Word: levenspiel
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...finds himself curiously unable to finish the book. Like that of his own fictional character, Lesser's isolated life bucks the very love he is trying to imagine on paper. Holed up in his self-made prison, he writes, munches apples and turns a deaf ear to Levenspiel, the landlord who wants to get him out so the structure can be replaced by a new six-story apartment building. Lesser is the last tenant, a holdout protected from eviction by a maze of city regulations. Using the world's red tape to keep the world...
...life's tragic limitations. In The Tenant, men hack blindly at each other's flesh, and the author labors to discern some faint compassion in the violence. Like Lesser, Malamud too has had trouble finishing his book. The difficulty is underscored by an epilogue in which Levenspiel, the landlord whom circumstance has also made a victim of the combat, sets up a liturgical cry for mercy. In effect it is an unanswered cry for a release from history...
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