Martin YOSELOFF

YOSELOFF, STEWART, GILMORE, SPENCER

Posted By: Sharon R Becker (email)
Date: 4/7/2011 at 00:45:17

Martin YOSELOFF

Martin YOSELOFF grew up in Mason City, although he was born in Sioux City (in 1919), and in his autobiographical novel, No Greener Meadows (1946), he speaks (through the narrator, Martin) of living in the small town of "Silver Lake," Iowa. . . .any one familiar with Mason City will easily recognize the "Stone City" of the novel - the cement plant, the packing plant, the "Bijou" theater, the street cars, the schools. They will also recognize Carleton STEWART, the music teacher; "Gilly" GILMORE, the long-time YMCA secretary; the high school English staff; the church building across from the "Y," built by the evangelist who later had to leave town.

Although "Martin's" family is intimately described - it includes an older brother, Thomas, just as the author's does - one never has any sense of what it might be like to be a Jewish person in a small Iowa town. "Martin's" family is Jewish, but very little is made of it, and if Martin YOSELOFF, himself, ever was aware of any discrimination practiced against the story's narrator comes about because he is small.

No Greener Meadows is a quiet book, moving slowly along the years, [age six to college years], incident by incident, letting us know what is was like to [be] very poor in a small midwestern town. . . .

Martin YOSELOFF was editor of The Masonian, the Mason City high school yearbook, and president (1936-37) of the Iowa High School Press Association. People who lived in Mason City in those years were talking about young Martin YOSELOFF'S literary abilities. . . .

At the University of Iowa, from which he graduated in 1941, YOSELOFF was a feature writer for the Daily Iowan. He left Iowa City to work in New York, then, like many others of his age, he went into the Armed Forces where he served from 1943 to 1946 in the transportation corps. No Greener Meadows was written during those years.

After the war, Martin devoted his life to writing and teaching.

~ ~ ~ ~
The New York Times
New York, New York
March 28, 1997

Deaths - YOSELOFF, Martin, author, listed in Who's Who in America, of New York, NY, on March 27, 1997. Brother of Thomas YOSELOFF and Frances SPENCER. Uncle of several nieces and nephews. Services Sunday 11:35 AM, Mt. Sinai Memorial Chapel, Cranbury Road at Evergreen Boulevard, East Brunswick; Burial Beth Israel Cemetery, Woodbridge, New Jersey.

We mourn the loss of our esteemed colleague who dedicated 48 years of his life teaching students at Drake Business School. We miss him dearly. Drake Business School Employees.

SOURCE:
ANDEREWS, Clarence A. "You Gotta Know the Territory" A Literary History of Iowa Pp. 216-17. University of Iowa Press. Iowa City. 1972.

Transcriptions by Sharon R. Becker, April of 2011