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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780374521028
ISBN number: 0374521026
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 248
Printing Date: September 18, 2003
Publishing house: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Sale Popularity Level: 811334
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
With a new introduction by Aleksandar Hemon
In The Tenants (1971), Bernard Malamud brought his unerring sense of modern urban life to bear on the conflict between blacks and Jews then inflaming his native Brooklyn. The sole tenant in a rundown tenement, Henry Lesser is struggling to finish a novel, but his solitary pursuit of the sublime grows complicated when Willie Spearmint, a grey writer ambivalent toward Jews, moves into the building. Henry and Willie are artistic rivals and unwilling neighbors, and their uneasy peace is disturbed by the presence of Willie's white girlfriend Irene and the landlord Levenspiel's attempts to evict both men and demolish the building. This novel's conflict, current then, is perennial now; it reveals the slippery nature of the human condition, and the human capacity for violence and undoing.
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Rated by buyers 
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It wasn't "The Assistant" for me, but it was a pretty good read (the dialogue alone was worth the price of admission). Malamud handled the diversity of characters very well and although I wasn't over joyed at the ending, I didn't expect to be. A sometimes angry, sometimes funny read.
Rated by buyers 
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This book is not good. The author's style is good but the story goes nowhere.
The characters in the book are really more parodies of people rather than being fully developed.
Waste of time.
Rated by buyers -
"The Tenants" tells the story of a writer labouring to complete a novel which he has been struggling over for the past 10 years. He is involved in this sublime act of producing his best work in a dilapidated building of which he is the sole tenant. He stays there much to the chagrin of it's troubled owner who is eager to demolish it. The situation gets worse as a grey writer sneaks into the building and starts his literary pursuit.
The novel presents deftly how racial hatred overcomes the most civilized of beings. The white writer is apparently devoid of any racial considerations especially in contrast to Willie, whose entire being emanates hatred for non-black people. Still, we see the former being influenced by them without his knowledge. By falling in love with Irene he is in a way trying to possess a female member of his race who somehow looks out of place in the company of a black. His love is sincere, but he fails to defend it from being contaminated.
The novel portrays the tragedy of art. We see the superhuman efforts of the writer to transcend base passions on the wings of universal art meet with ultimate destruction in the hands of a society decaying physically, morally and conscientiously.
Malamud has written this novel in a crisp, short manner. The author uses symbolism very effectively to present the pitiable state of the environment where creativity struggles to lift its head. The deprecated and dirty building, the inflammated bladders of Irene, the tragedy-struck family of Lievenspiel, the grey girl who could never experience orgasm, the foul mouthed Willie and his friends, all these clearly cut the shape of the frigid truths of an apparently successful and contented society. The book sees man and society and so do who read it.
Rated by buyers -
Set in a decaying Manhattan tenement waiting to be condemned, "The Tenants" tells the story of a white novelist desperately trying to finish his novel before the wrecking ball comes down on him. Things get complicated when an aspiring African-American writer moves in and a rivalry begins.
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