The Last Angry Man

542 Pages·2016·1.38 MB·English

by  Green Gerald

THE LAST ANGRY MAN
GERALD GREEN
Copyright
The Last Angry Man
Copyright © 1956 by Gerald Green
Cover art and eForeword to the electronic edition copyright
© 2000 by RosettaBooks, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews.
For information address [email protected]
First electronic edition published 2000 by RosettaBooks LLC,
New York.
ISBN 0-7953-0132-4
The Last Angry Man 2
Contents
eForeword
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
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eForeword
“There aren’t enough people left who get mad, who get plain mad,”
the television producer in Gerald Green’s The Last Angry Mansays,
describing the title character. Dr. Sam Abelman lives a relatively
modest life, by modern American standards, a doctor who tends to his
patients and, each day, fights the good fight. Tough and irascible, he
refuses to give in to the disillusion and violence that is overtaking the
Brooklyn where he has always worked and lived. A network television
producer discovers him and determines to make Abelman a celebrity
and a hero on a nationally broadcast show. To do that, the producer
will have to deceive the good doctor. In the end, he will fight to save
the last angry man.
Gerald Green (b. 1922) has been an acclaimed novelist since the
publication in 1950 of His Majesty O’Keefe, co-written with Lawrence
Klingman. At the same time, he worked extensively in television,
writing, producing and directing for NBC’s Today Show when Dave
Garroway was the host. Green published his most acclaimed novel
The Last Angry Manin 1956, a book that reflects his experience in
TV and his love and respect for his father, a principled Brooklyn
doctor. His writing is passionate and often inspired by real events.
Green has also written the TV films Kent State, Wallenberg: A
Hero’s Storyand Fatal Judgment, as well as a 1974 remake of The
Last Angry Man. His teleplay for Holocaust won him an Emmy Award,
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Also available from Rosetta Books is Gerald Green’s Holocaust.
For SAMUEL GREENBERG, M.D.
(1886-1952)
I called on the king, but he made me wait in his hall, and
conducted like a man incapacitated for hospitality. There was a
man in my neighborhood who lived in a hollow tree. His manners
were truly regal. I should have done better had I called on him.
—Walden
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Author’s Note
The author has taken the liberty of using the actual names of the
members of the Bellevue faculty during the years 1908-1912; these
men are now part of the medical history of America, and to fictionalize
them would be to minimize their stature. All other persons depicted in
this book, however, are fictional, and resemblances to persons, living
or dead, are coincidental.
—G. G.
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Chapter 1
Hours before the nightbell had commenced its furious buzzing he had
been awake, neither mildly awake nor half asleep, but wide-eyed and
alert, his mind crammed with the photographic clarity of insomnia. It
was an unbearably hot night, hot as only a square of attached slum
houses can get, the heat stewing and intensifying in the crib of
ramshackle backyards on which his bedroom window looked out. The
oversized window fan (he had installed it himself) was no help either.
In the early morning stillness it clattered like a jackhammer.
The buzzing had caused him to start, jerking him to a sitting position in
the old double bed and triggering an arthritic spark in his lower spine.
The luminous face of the dresser clock read three-thirty and he cursed
softly and considerately, although he was the only one in the house.
“Aaah, the bastard. The bastards won’t let you live.”
Sighing, he plopped back on the moist pillow, hoping that the bell-ringer
would grow discouraged and return to his tenement warren. Normally
it was his wife’s function to trudge to the front window and advise the
caller The doctor is not in, he has gone for the evening. It was a small
lie, and few of them ever believed it, but it worked most of the time.
But his wife was at the beach for the summer; if the visitor persisted
he would have no choice but to undertake the distasteful journey
himself. He was too old and too tired for night work. Why couldn’t they
get that into their thick skulls?
“My dear lousy patients,” he said half aloud. “Why don’t they bother
some young shtunkof a specialist? Why always me at three-thirty?”
By now he realized that the waiting game would not deter the
nocturnal intruder. The buzzing continued, in long agonized peals, in
brief bzzt-bzzt-bzzts, and occasionally, to his horror, in the
unmistakable beats of “shave and a haircut, two bits.”