| Life and art: The short fiction of Bernard Malamud is a critical analysis of Malamud's full canon of short stories. Because nearly half of Malamud's stories are concerned in one form or another with the aesthetic experience, this work has been divided into two sections: life and art. The purpose for this dichotomy is not only for the convenience of discussing separately those stories about art, but also to examine the thematic relationship between the portrayal of life and art that constitutes the major framework of Malamud's oeuvre. Within this division, Life and art addresses many of the major genres, themes, and stylistic patterns in Malamud's short stories.;Section I. Life contains three chapters. Chapter I addresses the Malamudian world, constructed out of the fabric of existentialism, the Jewish literary tradition, and the dreariness of post-war urban life. Chapter II investigates the more benign side of Malamud's fictional personality: his uneasy mixture of fantasy and realism, his idiosyncratic sense of humor, and his frequent use of the fable. Chapter III locates the source of Malamud's humanistic philosophy in the teachings of Martin Buber--in the cause of others the need for compassion and self-sacrifice--and discusses those stories containing characters who fail to respond to this set of ethics.;Section II. Art is divided into two chapters. The first is an examination of Malamud's finest achievement in the short story, a novel length series of tales based around the artist Arthur Fidelman, an outrageous picaro who descends into the moral and artistic netherworld of his own self, but who finally ascends, though still a mediocre artist, a better man than he had hoped to have become. The final chapter considers those stories about art other than the ones in the Fidelman series. Most are pessimistic, concerning themselves with artistic frustration or the temptations of aesthetic corruption. The final two stories, however, review the lives of real artists and the legacies they have left.;Life and art concludes with a critical assessment of Malamud's audience and his place in American letters. |
