Web of the City

(alternate title: Rumble)
1958

In 1954, a 21-year-old Jewish would-be author went under cover as a 17-year-old Italian, Phil "Cheech" Beldone, and joined a street gang in Brooklyn for 10 weeks. This novel was the first result of that experience. (The second, a non-fiction account, appeared three years later under the title Memos From Purgatory.) The manuscript was purchased by a little-known paperback house called Lion Books, which went out of business before the book made it to print. Pyramid finally released the book, under the title Rumble, in 1958.

It is a first novel like many others: earnest yet awkward, embarrassingly sentimental and obvious in some places, remarkably elegant and nuanced in others. The in-your-face approach that would become Ellison's trademark was already evident. Today, with the media's depiction of city streets filled with crack and Uzis, Web of the City's depiction of '50s gang life may seem downright quaint (midway through the novel, after a fierce and bloody knife fight, the protagonist turns to his girlfriend and asks, "Wanna go back to Tom-Tom's with us and have a soda?"). But the book's gritty authenticity transcends its dated subject matter.

Contents

• Introduction: Unnecessary Words (in 1975 and later editions)
• Chapter One: Thursday Night -- Rusty Santoro, The Cougars
• Chapter Two: Friday Morning -- Rusty Santoro, Candle, Pancoast
• Chapter Three: Friday Night, Saturday Morning -- Rusty Santoro, The Family, The Scum
• Chapter Four: Saturday Afternoon -- Rusty Santoro, Candle
• Chapter Five: Saturday Night -- Rusty Santoro, Dolores, The War
• Chapter Six: Saturday Night -- Rusty Santoro
• Chapter Seven: Sunday Afternoon -- Rusty Santoro, Moms
• Chapter Eight: Monday Morning, Monday Night -- Rusty Santoro, The Cougars, The Beast
• Chapter Nine: Tuesday -- Rusty Santoro, Mirsky, Miss Clements, Pops Santoro
• Chapter Ten: Saturday, a week later -- Rusty Santoro, Boy-O
• Chapter Eleven: Saturday Night -- Rusty Santoro, Morlan
• Chapter Twelve: Saturday Night -- Rusty Santoro, The Beast, The Death
• Chapter Thirteen: The Days After -- Rusty Santoro, Insubstantials

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