T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

who is lnvarlably at the wrong end of the bungling. The Waynalamud handles thls doubly 111-starred flgure illuminates hiswhole artlstlc relationship to his Jewishness. Malamud treatshlm - most memorably in the Fldelman storles - with a veryspecial quality of amused sympathy modified by satiricawareness. Malamud's protagonlsts are 'schlemiels' who talk tothenseLves and repeatedly engage in self-confrontation. LikeFldelman, they are shrewdly but futile aware of thelr own'7l~nltatlons - "self confessed farlures" caught In thelr owntIaps and rankling over thelr predicament. "To be a schlemlel-for Malamud 1s almost lnterchangeable with the ldea of being aJew-rrelns ts assume a moral stance ln his frctlonal world".(Alter 1970. 5)Ceymoux Levln, the protagonist of & New Life, is aBtypical Malamudlan 'schemlel' who comblnes ln himself thetralts of a 'schl~mazel'. Avictlm of hls own wrong choices,Levln considers hls llfe "a sad hash of beglnnlngsv. He sees"In the strewn garbage of hls lrfe, errors, mlshaps. Ignorance,experience from whrch he learned nothing". (NL 228). &1s at once an academlc satrre and a "blldungsroman", deplctlngLevln's quest for new llfe. Malamud has removed the "schlemiel"hero from a qhettolzed New York of The Assistant across thecuntlnent to rascadia college, a thlniy disguised verslon ofOregon State Colleqe, where Malamud taught for almost a decade