L ifestyle /C ulture
Books: ‘Last Resort’s Slow, Satisfying Suspense
B OOKS
SASHA ROGELBERG | JE STAFF
AT MY ALMA MATER Bryn
Mawr College — only a mile
away from its cousin Haverford
College, where both author
Andrew Lipstein and his novel
“Last Resort”’s protagonist
Caleb Horowitz are alumni —
there’s a certain way people
gossip. The body language is
unmistakable: the lowering of
the voice to a sotto voce, the
hunch and crouch of the shoul-
ders, but most of all, the quick
and discreet glance over the
shoulder to ensure the subject
of the conversation is not in
your mudslinging perimeter.

Before you accuse me of
lashon hara, know that every
student participated in this
cultural phenomenon, and
quite a few got caught by their
gossip-ee. After all, it’s a small
school, even when you add in
our consortium counterparts
of Haverford students.

In his debut novel “Last
Resort,” published Jan. 18,
Lipstein manages to make the
Brooklyn borough appear even
smaller than the liberal arts
18 FEBRUARY 10, 2022
school in the Philly ‘burbs and
his protagonist much pettier
than collegiate serial gossipers.

It’s hard not to get the sense
that Caleb is a narcissist, or
at least self-important. The
entirety of the novel, written
from his point of view, is
formatted in long, block-
shaped paragraphs. There’s no
indentations or quotations for
dialogue, only long strings of
italicized sentences to illustrate
someone else is talking in his
stream-of-conscious prose.

Avi, mild-mannered and
good-humored, is disdained by
Caleb. Avi’s sandy, blonde hair
and conventional handsomeness
betrays his Semitic roots, Caleb
thinks, something Caleb is a bit
jealous of, or just irked by.

But Avi is also a masterful
storyteller, sharing with Caleb
over pizza and gin his tales
vacationing and meeting a
free-spirited woman who takes
him on a salacious and winding
adventure. His story has a
heartbreaking twist ending,
While Caleb may now be banking on a career
as a writer, he has established himself as an
opportunist above all.

Caleb is a cog in the startup
machine by day — writing copy
for Parachute, a loan company
marketing itself as altruistic —
and a writer by night. He took
a several-month long sabbatical
to Florida and the West Coast
after initially moving to New
York to work on his novel, which
was immediately scrapped after
a run-in with Haverford class-
mate Avi Dietsch.

and Avi was so touched by his
experiences that he wrote them
into a short story, which he
generously shares with Caleb.

Interpreting Avi’s gesture a
little too generously, Caleb writes
a new novel inspired by Avi’s
story, and the novel hooks the
interest of an enthusiastic agent.

As the agent tries to secure Caleb
a book deal, the manuscript
mistakenly finds its way to Avi, a
book agent, who demands some
sort of compensation.

After a series of confronta-
tions of increasing intensity,
the pair settle on a solution
with the help of a lawyer and
Caleb’s agent: Avi’s name
will be printed on the book,
but Caleb will receive the
manuscript’s hefty advance
and royalties, which end up a
pretty penny after the book’s
runaway success.

While Caleb may now be
banking on a career as a writer,
he has established himself as
an opportunist above all.

Caleb, despite seemingly
drawing the longer straw and
coming out on top after the
book’s release, only masquer-
ades as nefarious. He intends to
be cunning and cutthroat, but
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his clumsy, shoot-from-the-
waist texts to Avi that could get
him in trouble give hint that he
doesn’t really know how to get
away with theft.

Underwhelming at first,
“Last Resort” seamlessly and
unsuspectingly raises the
stakes of the book’s narrative.

Lipstein’s attention to detail,
diary-like writing and tongue-
in-cheek humor add realism
to a story that could easily fall
off the rails on any page. The
author’s restraint has great
pay-off; Caleb becomes a rich,
multi-dimensional character
whose actions make the
reader’s muscles clench with
apprehension. However, at times, his
character feels a little flimsy
and too good to be true. The
guy who frequently concocts
a weed/Xanax/alcohol cocktail
and survives off of Trader
Joe’s freezer meals wakes
up and runs 15 miles the
next morning, really? Then
again, maybe Caleb has just
cemented himself as an unreli-
able narrator, trying to paint
himself as a protagonist and
not an antihero.

“Last Resort” is more than
just a double entendre; it cleverly
shares the title of the book Caleb
and Avi publish. Picking up a
novel from the point of view of
a shoddy narrator, the real-life
reader can’t help but feel an
extra layer of suspicion given the
novel’s self-referential nature. l
srogelberg@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0741
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



L IFESTYLE /C ULTURE
LEGAL DIRECTORY
Little-known History
of US Antisemitic
Far-right Detailed
H I STORY
ELEANOR LINAFELT | JE STAFF
WHILE MUCH OF the
story of the Christian Front,
a far-right, antisemitic and
anticommunist movement
occurred elsewhere along the
East Coast, it had its begin-
nings in Philadelphia.

Charles Gallagher, an
associate professor of history
at Boston College, detailed
that history in his recent book
“Nazis of Copley Square:
Th e Forgotten Story of the
Christian Front, 1939-1945”
and during a Feb. 7 webinar
hosted by the Institute for
Jewish-Catholic Relations at
Saint Joseph’s University.

Gallagher said Marine
Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley
Butler received a call to his
Main Line home in 1935
from Charles Coughlin, the
“foremost media priest of the
1930s.” Coughlin, who hosted a
wildly popular antisemitic
and anticommunist radio
show from Detroit that aired
across the country, encour-
aged Butler to lead Christian
soldiers to invade Mexico.

He saw the Mexican govern-
ment as communist and was
concerned about Catholics
being persecuted.

While the Christian Front
itself hadn’t yet been founded,
Gallagher said that this
“exchange is fascinating and
coalesces a number of themes
that play out in the book:
militarism, paramilitarism,
Catholic theology and Catholic
grievance claims.”
But Gallagher said he did
not want to write a book about
Coughlin, who has been the
subject of many studies.

“I wanted to write about
the foot soldiers who do dirty
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM work for Father Coughlin,” he
said. “No one has written about
them.” One such fi gure was John
F. Cassidy, the leader of the
Christian Front in New
York. Aft er the movement
formed in 1939, he hosted a
rally in Philadelphia where,
as Gallagher recounted, he
told his audience of 10,000
that “it’s morally permissible
for Catholics to take up arms
against communists.”
Cassidy planned to lead a
bombing campaign in New
York that the Christian Front
would blame on communists.

“Th ey thought they would
save the nation by creating this
plot,” Gallagher said.

While Cassidy’s plot was
ultimately stopped by the
FBI and he was arrested, the
Christian Front persisted.

It moved its operations
to Boston, where Francis
P. Moran, a leader in the
movement, found mentorship
in Herbert Scholz, a Nazi based
there. Membership grew, which
attracted the attention of
British intelligence. One of
their agents recruited Frances
Sweeney, a devout Catholic
dedicated to promoting human
rights in Boston, to lead the
Irish American Defense
Association, which she never
knew was a front for British
intelligence. Eventually, under pressure
from Sweeney’s organiza-
tion, the local police detained
Moran. He disbanded the
Christian Front but moved his
operations underground.

According to Gallagher, the
fallout of the Christian Front
resulted in “gang warfare”
against Jews in Boston in 1943.

“Gangs of Irish Catholic
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