Bernard Malamud: a Centennial Tribute

Bernard Malamud aarons 6p.indd 1 5/13/16 10:58 AM aarons 6p.indd 2 5/13/16 10:58 AM Bernard Malamud A Centennial Tribute J Edited by Victoria Aarons & Gustavo Sánchez Canales Wayne State University Press Detroit aarons 6p.indd 3 5/13/16 10:58 AM © 2016 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America. 20 19 18 17 16 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN 978-0-8143-4114-8 (paperback) / ISBN 978-0-8143-4115-5 (e-book) Library of Congress Control Number: 2016930473 Designed and typeset by adam b. bohannon Composed in Adobe Caslon Wayne State University Press Leonard N. Simons Building 4809 Woodward Avenue Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309 Visit us online at wsupress.wayne.edu aarons 6p.indd 4 5/13/16 10:58 AM For our children, Aaron and Gabriel and Federico and Micaela aarons 6p.indd 5 5/13/16 10:58 AM aarons 6p.indd 6 5/13/16 10:58 AM A smart man hears one word but he understand[s] two. —Bernard Malamud, The Assistant aarons 6p.indd 7 5/13/16 10:58 AM aarons 6p.indd 8 5/13/16 10:58 AM Contents Preface xiii “Bernard Malamud, Person and Writer” by Paul Malamud xvii “Mediterranean” by Paul Malamud xxi Part I. U.S. Voices Introduction: “Moved by a Memory”: Bernard Malamud’s Literary Landscape 3 VICTORIA AARONS Novels 1. The Beard Makes the Man: Bernard Malamud’s A New Life 17 LEAH GARRETT 2. “I Shit My Death”: From the Providential to the Excremental in The Fixer 31 HOLLI LEVITSKY 3. The Jew as Vampire in Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer 45 ANDREW M. GORDON 4. Malamud’s The Tenants and the Problem of Ralph Ellison’s Second Novel 52 TIMOTHY PARRISH 5. Unbound and Un-bodied: Reading Race in Malamud’s The Tenants 70 JESSICA LANG ix aarons 6p.indd 9 5/13/16 10:58 AM CONTENTS Short Stories 6. Midrash, Memory, and “Miracles or Near-Miracles”: Bernard Malamud’s All-Too-Human Project 89 VICTORIA AARONS Part II. European Voices Introduction: Encountering Bernard Malamud through an I-Thou Relationship 109 GUSTAVO SÁNCHEZ CANALES Novels 7. Rethinking the Discourse of Suffering in Bernard Malamud’s Fiction 119 PILAR ALONSO 8. “What’s in a Name?”: Aptronyms and Archetypes in Bernard Malamud’s The Assistant and The Fixer 135 GUSTAVO SÁNCHEZ CANALES 9. Fixing Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer through Translation: From El hombre de Kiev (1967) to El reparador (2011) 151 MARTÍN URDIALES SHAW 10. Dostoevsky, Lawrence, Malamud: Malamud’s Heroes, Facing the Twin Rejection of Identity and Sensuality 171 RÉMI ASTRUC, TRANSLATED BY ALAN ASTRO 11. Writing on the Edge of Doom: Theological Reflections on Bernard Malamud’s God’s Grace 183 TILL KINZEL Short Stories 12. Seeking the Man behind the Text or a Biographical Approach to Bernard Malamud’s Short Stories 197 EMILIO CAÑADAS RODRÍGUEZ 13. Malamud’s Short Fiction: Angels and Specters 210 FÉLIX MARTÍN GUTIÉRREZ x aarons 6p.indd 10 5/13/16 10:58 AM Contents 14. Bernard Malamud’s and John Updike’s Art Stories: The Act of Creation in “Still Life” and “Leaves” 231 ARISTI TRENDEL 15. Arthur Fidelman’s Aesthetic Adventures and Malamud’s Poetics of Creativity 244 THEODORA TSIMPOUKI Annotated Works Cited 265 Contributors 297 Index 303 xi aarons 6p.indd 11 5/13/16 10:58 AM aarons 6p.indd 12 5/13/16 10:58 AM Preface Bernard Malamud (1914–1986), consummate storyteller, artful craftsman, and exacting stylist, is generally considered not only one of the three most influential postwar American-Jewish writers but also a writer holding a central place in the canon of twentieth-century American letters. Mal- amud came to prominence at an important moment in American social, political, and cultural history, writing at a time that saw dramatic changes in both America’s self-assessment in the aftermath of World War II and in its ability to assimilate diverse sectors of its population. Along with the novelists Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud brought to life a decidedly American-Jewish protagonist and a newly emergent Jewish voice that came to define American letters and influence Ameri- can writers for over half a century, an influence that continues. The Mal- amudian voice and characteristic urban landscape that define his fiction speak to the changing ethos in American life and thought at this pivotal, mid-twentieth-century moment in American history. Malamud’s literary oeuvre reflects “a struggle to achieve order” in both life and literature, as well as a deep appreciation for the supple and elastic forms of the written word (Malamud, introduction vi). Malamud’s legacy continues to be a hallmark of American literature, with the very best of his work—the novels and short stories that create the felt conditions of “what it means human” (“Idiots First,” Stories 44)—an expression of the deep investment in an ethical life and in the rigors of “the human sentence” (Malamud, introduction xii). While Malamud remains a major, formative voice in American letters, recent years have shown an emergent, burgeoning interest in Mal- amud among European scholars, who regard Malamud with growing interest not only as a central American voice but also as a writer whose fiction opens itself up to an exploration of stylistic technique, narrative xiii aarons 6p.indd 13 5/13/16 10:58 AM PREFACE voice, and the making of character. Thus, in recognition of this major voice in American literature, the editors of this volume have brought together both North American and European scholars in an attempt to show the range and depth of the possibilities for Malamud studies in the twenty-first century. In celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of Malamud’s birth and in recognition of the thirtieth anniversary of Mal- amud’s death, the editors of this tribute have attempted to bring together under one title a variety of approaches and responses to Malamud’s central, defining works of fiction. We have intended the essays gathered here to play off one another, to show differences as well as overlapping concerns and interests. In engag- ing scholars from the United States and abroad, we hope to establish a dialogue between the critical, traditional study of Malamud in America and the newly emerging one in Europe. Malamud’s work lends itself to this cross-cultural engagement. Very much in the tradition of twentieth-century American writers, Malamud traveled to Europe, centering many of his stories there, a fertile context for looking back to the origins of America and its comparative cultural successes and failures. Many of Malamud’s stories are set in Europe, especially the Italian stories. Europe was, for Malamud, a landscape for his characters’ self-assessment against the backdrop of history. In, for example, “The Last Mohican,” Malamud’s recurring protagonist, Fidelman, in Rome, standing in the Eternal City, gazing at the remains of the Baths of Diocletian, whispers to himself, “Imagine all that history” (Complete 200). Europe figures in the Fidel- man stories as a place of possibilities, opportunities, and self-reinvention. Abroad, Fidelman “experienced the sensation of suddenly seeing himself as he was” (201). And Henry Levin, in the story “The Lady of the Lake,” travels “abroad seeking romance. He liked the sense of foreignness of the city—of things different, anything likely to happen” (Complete 221). Paul Malamud’s poem “Mediterranean,” which is a part of this collection, speaks to his father’s affinity and deep appreciation for a landscape and a history so different from his own, “a poor Jew from Brooklyn who had made good, walking under the olive trees.” The editors have arranged this book in an attempt to illustrate the richness and complexity of Malamud’s work as a way of paying tribute to the writer and to the subtle utterance and perfection of the written word that is such a fundamental feature of Malamud’s craft. Our hope xiv aarons 6p.indd 14 5/13/16 10:58 AM Preface is that including scholarly approaches from a range of countries—the United States, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, and Greece—will multiply the possibilities of study and appreciation of this important author and his work. And while our intention, initially, was to show an understand- ing of Malamud from two different perspectives—U.S. and European— the exchange among scholars demonstrates the enormous breadth and complexity in such a diverse perspectival reach. For ease of reading, we have structured this book in two parts: U.S. and European Voices. Each is introduced separately in order to set up, in general terms, the direction and focus for the evolving perspectives. What we find in such a dialogue is a kind of chiastic exchange, reflecting one of Malamud’s major literary tropes, a relationship that has at its center the experience of an essential connection and consanguinity. xv aarons 6p.indd 15 5/13/16 10:58 AM aarons 6p.indd 16 5/13/16 10:58 AM Bernard Malamud, Person and Writer J PAUL MALAMUD (Address delivered at City College, New York, May, 2013) Dad was known as a short-story writer and a novelist. The peak of his career was between the early 1960s and 1980 or so. He was known for his short stories, which began to appear in Commentary, the literary maga- zine, in the ’50s. He was also known for his novels, such as the baseball yarn The Natural and The Assistant.

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