Word: malamud
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...FIXER. Bernard Malamud's novel is the source for this resonant essay on individual courage and political morality. The actors-notably Alan Bates, Dirk Bogarde and Ian Holm-all seem perfect for their roles, and John Frankenheimer's direction is impeccable...
...FIXER. An adaptation of Bernard Malamud's Pulitzer prizewinning novel that is faithful to the original in its impassioned portrait of the dignity of individual man. John Frankenheimer directs with taste, and the actors-notably Alan Bates, Dirk Bogarde and Ian Holm-are transcendent in their roles...
...Malamud, as usual, is clear about his conclusion-and as usual uneasy with it. The reader turns each page of this little fable with a premonitory wince. Malamud has put Fidelman not so much through a pilgrimage as a forced migration. One senses that he may be all too aware that resurrections are always problematical. There is an uneasy shrillness, after all, to the notion of using a homosexual to demonstrate the complete way to fall in love with life...
...also, the stock figure of the schlemiel supplies no answer. Like all characters programmed for one response-the sobbing laugh-he provides a pattern but finally locks his author into it. Let other Jewish American novelists take warning: even with Malamud's deeper variations, the schlemiel has begun to take on the faded look of pseudo folklore...
What saves Malamud is his own presence. Every line he writes is stamped with the intensity of personal concern. It is as if all his characters and all that happens to them are projections of an interior morality play, more interesting, possibly, than what gets staged. This funny, racking battle between unseen angels and demons is what makes Malamud vibrate so faithfully to both the hope and the despair...