Word: beppo
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Runyonesque caricatures, proving mainly that Damon's were pithiest. There is, for instance, 425-pound Big Jelly Catalano, who likes two girls at once and "always takes his clothes off when he eats"-not to mention Roz the Meter Maid, Tony the Indian, Joe the Wop, Beppo the Dwarf and a lion with body odor. Yet the book is funny, particularly on the sadistic Tom-and-Jerry cartoon level of violence, because the characters aren't real and nothing is really at stake but a few laughs...
...kind of surrealistic daze, Fidelman moves on to Venice, letting himself in for another of those tormenting Malamud women whose specialty is interrupted coition. The woman's homosexual husband, Beppo, interrupts this time to seduce Fidelman from his wife -and from art. Beppo is a truly queer dens ex machina; yet Malamud clearly intends him for the role. It is Beppo, in fact, who finally gives Fidelman the word on his "painter's progress": "After twenty years if the rooster hasn't crowed she should know she's a hen." And it is Beppo who points...