Shushy Margulis

Shushy Margulis is a marginal neighborhood figure whose comic reputation and gambling connections bring him into close association with Alvin Roth after Alvin returns from the war. As Alvin’s partner at a dice game, Shushy becomes a visible emblem of the life Philip Roth’s family had hoped Alvin would leave behind: a world of hustling, gambling, and disregard for the sacrifices made on his behalf.

Identity and Background

Shushy is in his thirties and lives with his widowed mother in a small attic flat above a house on Wainwright Street, next to a synagogue. His mother, known sympathetically as Mrs. Margulis, earns a living doing piecework as a seamstress for a dress manufacturer. The contrast between her labor and her son’s precarious existence shapes his place in the neighborhood: Shushy has apparently held no steady job beyond running errands for a local bookie.

His nickname, the Pinball King, has two sources. He spends long hours playing pinball in neighborhood candy stores, sometimes shoving and shaking the machines until the game ends or the shopkeeper sends him away. He also boasts of an uncle who is a racketeer and a king of illegal slot machines in Philadelphia. The nickname therefore joins a small-scale neighborhood notoriety to the criminal glamour Shushy claims by association.

Neighborhood Reputation

Shushy cultivates the role of comic troublemaker. Among his stunts is an exaggerated limp across Chancellor Avenue, performed to make traffic stop despite nothing being wrong with him. His public persona depends on spectacle and provocation; Philip recalls him as someone who could entertain admirers through calculated mischief, rather than through work or conventional achievement.

That performance contrasts sharply with the circumstances at home. While Shushy bops around the neighborhood in conspicuous clothes, his mother sews dresses to meet the family’s bills. Philip’s account places the son’s showmanship beside the mother’s unshowy labor, making his reputation look less like success than a performance sustained at her expense.

Partnership with Alvin Roth

Philip finds Shushy beside Alvin at an outdoor dice game, where Alvin is crouched with the dice and the winnings secured nearby. Shushy hovers over him as his partner, a connection traced back to Alvin’s earlier days at a gas station. The gathering is tucked beyond the neighborhood playground fence, in a secluded area where a handful of local gamblers can play out of public view.

Shushy treats Philip as part of the scene, mussing his hair and calling him Alvin’s mascot. The label reduces Philip’s loyalty to a childish attachment, although he has come to regard himself as Alvin’s protector. Shushy’s teasing thus exposes the gap between Philip’s private devotion and the casual, performative camaraderie around the dice game.

Conflict and Narrative Role

Shushy’s partnership with Alvin alarms Philip because it seems to reverse the family’s effort to keep Alvin from becoming like him. Alvin wins at the dice game, and Shushy is there as he gathers the money; for Philip, the scene makes Alvin’s return to gambling more consequential than a passing diversion. Shushy stands as the companion through whom that choice becomes visible.

The association continues beyond the game. When Alvin wins at poker or craps, he takes Shushy downtown for a steak dinner. Herman Roth calls Shushy Alvin’s partner in crime and treats their dinners as part of Alvin’s reckless estrangement from the family. Shushy is not the focus of the family’s political and personal crisis, but his recurring presence gives that crisis a concrete neighborhood dimension: Alvin’s decisions have drawn him toward a companion his family distrusts and away from the household that supported him.