Designed to provide writers with insights into the way a master thinks about and practices his craft, this collection includes discussions of the novel, the short story, subject matter, work in progress, revision, and the Jewish experience. Malamud also discusses the responsibilities of the writer.
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"I think it hurts a writer," said fiction writer Bernard Malamud, "to have his secrets known--his method of working disclosed while he is still active." Malamud was, according to his colleagues Alan Cheuse and Nicholas Delbanco (the editors of Talking Horse), "resolutely private about the construction of his finished work." Maybe so. But over a lifetime, he wrote an impressive amount of material about his own work, and about fiction in general. Talking Horse collects much of that material--speeches, book introductions, interviews, lesson plans, essays, and more. Included here are notes on The Natural, a defense of fantasy, musings on the great task of embarking on a novel, and a discussion about Jewishness in American fiction. Though most fiction writers see the short story as a warm-up for writing longer fiction, Malamud loved the form. "Within a dozen or few more pages," he said, "whole lives are implied and even understood." He displays here, by turns, endearing humility ("it took years for my work to impress me"), a piercing intellect, disdain for "gossips" who want to know the person behind the fiction, and a strong belief not only that the work must speak for itself, but that there is likely "more to a book or short story than the writer himself knows." A very satisfying collection from a man who liked to claim that "as a writer I learned from Charlie Chaplin." --Jane Steinberg
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Novelists Cheuse (The Light Possessed) and Delbanco (In the Name of Mercy) have assembled an impressive gathering of the late Malamud's essays, interviews, lectures and notes, a good number of which have never before been published. The collection reveals the author of The Natural and many other books as a dedicated craftsman and teacher, firmly connected to a larger Jewish literary tradition and animated by a deep-seated humanism and a sly wit. In addition to admirers of Malamud's fiction, this book should also be of considerable interest to aspiring writers, as Malamud is open and revealing about his own creative process, and consistently engaging in his often politicized and outspoken views on the artist's role in society. The book's biggest weakness lies in the fact that it is clearly a gathering of disparate occasional pieces, with considerable repetition. Malamud often uses the same examples to make the same point, sometimes almost quoting himself word for word. And while his comments on his own work and on the creative process are enduring, some of his comments on the cultural moment already feel dated. While readers may find themselves wishing the author himself had been given the opportunity to form these pieces into a larger whole, the collection is nevertheless filled with Malamud's distinctive and compassionate wisdom.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A master on the art of his writing,
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This review is from: Talking Horse (Paperback)
Nicholas Delbanco and Alan Cheuse two younger colleagues of Bernard Malamud collected speeches, occasional writings, whatever they could find in which Malamud spoke about his writing, and to a lesser degree, his life. Malamud was a dedicated craftsman, a modest and devoted artist, whose love for the short story is strongly emphasized in this collection. Cynthia Ozick writes of it, "In these pages the Malamudian intellect is so clear, the humanistic sweetness so dear, the literary credo so pure, that it is almost as if the writer's living presence-in all its urgent truthfulness - were magically restores to us."
I think a review of this kind is best served by giving a taste of the words of its subject. So here are remarks from Malamud in 1959 in a speech 'The Writer in the Modern world' which he gave upon receiving the National Book Award. " At the same time the writer must imagine a better world for men the while he shows us, in all its ugliness and beauty, the possibilities of this. In recreating thehumanity of man, in reality his greatness, he will, among other things, hold up themirror to the mystery of him, in which poetry and possibility live, though he has endlessly betrayed them. In a sense, the writer in his art, without directly stating it ( though hemay preach, his work must not)must remind man that he has, in his human striving invented nothing less than freedom: and if he will devoutly remember this, he will understand the best way to preserve it and his own highest value."
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