TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/112089/11208900.079

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 4KB | 75 lines

                                                                                BOOKS, Page 106

Underdogs


    THE PEOPLE AND UNCOLLECTED STORIES
    By Bernard Malamud Farrar,
    Straus & Giroux; 269 pages; $18.95


    In a 1968 story called An Exorcism, Bernard Malamud wrote
of Eli Fogel, a middle-aged author suddenly saddled with a
young acolyte named Gary Simson. Fogel enjoys the veneration,
up to a point; his work has garnered moderate recognition and
less money. But Simson's relentless requests for advice, tips
on writing and letters of recommendation distract Fogel from his
own efforts, in this case his slow progress in finishing another
novel: "Perfection comes hard to an imperfectionist. He had
visions of himself dying before the book was completed. It was
a terrible thought: Fogel seated at the table, staring at his
manuscript, pen in hand, the page ending in a blot."

    With hindsight this passage seems chilling. An Exorcism was
not included among the 25 works in The Stories of Bernard
Malamud (1983). But it appears in this posthumous collection,
along with The People, a novel interrupted in its 17th chapter
by Malamud's death in 1986.

    In its truncated and unrevised form, The People will add
little to Malamud's reputation, which hardly needs embellishment
in any case. His novels, including The Natural and The
Assistant, and books of stories such as The Magic Barrel and
Idiots First long ago established his place among the best
postwar American writers. This triumph was not easily won.
Malamud never catered to popular tastes or expectations. His
fiction was often as grim as it was enchanting. He wrote, and
rewrote, slowly, with consummate care.

    Unhappily denied such attentions, The People is a rough
draft of the novel it might have become. The year is 1870, and
Yozip Bloom, a Russian immigrant and itinerant Jewish peddler,
roams the Pacific Northwest. He is kidnaped by an Indian tribe
that calls itself the People. For reasons not entirely clear,
Yozip has been singled out as the spokesman, Yiddish-inflected
English and all, who will defend the rights of the People
against the perfidious, treaty-breaking whites.

    In outline this story is pure Malamud. It sets a
sympathetic vision of the underdogs and downtrodden against a
backdrop of myth and spacious possibilities. When the narrative
breaks off, the good guys are losing, a situation that is also
typical of its author. But in the notes he left for the
remaining four chapters, Malamud outlined a way for Yozip to be
of further, and possibly victorious, service to those who had
adopted him.

    The best part of this volume can be found in the 16 stories
following the unfinished novel. Five have never been published,
and the rest were never collected in hard covers. It is
difficult to imagine why not. Malamud hit his stride early,
writing stories of old men trying to preserve their dignity amid
the shambles of harsh circumstances. In The Literary Life of
Laban Goldman, an elderly Jew attends night school to improve
his English and get away from his nagging wife; he experiences
a brief moment of triumph when the Brooklyn Eagle publishes his
letter to the editor urging a relaxation of New York State
divorce laws. The Grocery Store evokes the atmosphere in which
the author, the son of a grocer, grew up in Brooklyn.

    Almost alone among his contemporaries, Malamud was equally
gifted at the novel and short story. In some moods he preferred
the short form: "In a few pages a good story portrays the
complexity of a life while producing the surprise and effect of
knowledge -- not a bad payoff." All the stories salvaged here
are good, and so is the payoff.