THE STORIES OF BERNARD MALAMUD
by Bernard Malamud; Farrar Straus Giroux; 350 pages; $17.95
Sprinters do not ordinarily sign up for marathons, nor do lonely long-distance runners enter the crush of 100-yard dashes. But some authors perform an analogous feat by writing both short stories and novels. Instead of being complimented on their versatility, though, they frequently encounter a peculiar problem: facing themselves as competitors. Choices, so the assumption goes, must be made. Which Hemingway is the ultimate winner, the one who broke so many tapes in In Our Time or the one who strode with such manly endurance through The Sun Also Rises? Which O'Hara, which Welty, which Cheever, which Updike? Admirers of a given writer will usually extol the novels; praising short stories can be a subtle form of denigration.
Under such difficult conditions, Author Bernard Malamud, 69, has been racing himself for a long time. In 31 years he has published seven novels, including The Natural (1952) and The Fixer (1966), interspersed with four volumes of short fiction. The Stories of Bernard Malamud includes 23 pieces selected by the author from these past assemblages, plus two previously uncollected stories. The book not only offers substantial evidence that Malamud's stories are better than his novels; it makes the distinction seem irrelevant. In sufficient concentration, small objects achieve critical mass, enough fast victories add up to a triumphant long haul.
Malamud's world reveals itself bit by bit: a place of stony certainties and infrangible laws, brightened occasionally by enclaves of unexpected magic. Those who live here are predominantly poor, oppressed by hard work. Most are men without women. More than half the heroes in these stories are bachelors or widowers. There are also a few male characters for whom marital status hardly matters: a talking horse named Abramowitz, a bedraggled black bird who claims he is Jewish and calls himself Schwartz. The main character in a story called The Model speaks for most of Malamud's men: "Is there nothing more to my life than it is now? Is this all that is left to me?"
These people must bear Old Testament burdens, punished not just by life but by the suspicion that they somehow deserve all the troubles heaped upon them. In The Mourners, a sick old man faces eviction from his fifth-floor tenement room. He sits huddled on his floor: "How, in so short a life, could a man do so much wrong?" Advancing years do not bring with them the comforts and support of progeny; there are enough ungrateful daughters here to stock several road companies of King Lear, and sons are equally unfeeling.