Menzo, Utica 1949

Menzo is a street vendor who sells vegetables from a cart in downtown Utica, NY in 1949. He is based upon an actual peanut vendor who sold his goods near the Hotel Utica about the same time. A secondary character is Mrs. Anya Potlatch, a wise old tailor who had a shop near the hotel. Because of changing traffic patterns in the city at that time, Menzo is faced with a significant change to his way of doing business, and he is struggling to adapt. From page one where we meet Menzo, the arc of the story revolves around Menzo’s thoughts and actions which move steadily along, and the reader never loses track of Menzo. The novel Menzo has specific antecedents, specifically The Overcoat by Gogol. The Overcoat is considered seminal to all the great nineteenth century works of Russian literature and describes the relationship between a poor old man and a tailor. In Menzo, a similar relationship exists, and the strangeness in that relationship is part of the vivid color of the narrative. Also, there is a detached and sympathetic but ironic tone to the voice of the narrator of Menzo, who clearly is not of the same time nor temperament as the characters whose actions are being described.