ROBERT GIROUX
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service held for him at the 92nd Street Y, Cynthia Ozick remembered his
reading of his story "The Silver Crown," which was "so electrifying that
I wished with all my heart it was mine."
Both Gilman and Ozick rightly praised his highly individual stylistic
gifts. Ozick mentioned the "heat of a Malamudian sentence." Gilman cited
"the pleasures of the text, the little fates of language," giving these exam–
ples: "He drew on his cold embittered clothing" ("Idiots First"); "Life,
despite their frantic yoohooings, had passed them by" ("The Magic
Barrel"); "He pitied her, her daughter, the world. Who not?" ("The Girl
of My Dreams"); "His heart, like a fragile pitcher, toppled from the shelf
and bump bumped down the stairs, cracking at the bottom" ("The Death
of Me"); "The window was open so the skinny bird flew in. Flappity-flap
with its frazzled black wings. That's how it goes. It's open, you're in.
Closed, you're out, and that's your fate" ("The Jewbird"); "Exaltation hav–
ing gone where exaltation goes" ("The Last Mohican").
Ozick asked: "Is he an American Master? Of course. He not only
wrote in the American language, he augmented it with fresh plasticity, he
shaped our English into startling new configurations ... He wrote about
suffering Jews, about poor Jews, about grocers and fixers and birds and
horses and angels in Harlem and matchmakers and salesmen and rabbis and
landlords and tenants and egg candlers and writers and chimpanzees; he
wrote about the plentitude and unity of the world."
At the memorial service Daniel Stern stated that Malamud "came as
close to making a religion of art as is possible; a religion of suffering and
comedy, taking the Jew as his starting point for what was most human in
humankind. 'All men are Jews'-perhaps his most famous and most mys–
terious line."
In 1985, when he put together
The Stories
if
Bernard Malamud,
the last
book published during his lifetime, I was honored that he dedicated it to
me. His preface says, "Art celebrates life and gives us our measure." His art
has given us his measure and it is great.
