Howard Norman, The Museum Guard

Howard Norman's The Museum Guard is a quiet novel narrated by its quietest character. DeFoe Russet is one of two museum guards at a small art museum in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The other guard is his uncle, who is his opposite in most ways. Where DeFoe is taciturn, Edward is overly talkative. Where DeFoe is neat and buttoned down, Edward is slovenly and disheveled. And most problematically for him, where DeFoe is fawning and subservient toward his girlfriend (who is borderline emotionally abusive to him), Edward is a carefree ladies' man.

The plot, centered around a Dutch painting by the fictional Joop Heijman titled Jewess on a Street in Amsterdam, unfolds against the backdrop of Hilter's first moves toward expansion. The subject of the painting bears a certain resemblance to DeFoe's girlfriend Imogene who, as she becomes aware of this, begins to loose herself into a strange fantasy life as Heijman's wife, adopting the costume worn by the figure in the painting (who does turn out to be Heijman's wife, killed by the Nazis in some of their first advances) and affecting a transparently false Dutch accent.

The sparse writing of The Museum Guard, which bears few stylistic flourishes, conveys the sense of isolation experienced by DeFoe (orphaned as a young boy by a freak accident), the cold Canadian winter, and the emotional chill cast by the posturing of Hitler and the murmurs of fear passed through the Jewish community from Europe to North America. It is worth noting that none of the central characters here are Jews, but they are increasingly pulled toward the conflict as a Gentile in Canada comes to believe herself to be the Jewess on a Street in Amsterdam.

Bernard Malamud, The Assistant

Toward the end of the slim, mournful novel The Assistant, Helen Bober concludes:

"Only growing in value as a person could she make [her father's] life meaningful, in the sense that she was of him. She must, she thought, in some way eventually earn her degree. It would take years--but was the only way."

This claustrophobic novel won a Pulitzer Prize for Bernard Malamud, probably now best known now for his first, The Natural, and for its movie adaptation. Unlike The Natural, The Assistant might well have been a stage play, with its confined set and small cast of characters. Here, there are no glamorous professions -- a poor Jewish grocer rather than a ballplayer -- and no envious settings -- the Brooklyn store is at several points in the text referred to as a prison and a tomb. The reader feels with every sparse turn of phrase in this economical text the increasing sense of entrapment and futility. Morris Bober is a good, decent man, an honest man (yes, of course, in a dishonest world), but his honesty evokes as much pity as admiration. He is cheated by business partners, by customers and employees alike. His wife frets endlessly, and his daughter cannot afford a college education. What good, then, is his honesty?

If there is an answer provided in a novel neither cynical nor sentimental, it is in the effect it has on Frank Alpine, the "Italianyer" as the Yiddish speaking Jews of the neighborhood call him. Much of the novel conveys his inner struggle, more beset by failings than successes, more filled with self-loathing than self-pity, though enough of the latter appears to maintain realism.

There are no excess turns of phrase, here, no lyrical flourishes. It came as no surprise to find in a bit of research that Malamud was close with Philip Roth (praised here for his deceptively simple prose). But for its simplicity of style, it carries great weight. We feel the oppression of the lives of the Bobers. And those of us fortunate enough to live better lives should read this account not of desperate poverty and misery, but merely of the crushing power of the ordinary cares of the working poor. And for my students, if you are fortunate enough to be able without great toil to afford your tuition, read this book with an eye toward Helen. Much of her life occurs off the page, between scenes, but we sense the manner in which it pulls her toward her parents grave, a bit more each day.

Philip Roth, The Human Stain

Philip Roth is on any serious shortlist for the greatest living American novelist. I have read a few of his books, and each has been profoundly powerful. American Pastoral, The Plot Against America, even to a lesser degree the short Indignation. And now The Human Stain. In each case, I have begun thinking that I am reading a more or less ordinary novel, plainly written. This feeling of slight disappointment in this "great novelist" persists for about half or even two-thirds of the novel.

And then, everything changes. It is as if the wool is pulled from before my eyes. I gasp aloud at sudden revelations that, in retrospect, change the valence of everything that has come before. This experience in The Human Stain caught me, yet again, completely off guard. I thought that I had already grasped the twists and shifts, but again, Roth had me in the palm of his hand.

The story here focuses on a college professor (so I am, of course, sympathetic from the outset). He is put under intense investigation, culminating in his storming out shortly before his retirement, for a supposedly racist remark. The accusation is, we realize, absurd, trumped up, the result of simmering resentments throughout campus. Coleman Silk has been (like many Roth characters), an outspoken and successful Jew who is resented by society. Here, though, race becomes more broadly considered, triangulating between Silk, his white Christian colleagues, and the African-American students who are the supposed target of his remark.

If you think you have a handle on such issues, pick this book up and reconsider. If you don't, pick this book up and consider. This is an excellent choice for college students, in particular, as the setting and concerns should hit home perhaps more than some of Roth's other books. More students are likely to identify with college professors and students than, say, with the glove factory owner in American Pastoral. Roth is the only novelist whose work has caused me to rethink my understandings of my country, my ethnicity, and my personal identity. And he has done so more than once. If this is the book that serves for a reader as an entry point into Roth's work, all the better.