Word: malamud
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DUBIN'S LIVES by Bernard Malamud is another example of the male menopause novel, a form that has become increasingly popular in recent years with such authors as Saul Bellow, John Updike and John Fowles. Men in their mid-life crisis get bored with their careers, fall out of love with their wives and in love with younger women, suddenly and unexpectedly find that they have lost control of their lives...
...love with Fanny Bick, a semi-flower child and college dropout. He is fifty-seven; she is twenty-two. It takes him 200 pages to get around to making love to her. They love each other, passionately, but Dubin cannot let go of his wife, of his ordered life. Malamud's descriptions of a middle-aged marriage-gone-sour are minutely detailed, embarassing in their intimacy and immediacy...
Dubin is ultimately a coward--one more sympathetic to his plight (and nearer his age) might call him very human?--but in the end the book is wearing. He obviously sees himself as likable (as does Malamud), but it becomes harder and harder to understand why. The problem is that the book becomes too much like Dubin--one of those people who draw you into their lives with the message, "I can change, I want to change, all I need is for you to believe in me, love me and I will change." And it ends with Dubin sneaking...
FICTION: A Perfect Vacuum, Stanislaw Lem ∙ Birdy, William Wharton Dubin's Lives, Bernard Malamud Nostalgia for the Present, Andrei Voznesensky ∙ The Coup, John Updike ∙ The Flounder, Gunter Grass ∙ The Stories of John Cheever, John Cheever...
FICTION: A Perfect Vacuum, Stanislaw Lem ∙ Birdy, William Wharton Dubin's Lives, Bernard Malamud Nostalgia for the Present, Andrei Voznesensky ∙ The Coup, John Updike ∙ The Flounder, Gunter Grass ∙ The Stories of John Cheever, John Cheever