Through the Ghetto to Giotto

The underlying paradigm in Bernard Malamud's novels is the universal archetypal heroic journey, which in itself reflects the problematic relationship between self and society. As a narrative deep structure it provides the author with a richly allusive unifying principle which supports the development of the major themes of his fiction. The author's focus is always on the protagonists, who function as his instruments for social criticism. All the heroes from Roy Hobbs in The Natural (1952) to Calvin Cohn in God's Grace (1982) are concerned with the search for a new identity and with the search for individual and social responsibility. The successful protagonists in Malamud's fiction undergo a process of inner transformation that ultimately allows them to reconcile their hardwon identity with a personal commitment to other people. The ethnic aspects of Malamud's work are subordinated to his two major themes and they usually provide vital links between them. The author develops the themes of individual and social responsibility with the help of an underlying moral construct which links spiritual growth, the precondition of a positive new identity, to productive suffering. In the end, the assimilation and integration of the positive value of suffering into the hero's psyche lead to the internalization of the Jewish code of menshlichkeit, the moral imperative of man's responsibility to his fellow men. Malamud's novels can be divided into two main groups: the early novels that precede Pictures of Fidelman: An Exhibition (1969) and the later novels that follow it. While the early novels suggest the possibility of a unified self which may emerge as a result of a teleological process of inner transformation, the later novels show that the author is increasingly preoccupied with the problem of an elusive and ultimately unknowable

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• Bernard Malamud in Italy

  Samuel Kessler, Samuel Joseph Kessler•Studies in American Jewish…•2017

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• Fish and The Book off Tobit in Malamud's “The Magic Barrel”

  David G Robertson, David Robertson•Studies in American Jewish…•2009

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• The American Adam

  R W B Lewis•The American Adam•1955

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• Life Is with People

  Sylvester A Sieber, Mark Zborowski et al.•The American Catholic Sociological…•1953

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