From Amazon.com
Due to his formidable skill as a novelist--and to the fact that one of his novels,
The Natural, had the good or bad luck to be repackaged as a large-screen vehicle for Robert Redford--Bernard Malamud hasn't always been recognized as short-story master of the first rank. As this collection demonstrates once and for all, he is. The anthology pieces, such as "The Magic Barrel," "The Silver Dish," or "Rembrandt's Hat," would be more than enough to place the author in the pantheon. But the 54 stories gathered here represent an astonishing abundance of narrative smarts and brilliant, Yiddish-accented prose. Malamud's heroes meet all manner of misfortune--there's something distinctly Job-like about even his most contented characters (a typical one has "a sort of indigenous sadness [that] hung on or around him")--yet the author suffuses their woes with gentle comedy. And while Jews occupy center stage in almost every tale, they are universal rather than parochial figures: as the beleaguered tailor in "Angel Levine" triumphantly informs his wife, "Believe me, there are Jews everywhere."
From Library Journal
Malamud, who died in 1986, is perhaps better known for his novels (e.g., The Natural; The Fixer) than for his short stories, though these he published abundantly in collections over the years (e.g., The Stories of Bernard Malamud, 1983). Giroux, Malamud's longtime editor, publisher, and friend, who put together this evident labor of love, quotes Flannery O'Connor on Malamud: "I have discovered a short-story writer who is better than any of them, including myself." Many of these stories treat the dead-end lot of working-class Jews ("The Cost of Living") or the thwarted aspirations of the artist Fidelman in Italy ("A Pimp's Revenge"). Appearing in the order in which they were written (rather than published), the 55 stories span his first, "The Armistice" (1940), until his last experimental biography of Virginia Woolf. Displayed thus, Malamud's skill is consistently sound, effected quietly through disciplined pacing and dignified characters. Essential for libraries that lack Malamud's previous story collections.?Amy Boaz, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
