Rich Man, Poor Man

The story of the Jordaches, a poor German-American non-religious family living in small towns near New York City, spanning over two decades from 1945 to 1968. The father is Axel Jordache, a violent German that ran to America with money he robbed and murdered a British visitor to obtain. In America he hid his violent past while courting his future wife Mary, an orphan raised in an orphanage, parents unknown, mother thought by some to have been a prostitute. The children are Gretchen, already a working young lady at the start of the tale, Rudolph, the favorite child of the family and a high school student, and his slightly younger brother Thomas.

Rudy is the bright one that goes on to amass considerable wealth even before he marries in his thirties—the Rich Man. Tom is the wild and violent one, taking on the violent trait of his father, the one that did poorly in school and was always fighting—the Poor Man. The tale follows the lives of the children (not only Rudy’s and Tom’s but also Gretchen’s) to middle age, highlighting their love lives, fortunes and misfortunes, initial rivalries and eventual reconciliation, ending with Tom’s sudden death from injuries sustained as a revenge-inspired consequence of the last fight he is involved in, a fight funnily over Rudy’s wife’s honor.

In the course of the tale are several deaths and births: Axel first disappears in a river during a storm, and it is not clear if he just ran away as his wife believes, or if he’d drowned. Gretchen’s child Billy is born, then later Tom’s child Wesley is born, both conceived before marriage. Then Mary dies in a hospital, before Rudy’s child Enid is born. The tale moves from New York to Hollywood to the south of Europe, with a brief touch down at Dallas. At the peak of his success, Rudy becomes the mayor of the small town where he went to college, while Tom becomes the owner of a cruise boat along the coast of France.

There is brief mention of America’s racial attitudes of the time, like the Irish looking down on the “dirty” Italians; an appearance of a black character here and there. The lives of the rich are dealt with in detail, and then juxtaposed with that of the poor. Mention is made of President Kennedy and the renaming of an airport in New York after him following his assassination, along with the student demonstrations and unrest of the 1960s. You get to see how the rich and powerful are liable to use their connections for the advancement of the personal interests of those close to them or their friends and associates, like getting accepted by a college when your grades weren’t good enough, like getting an army posting that would ensure you did not get sent to the jungles of Vietnam.

January 17, 2015. Review initially written in 2011. Novel first published in 1969; this New English Library (Hodder and Stoughton) edition published in 1991, ISBN 0-450-02089-4.