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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780374525866
ISBN number: 0374525862
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 232
Printing Date: July 07, 2003
Publishing house: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Sale Popularity Level: 149980
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Product Description:
Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction Introduction by Jhumpa LahiriBernard Malamud's very first book of short stories, The Magic Barrel, has been recognized as a classic from the time it was published in 1959. The stories are set in New York and in Italy (where Malamud's alter ego, the struggleing New York Jewish Painter Arthur Fidelman, roams amid the ruins of old Europe in search of his artistic patrimony); they tell of egg candlers and shoemakers, matchmakers, and rabbis, in a voice that blends vigorous urban realism, Yiddish idiom, and a dash of artistic magic.The Magic Barrel is a book about New York and about the immigrant experience, and it is high point in the modern American short story. Few books of any kind have managed to depict struggle and frustration and heartbreak with such delight, or such artistry.
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Rated by buyers 
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I selected the complete short stories of Malamud and this book is only a selction of short stories. I was disappointed but we decided to keep it and be more careful in ordering.
Rated by buyers 
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It was such a pleasure to read these stories. Each story grabs you quickly, and makes its narative thrust accessible. His stories don't stray from his simple narratives; there is very little excess or digression.
The stories are very personal and moral without being preachy. He knows how to capture people's moral ambivalence without judging them or resorting to stereotypes.
I found this book to be both an easy read and very moving.
Rated by buyers -
I was looking for a hard to find book in large print. I was shocked to see that they were selling a new edition for about $1.57. I was skeptical but for the price took a chance and was amazed to find that I received exactly what was described in perfect brand new condition. The delivery time was also very, very fast. I'll check out their WEB site in the future for more extraordinary values.
Craig Heard, New York, NY
Rated by buyers -
Malamud does three or four tricks in his fiction well, and here he does each one to utter perfection. And when taken together, this collection of stories almost transcends Malamud's normal limits: the stories are compressed, short, and below the surface, charged with almost unbearable tension. Unlike other collections of stories (or when you read too many Malamud stories) Malamud does not parody himself in the Magic Barrell. Everything is where it is supposed to be, and works like a well oiled machine. It is a shame that (as of writing this) only eight people have reviewed this masterpiece of a short story collection. In Roth's The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman explains that the world's morality has already passed by the E.I. Lonoff's (a character based on Malamud). Seems Roth was correct... and this is true even more today, thirty years after the publication of The Ghost Writer. We no longer live in Malamud's world, and it is a shame.
Rated by buyers -
These stories about New York, even when read fifty years later by someone like me from a totally different demographic, in Los Angeles, are still relevant. There are universal self-loathing themes for all immigrants, at all times. I wouldn't call it immigrant lit, but it's more like human diaspora lit, the transience of people, and how people make sense, however limited, of the world around them. Strongly recommend. Malamud is able to make writing about trash untrashy, but not in a falsely glorifying way, but in a humanizing way. These are real short stories, not failed novellas.
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