The Short Stories of Bernard Malamud: In Search of Jewish Post-Imigrant Identity(Twentieth Century American Jewish Writer Series) »

The Short Stories of Bernard Malamud is a study of how Malamud's anthology attempts to re-capture the poetic subject's identity, behind whose mask the author lies. Dr. Sio-Castineira's study demonstrates how Malamud seeks to capture an instance of identity by means of denouncing the isolation caused both by extreme Jewish orthodoxy and brutal assimilation, and proclaiming his faith in the potential contained in the individual mind as the only way to recuperate a sense of self.

Booknews

Examining ten stories from Malamud's Selected Stories, the author examines Malamud in the context of the American and European, and not exclusively Jewish, tradition. She explores why Malamud chose the stories that he included in this work and how they relate to his social conscience. She argues that the stories demonstrate that the modern individual has broken the ancestral linearity of life, and that neither family, religion, nor community hold together today because of a lack of an appropriate set of values. She also explores Selected Stories as a literary work of art, showing how alienation and fragmentation have been recreated in the anthology by means of literary devices, using structural oppositions to examine such issues as security, mystery, and doubt. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.