The Assistant

The Assistant
By Bernard Malamud
Featured on Time Magazine's Top 100
        Like most people my age, my first experience with Bernard Malamud was the 1984 film version of The Natural. I honestly don't know how many times I have seen this movie, but I would not be surprised if it is a three figure number. For those who have not seen it (for shame), the movie is about a young man, named Roy Hobbs, who has an incredible talent for playing baseball. Hobbs makes a moral transgression, and, the universe being what it is, punishes him. The form of punishment is banishment from baseball for over a decade, and when he returns, older, wiser, and finally ready to prove himself, Hobbs becomes the leader of a fictional major league team. The movie, which stars Robert Redford as Hobbs, is a sort of American take on the King Arthur legend. It has a fairy tale ending (well, as much of a fairy tale ending as can be expected from a baseball movie) which always makes me happy even as I see it as more than just a little contrived.
         Quick aside (to what would seem a very long aside, since really I haven't gotten around to even mentioning the book I'm supposed to be writing about): I have no real idea how large a figure Roy Hobbs is in popular culture, or as part of a larger American myth. However, I clearly recall Charlie Brown on the pitcher's mound in an old Peanuts strip comparing himself to Roy Hobbs (This was before a ball has hit back at him with such dizzying force that it completely disrobed him. Is that something that happens? The physics of Charles Schultz are dubious at best.), which is odd, since I tend to think of the world of Peanuts being rather self-contained(except for the characters pressing need for the world to be insured by Met Life).
         Years ago, on a road trip to some vacation or other, my parents got The Natural as a book on tape. My attention drifted in and out while they listened, but I dimly recalled the ending of the novel being quite different. Last year I read it, and, yes, reading the book is a completely different experience. While in the film, Hobbs sometimes came off as a little slow on the uptake, in the novel, he is a buffoon. Gone are the moments of quiet dignity that Redford brings to the role. In their place, Hobbs is an anxious, self-absorbed everyman who happens to be a very good baseball player. His motivations come from a deep hole in his soul that he needs to fill, and throughout the novel he consumes food with a gusto that often reads as disturbing. But the most shocking moment of the novel is the ending. Barry Levinson, the film's director, turned a novel with a deeply ironic ending into a fairy tale, and reading the closing lines, after seeing this movie what must have been 100 times, was almost like finding out there is no Santa Clause.
           I mention that most people know Malamud through the film version of The Natural, by the way, as a roundabout way of saying that no one really reads Malamud very much anymore. That I know of. There may be Malamud societies out there, big pockets of people who write their observations of The Assistant and The Fixer in the margins of their well-thumbed copies. But I doubt it. Malamud was an important writer, though. He was part of a post-war movement of second and third generation immigrants that became major voices in American fiction. The fact that The Natural was his first novel is significant, since he distills his ideas of America by writing about the national pastime. He was also a major influence on Philip Roth, whose observations of second and third generation immigrants to the United States have been celebrated over his decades-long career. (The character of E.I. Lonoff in Roth's 1979 novel The Ghost Writer was supposedly based on Malamud.)
            So now I guess I should discuss The Assistant. The problem is, I don't have much to say about it. The novel is about a store owner named Morris Bober, a Jewish immigrant who fled Eastern Europe for the promise of America. Bober runs a grocery store that is loosing money in a neighborhood that is falling apart. One day Bober is held up by two robbers, and is gravely injured. Bober opens the store back up, and soon discovers a homeless man living in his basement. The man is Frank Alpine, an Italian American, and Bober hires him to help around the store. Alpine is an odd character. He comes from the west coast, talks about St. Francis, is uncomfortable around Jewish people, steals food and cash from the store, longs for Bober's daughter, and (mild spoiler) was one of the men who robbed the store. The relationship that Frank has with Bober and Bober's daughter, Helen, make up the meat of the story. Frank deals with his guilt, Bober dreads the future when his store will have to close, and Helen worries about falling in love with Frank.
             The Assistant's strength is the sense of hopelessness that runs through the story. Frank is faced with moral dilemma after moral dilemma, and he makes choices that seem hopelessly wrongheaded and do nothing but add to his guilt. Helen, unable to experience life the way she wants to, reads novels about tragedy and redemption in order to feel more alive. But, of course, these tragedies only foreshadow her own doom. It is interesting to think of this novel in comparison to The Natural. Both Hobbs and Alpine are essentially idiots who have no foresight, no plan, and who have deep longings that are always just out of reach. They both exist in worlds where it is difficult to see anything or anyone growing. The Assistant especially is set in a dreary version of New York, where the characters all just seem to mark time, as opposed to pursuing any sort of achievement.
            I hope I have more to say about the other Malamud novel on my list, since I have pretty much blown through all my Malamudian miscellany in this post. But seriously, check out the film version of The Natural. It's pretty great.

Coming Soon: Oh, yeah, I'm writing about Pulitzer winners...