• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

INFORMATION TO USERS This dissertation was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the original submitted. The following explanation of techniques is provided to help you understand markings or patterns which may appear on this reproduction. 1. T he sign or "target" fo r pages apparently lacking from the docum ent photographed is "Missing Page(s)". If it was possible to obtain the missing page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages. This may have necessitated cutting thru an 'mage and duplicating adjacent pages to insure you complete continuity. 2. When an image on the film is obliterated v/ith a large round black mark, it is an indication that the photographer suspected that the copy may have moved during exposure and thus cause a blurred image. You w ill find a good image o f the page in the adjacent frame. 3. When a map, drawing or chart, etc., was part of the material being photographed the photographer followed a definite method in "sectioning" the material. It is customary to begin photoing at the upper left hand corner of a large sheet and to continue phctcing from left to right in equal sections with a small overlap. If necessary, sectioning is continued again - beginning below the first row and continuing on until complete. 4. The majority of users indicate that the textual content is of greatest value, however, a somewhat higher quality reproduction could be made from "photographs" if essential to the understanding of the dissertation. Silver prints of "photographs" may be ordered at additional charge by writing the Order Department, giving the catalog number, title, author and specific pages you wish reproduced. University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 A Xerox Education Company 73-9151 FAULKNER, Howard John, 1945- BERNARD MALAMUD: THE PROMISE OF NEW LIFE. The University of Oklahoma, Ph.D., 1972 Language and Literature, modern University Microfilms, A XEROX Company. Ann Arbor, Michigan © 1973 rio'.vr’ rc' uchn fru lk n e r ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE BERNARD MLAMUD.; THE PROMISE OF NEW LIFE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY HOWARD JOHN FAULKNER Norman, Oklahoma 1972 BERNARD M1AÎ5UD: THE PROMISE OF NEW LIFE APPROVED BY / / , mZTZTTTHS DISSERTATION COMr-ilTTEE PLEASE NOTE: Some pages may have indistinct print. Filmed as received. University Microfilms, A Xerox Education Company CONTENTS Chapter Page 1 MAIALIUD'S M Y T H ....................... i 2 THE NATURAL: THE LOSS OF WORLD AND■ SOUL ...................... 19 3 THE ASSISTANT: A LAW LIKE LOVE i ....... , 46 4 A NEW LIFE: THE ECONOMY OF PAIN ...... 68 5 THE FIXER: MAN AS POLITICIAN......... 91 6 PICTURES OF FIDELMAN: ARTISAN AND LOVER ..................... 113 7 THE TENANTS: MAN AS ARTIST .......... 128 8 THE PROMISED END .................... 146 Notes ............................... 152 Bibliography ........................ 158 BERNARD IvlALAIfJD: THE PROLilSE OF NEW LIFE CHAPTER ONE riALfJ-IUD'S iü'TH Since the early part of this century, Jewish-Ainerican novelists have uade a continuous and distinctive contribution to American letters. Before the Second World War, however, TI most of the Jewish writers were considered minor. There are, to be sure, exceptions; Leslie Fiedler, among others, has made the case for such a writer as Henry Roth. But despite influential and persistent advocates, Roth, like Daniel Fuchs and Michael Gold, remains a writer of limited interest. Others, Abraham Cahan, for example, are scarcely known today. Only Nathanael West seems to be an exception. After World War II, as both the critics and the general reading public judged, Jewish-American novelists carfie of age. Indeed, they have seemed to form, one of the main bodies of our contemporary writing, although seeing them as all a part of one tradition ignores :;e real differences among them. Some have, for example, chosen to minimize their Jewishness; it is possible to read Salinger or Mailer or Heller, to name three, and be unconcerned about the author's being a Jew. PLEASE NOTE; Some pages may have indistinct print. FiImed as received. University Microfilms, A Xerox Education Company CONTENTS Chapter Page 1 MALAMUD'S MYTH ........ 1 2 THE NATURAL: THE LOSS OF WORLD AND S O U L ....................... 19 3 THE ASSISTANT: A lAÜ LIKE LOVE i ....... , 46 4 A NE*!? LIFE: THE ECONOMY OF PAIN ...... 68 5 THE FIXER: MAN AS POLITICIAN......... 91 6 PICTURES OF FIDEIMN: ARTISAN AND LOVER ....................... 113 7 THE TENANTS: MAN AS ARTIST ........... 128 8 THE PROMISED END ..................... 146 N o t e s ............. 152 Bibliography ........................ 158 BERNARD MLAI^D: THE PROMISE OP NEW LIFE CHAPTER ONE MLAMUD'S MYTH Since the early part of this century, Jev.dsh-American novelists have made a continuous and distinctive contribution j to American letters. Before the Second World War, however, most of the Jewish writers were considered minor. There are, to be sure, exceptions; Leslie Fiedler, among others, has made the case for such a writer as Henry Roth. But despite influential and persistent advocates, Roth, like Daniel Fuchs and Michael Gold, remains a writer of limited interest. Others, Abraham Cahan, for example, are scarcely known today. Only Nathanael West seems to be an exception. After World War II, as both the critics and the general reading public judged, Jewish-American novelists cade of age. Indeed, they have seemed to form one of the main bodies of our contemporary writing, although seeing them as all a part of one tradition ignores he real differences among them. Some have, for example, chosen to minimize their Jewishness; it is possible to read Salinger or Mailer or Heller, to name three, and be unconcerned about the author's being a Jew. others, however, chose to concern themselves with Jews and their ethos, and three of these, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and Bernard Malamud, have emerged as among the most gifted of those Jewish writers who first gained prominence in the 1950's, A further distinction can be made among these three: unlike Roth and Bellow, who usually write about assimilated Jews, Malamud's characteristic setting is a world from the past, an isolated island; his people tend to be unassimilated, lonely, poor, and quite frequently frightened Jews. His world seems not quite a part of the everyday world which Jews who have made it know. Malamud is sometimes criticized for substituting images made from fantasy and myth for the more normal manners and morals of contemporary Jewish life. Alfred Kazin, Norman Podhoretz, and Philip Roth have all charged Malamud with a failure adequately to depict reality. Kazin, "riding his hobby horse of realism," as Charles Thomas Samuels puts it,"* talks about Malamud's being 2 "unnecessarily tempted by symbolism," and Roth writes: What I do mean to point out is that he [Mal- amud] does not— or has not yet— found [sic] the contemporary scene a proper or sufficient backdrop for his tales of heartlessness and heartache, of suffering and regeneration. And Podhoretz, specifically criticizing The Natural, but suggesting the direction his later criticism of Malamud will take, says that it is overloaded with rayth.^ Podhoretz's criticism suggests a middle ground, leads to those critics who do not demand realism or rule out the fantastic, but who assert that Malamud tends to rely too heavily on the non-realistic or that he sometimes fails to integrate the probable with the merely possible. There are times, as welwill see, when this form of the criticism is to the point. These times, however, are the exception; they indicate a quite specific failure, not a more general one. On the contrary, Bernard Malamud's greatest strength is that he sometimes manages what Robert Penn Warren has described William Faulkner as doing; he creates a real world which serves in turn as a mythical one, and his art lives in both realms ai, once. The real world that usually serves Malamud's myth is the poor Jewish sections of New York City; here, their poverty invisible to most outsiders, the last of the small shopkeeper Jews live out their lives, caught between an older world which cannot survive this new environment and a newer world of which they are not a part. Sometimes Malamud makes other worlds, perhaps more familiar ones, carry the same freight. Although those worlds seem different from the oppressive milieu of Malamud*s New York City tales, the stories of the American in Italy or the country rube on an urban baseball team or the Easterner in Oregon have the same atmosphere and the same protagonist. Into the closed and alien atmosphere comes the hero— unable or unwilling to return to his old life and its familiar ways. but a stranger to the new. This element remains the same throughout Malamud's work. What binds the novels and stories together and gives them a mythic sense is partly the author’s striving for effects beyond mimesis. But it is also achieved through the similarity of character, setting, and action. Most important is the last of these, for each of Malamud’s characters undertakes, in this myth, the quest for a new life. The search for the new life propels the action of most of Malamud’s work and explains the position of his wandering protagonists. Moreover, Malamud is remarkably consistent in the meta­ phors he uses for this journey: the progress from an old life toward a new.

Load more

  172

Copy Link