Word: malamud
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...FIXER by Bernard Malamud. 335 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux...
...Great White Whale-which might stand for the tragic tradition that lives pelagically deep under the choppy surface of American life-there may be a Jonah of genius who will one day emerge with a great tragic novel. The critics have been whooping it up in the Malamud salon for so long now that it seemed as if the author of The Fixer might be the man. In his new book, Bernard Malamud retains all the literary expertise and moral concern that has won him his deserved prominence. But he is not Jonah, despite the publisher's declaration that...
...misses by very little, however. Malamud's novel is a fictional version of the Beiliss Case in Kiev, 1911, in which a Jew was wrongly accused of the ritual murder of a Christian child and of milking his blood for the purpose of making Passover matzos. The incident, followed by an obscene wave of antiSemitism, was documented in a bleak narrative by Maurice Samuel in Blood Accusation, published this year. Malamud coincidentally worked on the same gruesome subject, but he has gone beyond journalistic intention...
Another valid definition of a hero is "a person regarded as a model." In The Natural, Novelist Bernard Malamud has one character explain: "Without heroes we're all plain people and don't know how far we can go. . . It's their function to be the best." But excellence is not enough to make a hero, nor is willingness to challenge the odds; those qualities may merely add up to leadership. "Heroism should not be confused with strength and success," says Author John Updike. "Our concept of the hero must be humanized to include the ideas...
Henry A. Kissinger briefs Senatorial hopeful Edward Brooke on Vietnam. The four Harvard students arrested at the Boston Army Base are fined $20 for loitering and acting in a manner likely to cause breach of the peace. The Kennedy Institute will organize a "debating union" next Fall, and Bernard Malamud will teach a freshman seminar...