Word: malamud
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...PEOPLE AND UNCOLLECTED STORIES by Bernard Malamud...
...story called An Exorcism, Bernard Malamud wrote of Eli Fogel, a middle-aged author suddenly saddled with a young acolyte named Gary Simson. Fogel enjoys the veneration, up to a point; his work has garnered moderate recognition and less money. But Simson's relentless requests for advice, tips on writing and letters of recommendation distract Fogel from his own efforts, in this case his slow progress in finishing another novel: "Perfection comes hard to an imperfectionist. He had visions of himself dying before the book was completed. It was a terrible thought: Fogel seated at the table, staring...
With hindsight this passage seems chilling. An Exorcism was not included among the 25 works in The Stories of Bernard Malamud (1983). But it appears in this posthumous collection, along with The People, a novel interrupted in its 17th chapter by Malamud's death...
...truncated and unrevised form, The People will add little to Malamud's reputation, which hardly needs embellishment in any case. His novels, including The Natural and The Assistant, and books of stories such as The Magic Barrel and Idiots First long ago established his place among the best postwar American writers. This triumph was not easily won. Malamud never catered to popular tastes or expectations. His fiction was often as grim as it was enchanting. He wrote, and rewrote, slowly, with consummate care...
Complete with a Big Daddy and a Kindly Uncle. Roger Straus Jr., 71, is brawny, with silver hair and a salty tongue. Editorial Board Chairman Robert Giroux, 73, is more reserved, an inside man whose contributions to the list include T.S. Eliot, Flannery O'Connor, Robert Lowell and Bernard Malamud. The outspoken Straus bluntly rejects the nostalgic notion that publishing was once a gentlemen's business. "They were poor businessmen," he says of many of the resonant names of the profession, "poor marketers out to massage their own egos generation after generation...