Slippery when wet: A young historian's journey into the world of creative non-fiction

Abstract

If you had the opportunity as a graduate student to write your master's thesis as a compilation of little scenes, would you take it? If you said yes, what would you see three years later as you begin to chart your direction in your doctoral work? I said yes, and the reverberations from that choice have not stopped. This essay is the story of my many attempts at writing a history of Prohibition and bootlegging in Newark, NJ and how those attempts have shaped the ways I think about the relationship between creative non-fiction and historical scholarship, and the many paths that I found I could take on my way to learning how to be a scholar.

Keywords:

• creative non-fiction
• Newark, NJ
• bootlegging
• Prohibition
• storytelling
• gangsters

Notes

 1. Asbury 1950, 289.

 2. US Senate 1951; King 2007.

 3. Reeves 1931, vii.

 4. Stuart 1985, 61.

 5. Messick 1973, 17.

 6. Mappen 1992, 214.

 7. Grover 2003, 41–2.

 8. King 2007.

 9. Marrus 1991, 76.

10. Reeves 1931, 179.

11. Stuart 1985, 33.

12. Immerso 1997b.

13. Stuart 1985, 33.

14. Weequahic, Newark History Project: Howie, at Jewish Historical Society, MetroWest.

15. Canney 1990, 2.

16. King 2007.

17. Fox 1989, 31.

18. Reeves 1931, 49.

19. Stuart 1985, 43.

20. Abadinsky 1981, 7.

21. Immerso 1997a, 111.

22. Schanes 2002.

23. Myron Sugerman, Myron Sugerman Collection: Judge Harold Greene, Jewish Historical Society at MetroWest.

24. Ibid.

25. Stuart 1985, 61.

26. Immerso 1997a, 111.

27. Haller 2007.

28. Sugerman 2007.

29. Ibid.

30. Field and Galluzzo 2004, 1.

31. Stuart 1985, 33–4.

32. New York Times, ‘Town seething in liquor’, 12 January 1923, 8.

33. Stuart 1985, 33.

34. Ibid., 38–9.

35. Rutkin v. Reinfeld, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, 1956.

36. Mappen 1992, 177–8.

37. Reeves 1931, viii.

38. Stuart 1985, 71.

39. Joselit 1983, 96.

40. Ibid.

41. Asbury 1950, 225.

42. Reeves 1931, 146.

43. Ibid., 91.

44. Reeves 1931, 135–7.

45. US Federal Bureau of Investigation, Irving ‘Waxy’ Gordon.

46. Reeves 1931, 182.

47. Ibid., 316.

48. Reeves 1931, 167.

49. New York Times, ‘Bootleg rum kills another in Newark’, 13 January 1922.

50. Kukla 2002, 3–4.

51. Ibid., 119.

52. Stuart 1985, 38.

53. Asbury 1950, 238.

54. New York Times, ‘Rothstein named in 5 feud murders’, 22 March 1930.

55. Drowne 2005, 34.