A Companion to the American Short Story
Page 98
men are Jews,
”
Malamud famously declared, and mainstream readers apparently
agreed.
Writing in the wake of high modernism, its fetishizing of the aesthetic and its
associated nihilism, Bellow, as Cynthia Ozick has noted, accepted as his charge from
the beginning of his career to “ restore the soul to American literature ” ( “ Farcical
Combat ” 238). The writer, Bellow has contended, “ should perform a moral function
… should provide emotional, spiritual stuff – those are rather old fashioned ideas,
but I don ’ t think that people have really given up old fashioned ideas – they just scoff
at them, while in reality they continue to live by them ” (qtd. in Boyers 7). As point-
edly as any other story in his canon, Bellow ’ s “ Him with His Foot in His Mouth ”
illustrates Bellow
’
s indefatigable efforts to affi rm a higher spirituality than that
afforded by America ’ s credo of anarchic individualism and rampant materialism. The
story revolves around an aging musicologist, Hershchel Shawmut, who receives word
from an old colleague that an insensitive retort he made to a college librarian some
thirty
-
fi ve years ago traumatized her for life. Shawmut, a brooder like many of
Bellow ’
s protagonists, writes the librarian an extended letter to refl ect upon his
predilection for insulting people.
Shawmut begins his letter by recounting his fi rst years as a Music History Professor
at a WASP
-
dominated institution. Shawmut
’
s refusal to court the establishment
contrasts notably with Eddie Walish, a colleague of equally humble origins, but who
wears “ good English tweeds and Lloyd & Haig brogans ” (380). Shawmut derides
Walish ’ s phoniness, his deference to the haughty blue - bloods of the establishment,
through his recollection of Walish ’ s clownishness: “ He has a sort of woodwind laugh,
closer to oboe than to clarinet, and he releases his laugh from the wide end of his nose
as well as from his carved pumpkin mouth. He grins like Alfred E. Neuman from
the cover of Mad magazine, the successor of Peck ’ s Bad Boy ” (380). The passage
demonstrates, generally, Bellow
’
s unsurpassed precision in rendering a character
’
s
essence through portraiture.
Although Shawmut attempts to resist Walish ’ s kow - towing to the establishment,
he recognizes that he too cultivated a false self of overblown civility to succeed in his
profession. He attributes his random insults to others, like the librarian, to his Yiddish
upbringing, which rejects this veneer of cordiality. Shawmut instinctively wishes to
honor his Jewish upbringing, the tough - mindedness of the Yiddish language and his
deep and abiding commitment to family, yet he must reckon with the reality that he
was victimized by his family. In short, his brother Philip, who marries a rich gentile
woman and moves to Texas, convinces him to invest in a fraudulent fi nancial scheme.
454
Andrew Furman
In an extended section of the story, rich in detail, Shawmut refl ects upon his brother ’ s
embrace of what can only be called a distinctly American brand of materialism and
self - centered individualism. Bellow ’ s depiction of his brother ’ s sprawling Texas estate
evokes its complete lack of human warmth. Philip ’ s wife, for example, breeds pit
bulldogs, which bare their teeth at Shawmut, terrifying him. The utter lack of human
warmth at Philip ’ s mansion provokes Shawmut ’ s nostalgia for their childhood home,
materially impoverished but rich with love. As Shawmut refl ects of Philip, “ Philly
had put himself into Tracy ’ s hands for full Americanization. To achieve this (obsolete)
privilege, he paid the price of his soul ” (402).
The restive Shawmut ultimately embraces a spiritual vision and achieves some
measure of peace. Although he initially seeks to affi rm intellectualism as a credo to
resist the American ethos of materialism, the convictions of his elderly Canadian
neighbor speak to him more profoundly: “ Intellect, worshiped by all, brings us as far
as natural science, and this science, although very great, is incomplete. Redemption
from mere nature is the work of feeling and of the awakened eye of the Spirit. The
body, she says, is subject to forces of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure. …
I listen to this and have no mischievous impulses ” (413).
Such concerted introspection is typical of Bellow ’ s protagonists and defi es the stoic,
hard - boiled ethos of the archetypal Hemingway hero. Often exceedingly brainy, many
of Bellow ’ s protagonists, like Shawmut, ultimately recognize the limits of straight
intellectualism and affi rm an inner, often emotive, knowledge. Other particularly
notable stories in Bellow ’ s canon – recently collected in Saul Bellow: Collected Stories
(2001) – include “ The Old System, ” “ Zetland: By a Character Witness, ” “ Looking for
Mr. Green ” (which addresses Black – Jewish relations), and “ Something to Remember
Me By. ”
Philip Roth burst upon the literary scene with his National Book Award – winning
Goodbye, Columbus (1959) , a collection which includes a novella and fi ve stories. The
book raised the hackles of several rabbis and lay people in the Jewish community as
Roth depicts, in fi erce detail, the moral slippage that accompanied the prosperity of
post - immigrant Jews, who left New York for the more leafy suburbs of New Jersey.
“ Defender of the Faith ” focuses upon a goldbricking Jewish soldier, who seeks to
exploit the sympathies of his Jewish sergeant; “ Epstein ” documents the ill - fated adul-
terous pursuits of its eponymous protagonist; and the opening novella,
Goodbye,
Columbus offers a scathing critique of the materialism, and creeping racism, of its
newly affl uent Jewish suburbanites. “ Eli, the Fanatic ” may represent the strongest
story of the collection. Eli Peck, a lawyer and nominal Jew, lives in a verdant, and
predominantly Gentile, New York suburb, Woodenton. The increasing number of
Jewish families who have settled in Woodenton live “ in amity ” with their Gentile
neighbors through eschewing their “ extreme practices ” (262). Thus, they fear the
reaction of their Gentile hosts when Leo Tzuref founds an Orthodox yeshiva in which
eighteen young Holocaust survivors receive instruction from a Hasidic Jew (also a
survivor). As one assimilated member of the community brays to Peck, “ There ’ s going
to be no pogroms in Woodenton. Right? Cause there ’ s no fanatics, no crazy people ”
The Jewish American Story
455
(277). The Jewish community goes so far as to seek to remove the yeshiva based upon
an obscure zoning ordinance, and secure Peck as their legal representative.
Eli, however, feels ambivalent about his community
’
s resolve to displace their
brethren. He initially attempts to placate the assimilated Woodenton Jews by provid-
ing the Hasidic instructor with a modern suit. “ I ’ m not a Nazi who would drive
eighteen children who are probably frightened at the sight of a fi refl y, into homeless-
ness, ” he explains to Tzuref in a letter. “ But if you want a home here, you must accept
what we have to offer ” (274). The Hasid relents and accepts Peck ’ s secular green suit.
Yet Peck, ultimately, feels remorse for stripping the survivor of his last remnant of
selfhood. In a curious act of empathy, he dons the black caftan and broad - brimmed
hat, which the Hasidic instructor surrenders, and strolls unapologetically through the
Woodenton streets. The moral vision of “ Eli, The Fanatic ” is somewhat more elusive
than this gloss of the plot suggests. It ’ s unclear, for example, whether Peck ’ s rebellion
represents a nervous breakdown or a moment of stark lucidity. The story ends mys-
teriously as a sedative administered to Peck by a physician “ calmed his soul, but did
not touch it down where the blackness had reached ” (298). However, in these early
stories, generally, Roth ’ s trenchant, uncompromising – and often hilarious – social
satire set the aesthetic bar much higher for his American contemporaries, writing
amid the “ triumphant, suffocating American philistinism ” (as Roth characterized the
age) of the 1950s ( “ Preface ” ix).
While the strength of Saul Bellow ’ s and Philip Roth ’ s novels tends to overshadow
their stories, the opposite is true of Malamud and Paley, who perform at the height
of their artistic powers within the generic confi nes of the short story. Malamud, whose
short fi ction often evokes the gritty Depression - era urban scene, never sought to deny
the moral dimension of his fi ction.
“
Literature,
”
he argued,
“
since it values man
by describing him, tends toward morality. … Art celebrates life and gives us our
measure ” ( “ Preface ” xiii). In several of Malamud ’ s fi nest stories an often disaffected
protagonist triumphs through recognizing and empathizing with the suffering of
others. In “ The Magic Barrel, ” Leo Finkle, a young rabbinical student, broadens his
humanity through measures of empathy. He decides to hire a marriage broker (a
shadchan ), because married rabbis stand a better chance of securing a pulpit. But he
recognizes the ruthlessness of his motives once Salzman, the marriage broker, arrives
and shuffl es casually through his portfolio of adrift female souls: “ Salzman eagerly
unstrapped his portfolio and removed a loose rubber band from a thin packet of much -
handled cards. As he fl ipped through them, a gesture and sound that physically hurt
Leo, the student pretended not to see and gazed steadfastly out the window ” ( Complete
Stories 135). In short, Finkle grows as a human being through recognizing the pain
that defi nes the existence of so many. Stories such as “ The Last of the Mohican, ”
“ Rembrandt ’ s Hat, ” “ Take Pity, ” and “ The Mourners ” are cut from the same cloth of
redemptive suffering.
The Holocaust looms throughout Malamud ’ s oeuvre. Malamud (and Bellow and
Roth, for that matter) tend to address the Holocaust allusively. “ The Loan ” represents
one of the most powerful American Holocaust stories to date, written in this allusive
456
Andrew Furman
vein. The action takes place in a postwar American bakery as Kobotsky enters the
shop of his old friend, Lieb, to secure a loan. Malamud emphasizes that, although his
characters escaped the Holocaust, the atrocity forged the trajectory of their immigrant
lives. Refugees from Hitler ’ s Europe, their lives are forever divided into two discrete
periods – before and after. The atrocity haunts their psyches as they continue to mourn
their signifi cant dead. Malamud eerily evokes the presence of the Holocaust in their
lives as Lieb ’ s wife rushes to the bakery oven toward the end of the story to be greeted
by a “ cloud of smoke ” billowing out at her, “ [t]he loaves in the trays were blackened
bricks – charred corpses ” (99). Other particularly notable stories by Malamud to
address the psychological trauma of the Holocaust include “ The German Refugee ”
and “ The First Seven Years. ”
Malamud ’ s ethical vision extended beyond the Jewish community to include, most
notably, the African American community, eking out its own existence along the
same gritty New York streets. Malamud addresses the relationship between blacks
and Jews, specifi cally, in “ Angel Levine ” and “ Black Is My Favorite Color. ” In the
fi rst story, an elderly Jew with an ailing wife grows to accept that a black man who
surprises him one day in his kitchen is both an angel from God and a Jew named
Alexander Levine. “ A wonderful thing, Fanny, ” he exclaims at the end of this fantasti-
cal story, “ there are Jews everywhere ” (166). In contrast to the heady optimism of this
early story, “ Black Is My Favorite Color, ” stripped of any fantastical elements, focuses
upon the interracial strife between blacks and Jews in the 1960s. In the story, a middle -
aged Jewish liquor store owner, Nathan Lime, refl ects upon the hostility between the
races that has persistently thwarted his efforts to bridge the racial divide. “ What I ’ m
saying is, personally for me there ’ s only one human color and that ’ s the color of blood ”
(332). Still, Lime ’ s “ language of the heart ” might never hold sway over the mutual
distrust between urban blacks and Jews, as Malamud suggests through the doomed
love affair between Lime and an African American woman (332). The stylistic contrast
between the magical “ Angel Levine ” and the realist “ Black Is My Favorite Color ”
illustrates Malamud ’ s aesthetic range as a fi ction writer. Stories in the former vein
(which also include “ Jewbird, ” “ Talking Horse, ” and several others) might best rep-
resent Malamud ’ s aesthetic contribution to the short story genre, as elements of the
surreal muscle their way into the otherwise prosaic realm of his characters.
While the protagonists of Bellow, Roth, and Malamud tend to be hard - driven male
Jews, Grace Paley ’ s carefully wrought stories often focus upon the particular burdens
of Jewish (and non
-
Jewish) women. In
“
The Loudest Voice,
”
the young Shirley
Abramowitz must rebel against patriarchal forces from both within and without her
Jewish community, which would silence her booming voice. While her public school,
ultimately, decides to make use of her gift for the school play, the play turns out to
be a celebration of Christmas. The Christian play, to Abramowitz ’ s mother, is emblem-
atic of the “ creeping pogrom ” which greets Jews in America (36). The play, to be
sure, illustrates the leveling effect of Christianity upon so many Jewish children reared
in the earlier part of the twentieth century. Paley, however, suggests that Abramowitz
will be able to resist the pervasive force of Christianity through the force of her
The Jewish American Story
457
character. At the end of the story, she even says a prayer for
“
all the lonesome
Chri
stians ” (40).
In “ An Interest in Life, ” Paley poignantly evokes the dwindling options afforded
to her female protagonist, Virginia, once she assumes the roles of wife and mother.
Her husband cruelly abandons her and their four children, leaving them to fend for
themselves. What is striking about the story is the self - possession of Virginia, the
narrator, as she coolly appraises her current circumstances. “ A woman counts her
children and acts snotty, like she invented life, ” she observes, “ but men must do well
in the world ” (60). Here, Virginia sees beyond the immediate circumstances of her
crisis to glimpse the larger, endemic cultural forces that account for her fi erce com-
mitment to her children and her husband ’ s more selfi sh concerns. Virtually imprisoned
in her tenement, she must embrace life on the mean terms offered to her. She takes
a lover, yet, perhaps to numb her pain, entertains the fantasy of her husband ’ s return.
Paley ’ s commitment to social justice, in life and in her art, extends beyond women
to include all disenfranchised peoples. In “ Zagrowsky Tells, ” for example, Paley offers
an honest and incisive examination of the anti - black racism that pervades Jewish
circles as her aging protagonist, Zagrowsky, examines the events leading up to the
birth of his black grandchild, Emanuel. Zagrowsky ’ s prejudice emerges forcefully as
he seeks to justify his past discrimination against people of color, who sought to
patronize his pharmacy: “ Also, they sent in black people, brown people, all colors,
and to tell the truth I didn ’ t like the idea my pharmacy should get the reputation of
being a cut - rate place for them. They move into a neighborhood … I did what every-
one did. Not to insult people too much, but to discourage them a little, they shouldn ’ t
feel so welcome ” (353). Against the backdrop of Zagrowsky ’ s racism, Paley includes
arresting scenes of tenderness between her protagonist and his biracial grandson.
Zagrowsky ’ s refl ections, in fact, take place as he walks Emanuel to the park. At one
point, he loses his patience with a nosy neighbor and immediately regrets his outburst:
“ I tried to be quiet for the boy. You want some ice cream, Emanuel? … The man ’ s
over there. Don ’ t forget to ask for the change. I bend down to give him a kiss. I don ’ t