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MARTIN GREENBERG
their fantastic tongues, but what do they want to do: see Joan Craw–
ford at the Miramar. Realists! When all the illusions are exploded, Mr.
Balkan the father brings the novel to an end with these musings:
... in the gentle haze of muddy reflection he stood for some time near
the couch, in his great patched checkered suit with the enormous shoes,
in his tremendous collar, the paint and the signs.... for a moment he
was taken back again, dreaming of Melbourne and King Lear. Alone,
unseen, Mr. Balkan raised his chest, stood ... tall and strong ...
Pompously he strutted around in the empty room, in rich pantomime,
thinking of his greatest successes, of Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth and
Tamburlaine. Mr. Balkan grandly lifted his arm ready to declaim, but
with the corners of his eyes he spotted his wife. She had been standing
at the doorway of the kitchen, her hands on her hips, restraining the
guffaws until she was purple in the face.
"Mr. Fumfotch!" she finally burst out and roared joyously.
"Sh, sh," the old man said and picked up the boards.
Then he knew what it was that had been troubling him vaguely
before. In his wife's earthy guffaws he recognized the clamorous demands
of the world, its insistent calls for resignation and surrender, and he
knew now that Max would never be the same again. Much had gone
out of Max, aspiration, hope, life. His son would grow old and aging,
die, but actually Max was dead already for now he would live for bread
alone. That was the rule and few men were strong enough to disobey
it.... And regretting the way of the world, Mr. Balkan realized that he
had witnessed the exact point at which his son had changed from youth
to resigned age. Walking out of the house and shifting the shoulder
straps to get the signs comfortably settled, it seemed to the old man
that this death of youth was among the greatest tragedies in experience
and that all the tears in America were not enough to bewail it.
But all the same the evening sun that day went down on time.
This is the wisdom of Koheleth, which says you might as well lie
down because you are already dead.
Low Company
shifts the scene to the more open terrain of Neptune
(Brighton) Beach; it shows no flagging in inventiveness or any tend–
ency on the writer's part to repeat himself. The novel is full of brilliant
portraits: the pathetic brothel operator Shubunka, who doesn't quite
come off but who still achieves a remarkably original quality; the fren–
zied horseplayer Moe Karty, who makes one writhe with uneasiness; the
dreadful owner of the icecream parlor, Mr. Spitzbergen, in whom all
commercial sordidness is summed up; Mrs. Spitzbergen, who though
she only makes a short appearance in the novel is an almost supernal
vision of assuaging female tenderness; the soda jerker Shorty; and the
relief man, a very minor character but a creation of genius-he shouldn't
be overlooked.
Low Company
has a much stronger action than the other
novels, and brilliant effects; but I do not think it speaks as profoundly
