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| | The magic barrel |  | Author: Bernard Malamud
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
Buy Used: $1.75
Used (5) from $1.75
Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Pages: 214
ASIN: B0006F2EVM
Publication Date: 1958
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Many of the characters in these short stories are Jewish, but through the author's gentle exploration of their predicaments, he illuminates a region that is common to everyone.
Book Description
Introduction by Jhumpa LahiriBernard Malamud's first book of short stories has been recognized as a classic from the time it was published in 1959. The stories are set in New York and in Italy (where Malamud's alter ego, the struggling New York Jewish painter Arthur Fidelman, roams amid the ruins of old Europe in search of his artistic patrimony); they tell of egg candlers and shoemakers, matchmakers and rabbis, in a voice that blends vigorous urban realism, Yiddish idiom, and a dash of Chagallesque artistic magic.The Magic Barrel is a great book about New York and about the immigrant experience, and it is a high point in the modern American short story. Few books of any kind have managed to depict struggle and frustration and heartbreak with such delight, or such artistry.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 Wrong title, right author October 2, 2008
I selected the complete short stories of Malamud and this book is only a selction of short stories. I was disappointed but we decided to keep it and be more careful in ordering.
 Simple, powerful stories December 14, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It was such a pleasure to read these stories. Each story grabs you quickly, and makes its narative thrust accessible. His stories don't stray from his simple narratives; there is very little excess or digression.
The stories are very personal and moral without being preachy. He knows how to capture people's moral ambivalence without judging them or resorting to stereotypes.
I found this book to be both an easy read and very moving.
Book Exactly as Described-Fast Delivery December 2, 2006
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was looking for a hard to find book in large print. I was shocked to see that they were selling a new edition for about $1.57. I was skeptical but for the price took a chance and was amazed to find that I received exactly what was described in perfect brand new condition. The delivery time was also very, very fast. I'll check out their WEB site in the future for more extraordinary values.
Craig Heard, New York, NY
Magic Malamud December 1, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Malamud does three or four tricks in his fiction well, and here he does each one to utter perfection. And when taken together, this collection of stories almost transcends Malamud's normal limits: the stories are compressed, short, and below the surface, charged with almost unbearable tension. Unlike other collections of stories (or when you read too many Malamud stories) Malamud does not parody himself in the Magic Barrell. Everything is where it is supposed to be, and works like a well oiled machine. It is a shame that (as of writing this) only eight people have reviewed this masterpiece of a short story collection. In Roth's The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman explains that the world's morality has already passed by the E.I. Lonoff's (a character based on Malamud). Seems Roth was correct... and this is true even more today, thirty years after the publication of The Ghost Writer. We no longer live in Malamud's world, and it is a shame.
50 years later, still relevant March 18, 2006
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
These stories about New York, even when read fifty years later by someone like me from a totally different demographic, in Los Angeles, are still relevant. There are universal self-loathing themes for all immigrants, at all times. I wouldn't call it immigrant lit, but it's more like human diaspora lit, the transience of people, and how people make sense, however limited, of the world around them. Strongly recommend. Malamud is able to make writing about trash untrashy, but not in a falsely glorifying way, but in a humanizing way. These are real short stories, not failed novellas.
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