Word: malamud
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Since Bernard Malamud (The Natural) and Mark Harris (Bang the Drum Slowly) made it O.K. to get all misty about guys in funny-looking knickers, the first- base box seats have been full of writers. To cite a few, W.P. Kinsella wrote Shoeless Joe (Field of Dreams, in its film version), and George Plimpton came up with the sly and flaky The Curious Case of Sidd Finch. New Yorker sage Roger Angell wrote about spring training over and over, decade after decade, in words so fine that people who would rather have their teeth fixed than go to an actual...
...PEOPLE AND UNCOLLECTED STORIES by Bernard Malamud (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $18.95). This posthumous volume includes an unfinished novel and 16 short stories never before collected in book form. The novel is little more than a sketch of what might have been, but the stories -- grim and comical in equal measure -- offer poignant reminders of Malamud's gift and his stature as an American master...
Almost alone among his contemporaries, Malamud was equally gifted at the novel and short story. In some moods he preferred the short form: "In a few pages a good story portrays the complexity of a life while producing the surprise and effect of knowledge -- not a bad payoff." All the stories salvaged here are good, and so is the payoff...
...outline this story is pure Malamud. It sets a sympathetic vision of the underdogs and downtrodden against a backdrop of myth and spacious possibilities. When the narrative breaks off, the good guys are losing, a situation that is also typical of its author. But in the notes he left for the remaining four chapters, Malamud outlined a way for Yozip to be of further, and possibly victorious, service to those who had adopted...
...best part of this volume can be found in the 16 stories following the unfinished novel. Five have never been published, and the rest were never collected in hard covers. It is difficult to imagine why not. Malamud hit his stride early, writing stories of old men trying to preserve their dignity amid the shambles of harsh circumstances. In The Literary Life of Laban Goldman, an elderly Jew attends night school to improve his English and get away from his nagging wife; he experiences a brief moment of triumph when the Brooklyn Eagle publishes his letter to the editor urging...