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The only children who do not ignore or turn on their fathers are retarded. In The Silver Crown, a rabbi explains his obese, mentally handicapped daughter: "She's not perfect, though God, who made her in His image, is Himself perfection. What this means I don't have to tell you." In Idiots First, Mendel has been approached by Ginzburg, a messenger of death, and warned that his life expires at midnight. Mendel must somehow raise the train fare to send his son Isaac, who is 39 and unable to care for himself, to an uncle in California. He succeeds, and the fierceness of his determination frightens even death himself. The father delivers his son: "He waited on the platform until the train began slowly to move. Isaac sat at the edge of his seat, his face strained in the direction of his journey. When the train was gone, Mendel ascended the stairs to see what had become of Ginzburg."
This is one of the handful of happy endings in Malamud's stories. Yet all the tales radiate a joy that has nothing to do with consequences, The author consistently portrays a kind of heroism devoid of self-consciousness or sentimentality. Convinced that their fates have already been determined, characters go on stubbornly behaving as if their actions mattered. The grocer in The Cost of Living knows that the supermarket moving in next door will destroy the 27 years that he has put into his business. He tries to compete and is wiped out within seven months. Although he takes no consolation from the fact, he has, at least, not gone gently into that bad night.
Suicide? "Don't ever think of it," says a character in The German Refugee, "it's total defeat." The person who receives this warning eventually does take his own life. Malamud is probably the most severe writer of his generation, a trait that may explain why his work has been extensively admired but less widely loved. Still, the gathering of these stories reveals a gentleness in Malamud's art that was not always clear before. He admires the sheer cussedness of his characters, their backs to the wall, squabbling in the maw of annihilation. He relishes the cranks and eccentrics who, destined to suffer and die, still insist on making noise in a vast, indifferent universe. Mendel, grappling with his fate, screams, "You bastard, don't you understand what it means human?" This book offers 25 vivid and unforgettable answers. —By Paul Gray
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