PARTISAN REVIEW
599
"Lesser, you trying to fuck up my mind and confuse me. I read
all about that formalism jazz in the library and it's bullshit. You
trying to kill off my natural writin by pretendin you are interested
in the fuckn form of it though the truth of it is you afraid of
what I am goin to write in my book, which is that the blacks have
to murder you white MF's for cripplin our lives."
It's as stark as, say, a debate between Irving Kristol and a ragged
member of a South Bronx street gang. And Malamud goes further.
While threatening Lesser's, Spearmint sa\'es the novel's life, and , more
to the point, the
quality
of Lesser's language - spoken or written - and
the quality of Lesser's day-to-day life. Through Spearmint Lesser "learns"
that black women may have the same trouble coming our mythology
associates only with stiffassed Wasps and Jewish girls made rigid fri gid
- so the story goes - by their Wasp-aspiring mothers ; equally reassur–
ing is his discovery, again through Spearmint, that he can , like a good
American free-enterpriser,
compete
with the black buck stud who
mythology says has and does it a ll.
But Malamud's Lesser-Spearmint clash shouldn't be confused with
Mailer's fantasy-at-play bug-out on the black-white confrontation in
An American Dream.
The essence of Spearmint's anger is that what is
lost today must be revenged tomorrow, that the buildup of hate is not
going to be dispersed
this
time by a bit of bluster, a weave, a crouch,
a gurgle, a softshoe routine.
In
the midst of the Harry and Willie
dialogue is a relentless movement toward the inevitable end. It starts
with Willie refusing to buy not only formalism but art itself: "Art my
ass," Willie says, " in this world it's heart that counts." Stalking
Lesser further he rejects the seeming resolution of Malamud's
The
Assistant,
a ritual circumcision just literary enough to cover up the
complexities of a Jew-Goy impasse: "Lesser," says Willie, "I know what
you talkin about, don' t think I don' t. I know you trying to steal my
manhood. I don ' t go for that circumcise shmuck stufL" This civiliza–
tion's end is probably foreseen here: we'll alJ end up dying of one
another's machismo.
The Tenants
is not Malamud's first tuning to the cry in the streets.
He, more than any other American novelist, has had the courage and
imagination to snatch significant myths out of the least likely spaces.
Baseball was Malamud's first existential field ( in
The Natural);
some–
thing as corny as an
Abie's Irish R ose
situation was turned into some–
thing else in
The A ssistant.
Malamud's compassionate eye has seen
significant human experience even in the old jokes of J ewish life - the
shat/chan
trying to dump the less-than-pretty girl ("The Magic Bar–
re!"' ) ; or the old jokes of academic life (S . Levin in
A New Life
comes
