or disturbing."
- Marcia Clark (from the foreword) "Before In Cold Blood, before The Executioner's Song, Meyer Levin's Compulsion was the standard-bearer for what we think of as the nonfiction novel....Though this trial took place in 1924, the book raises issues pertaining to society and our justice system--such as popular biases, groupthink, and the inherent, perhaps unfixable, flaws in our legal system--that are as much in evidence today as they were back then."
- Alan Lelchuk, author of American Mischief “If only for its rightful place in American literary history, Compulsion is worth reprinting. But it is also valuable because of its author's novelistic gifts--a convincing portrait of two brilliant psychopaths, a narrative capacity for a spellbinding tale, an authentic depiction of the 1920s Chicago moral and political landscape. Compulsion is a credible portrait of an era, and an early example of an infamous crime turned into compelling fiction."
- Michael Lavigne, author of Not Me “Compulsion is a lost star in the pantheon of America's golden age of Jewish fiction; its re-release should be welcomed by all. Despite prejudices and misconceptions about homosexuality that are inseparable from the time in which the story is set (and in which it was written), Levin brilliantly dissects the human heart in this classic of psychological realism – a remarkably sympathetic portrait years ahead of its time. Its call for mercy instead of punishment, compassion instead of retribution, is one of the most powerful things I've ever read."
