If James were a Jew : James v Malamud

If James were a Jew, imagine how he might have written Bernard Malamud's tragicomic story The Lady in the Lake (in "The Magic Barrel") - first of all it would have been 100 pages instead of 20, and it would have painfully and subtly analyzed the yearnings of the protagonist, Levin, changing his name to Freeman as he heads off to Europe to find himself, as they used to say - yes, Malamud is heavy-handed with the symbolism. Freeman would have pondered forever and never come close to making making a play for the mysterious lady in white whom he spies on the Del Dondo estate on an island in the Italian lakes. The story would be nuanced and strange and difficult and frustrating, which is to say Jamesian - not comic and rambunctious and gently mocking of the protagonist and his pretensions, which is to say Jewish-American. James sets a really high standard and - not to bang on Malamud particularly, he was a young writer charting some new territory - but Malamud doesn't measure up. Is there any reader alive today who wouldn't pick up on where this story is headed, as soon as Lady Del Dondo asks Freeman if he's Jewish? Were these tricky endings really such a novelty back when the story was published in the '50s? I doubt an editor anywhere would go for this today - which is really just good evidence that fiction grows and evolves, what seemed groundbreaking in Malamud's fiction back then now seems well-trodden ground. Similarly Malamud's story Take Pity - though the ending is a little more surprising - a census taker asks a man to tell the story of his life and we don't really see why this is so till the end - the story relies way too heavily on the comic shtick of yiddishims - lots of funny lines, but it all feels so quaint and arcane today.