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.