PAGAN DAYS by Michael Rumaker is a great novel in the tradition of Leo Tolstoy's ANNA KARENINA, Theodore Dreiser's AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY and especially Marcel Proust's REMENBRANCES OF THINGS PAST.

I make this statement with no sense of exaggeration, and with a sense that this novel by one of America's major literary talents is, in fact, a literary masterpiece.

My novel reading began in the 1920s when I first read Tolstoy, Dreiser and Proust and other classic novelists. My family was friends of the Knopf publishing family, Alfred and Blanche. The Knopfs introduced me to my late husband, the literary historian and critic, Maxwell Geismar.

As Max's wife, I came to know the work of many of the literary stars of the 20th century. My husband's essays and books, including WRITERS IN CRISIS and AMERICAN MODERNS, helped establish and define the literary careers of Dreiser, Wolfe, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Crane, Lardner, Dos Passos, Algren, Styron, Mailer and man, many others.

For many years, when Max chaired the Pulitzer Prize Committee for fiction, I read the novels being considered for that award. In all those years, I never read a better novel than Michael Rumaker's PAGAN DAYS. It is truly a world-class novel.

PAGAN DAYS begins with a birth scene that is so realistic, so beautifully written I felt all my senses being touched as I read it. From this beginning the narrator, Mickey Lithwak, talks on and on about himself and his world.

Mickey's world is working-class Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and South Jersey during the depression years of the 1930s. Through Mickey's remarkable voice, we learn of his family's struggle to survive. Their struggle includes poverty, the erratic behavior of an alcoholic father and Mickey's experiences with the Catholic priests in the Lithwak's neighborhood parishes.

Mickey seems to see and hear everything, revealing as he does, Michael Rumaker's amazing abilities as a novelist. Rumaker has a wonderful eye for realistic detail and an exceptional ear for dialogue. His ability to create realistic American characters living in 20th century America rivals any American novelist I have ever read.

PAGAN DAYS is one of the best novels I've read in a lifetime of reading. Michael Rumaker is a working-class Marcel Proust, a great novelist, inspired by memory to write this truly memorable novel.

ANNE GEISMAR