MILLICENT l3ELL
53
of your father who loves you," the old man says-making Albert sudden–
ly retort, in a burst of unforeseeable truth-telling, " He hates me the son of
a bitch, I hope he croaks ."
This roi!fcssioll
is the miracle, whether the death
of Albert's father is inevitable or caused by Albert's cu rse.
Malamud died in 10H(1, but Saul 13ellow, Philip Roth, and Norman
Mailer, the three other horsemen of the Jewish-Aillerican literary apoca–
lypse that galloped into view in the 1950s and 60s, are still clattering down
the highway. This past season saw new books by all three-a l11ajor novel
by Roth , a wise novell;) by Lkllow, and a characteristic illustration of his
rash self-confidence by Mailer, to be discussed below. In addition, there is
a new book of fiction fi-om Cynthia Ozick, her first in a decade. She has
always been aware of the dominating presen ce of her male rivals. When she
heard Malamud read "The Silver Crown" at the 02nd Street Y in New
York, the effect, Ozick says, was "so electrifying that I wished with all my
heart it was mine"-an event she reprodu ces in a story ca lled "Usurpation
(Other People's Stories) ." l3ut Ozick's exploitation of Jewish humor and
mysticism is not identical with Malal11ud's-she is more cOl11plexly and
self-consciously intellectual , for one thing. Except for 13ellow- the most
intellectual of them all-she is 1110re constantly embroiled in the play and
contest of ideas than her lllale counterparts, and it is not surprising that she
has become famous as an essayist with a quirky , swaggery, brightly read–
able way of dealing with difficult questions. 13ut her fiction expresses her
thought on a deeper level.
Where she differs most fi-om Mailer, Roth, Malamud, and even Bellow
has been in her view of Jewish identity. She does not believe that "all men
are Jews." She dedicated her novel
The !l1cssiah
4
Sto(khollll
to Roth
because he had drawn her attention to the novel's historical subject, the
Polish-Jewi sh writer l3runo Schulz, and perhaps because her plot was sug–
gested by Roth 's "Prague Orgy." Yet her use of their shared heritage-her
unique literary tone- is different from his. To Roth's disclaimer-not
unlike Malamud's-" I am not aJewish writer; I am a writer who is a Jew,"
she responded ill 1070, "Roth's words do not represent a credo; they speak
for a doom." More than these fell ow writers, Ozick herself has wanted to
hang fast to an unassimilated Jewish identity , to use the structures of tra–
ditional Hebrew exegesis in viewing the world. There is a resemblance
between her early story, " l3loodshed," and
I ~oth's
"Eli, the Fanatic," in
which an orthodox believer is contrasted with a modern , assimi lated
American Jew, but
I ~oth
is more interested in the co nflicted Jewish–
American, Ozick in the strength of her orthodox refugee from the Nazi
camps. Yet she is not all -of-a-piece_ The problem of achieving Jewish self–
definition obsesses her, and it sometimes seems that she despairs of a
solution. Who can forget Isaac Kornfeld in "The Pagan Rabbi," the pious
