IB6
STEVEN MARCUS
to reproduce the reality 'out of which the fantastic takes shape, al–
though it is almost always able brilliantly to do the reverse-that is,
to render the fantasy in which the reality takes shape. No novel by
Malamud could be without its serious interest, but the parts of
A
New Life
that are most impressive, most "real," are the more private,
claustral, and interior relations.
Malamud's first two novels were short and compact, and it is no
coincidence that some of his best writing has been done in the medium
of the short story. His justly celebrated "The Magic Barrel" is a kind
of lyric poem in prose-by which I do not mean that it is any less
a work of fiction, any less a story.
If
we compare Malamud's stories
to Joyce's, the distinction I wish to make is at once clear. The stories
of
Dubliners
are often spoken of as being constructed on formally
poetic principles, and Joyce's notion of the epiphany is properly
enlisted in support of this interpretation. Yet the prose of
Dubliners
omehow resists that idea.
In
its harshness, its flatness, its general,
deliberate tonelessness, it imposes itself on the reader with impersonal
masculine force, calling attention to itself as prose and nothing more,
and identifying itself with the naturalistic tradition. Joyce himself
called it "a style of scrupulous meanness." Moreover, the great poetic
leaps and illuminations in certain of these stories are to a considerable
degree validated by the aggressive, unpoetical insistence of their
prose. Similar observations might be made about the writing of
Kafka.
In
Malamud's stories on the other hand, the prose, though
spare, is spare in a lyrical way, gracefully compact of metaphor, and
of a piece with the poetic intention of their author's idea.
Another instance of this development in America can be found
in the writing of Flannery O'Connor.
In
theme, style, and structure,
Miss O'Connor's fantastic accounts of primitive religion and violence
in the South seem to belong to this tendency in fiction.
Let me state at this point that these observations make no
pretense to inclusiveness; any number of important writers cannot
be accounted for or understood by the general argument they advance.
Saul Bellow, for example, a writer whose gift is as considerable as
his range, is among the few novelists today who are masters of
several imaginative styles. Yet Bellow's finest piece of writing, the
work in which his remarkable talents are most fully realized, is one
which most resembles the kind of fiction I have been discussing. His
