''The Tenants'' is the sixth novel of
Bernard Malamud
Bernard Malamud (April 26, 1914 – March 18, 1986) was an American novelist and short story writer. Along with Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, and Philip Roth, he was one of the best known American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseba ...
, published in
1971 *
The year 1971 had three partial solar eclipses ( February 25, July 22 and August 20) and two total lunar eclipses (February 10, and August 6).
The world population increased by 2.1% this year, the highest increase in history.
Events
Ja ...
.
Background
Malamud began the initial composition of the novel in 1969 and completed it in 1971. Its plot concerns a rivalry between two writers—one of them a Jew and the other an African-American— who are the last two persons remaining in a soon to be condemned apartment building. Before Malamud began writing this novel, he'd already "published two short stories treating relationships between blacks and Jews": "Angel Levine" (1955) and "Black Is My Favorite Color" (1963).
And in at least one other story, "
The Mourners Bernard Malamud’s short story "The Mourners” first appeared in ''Discovery'' in January 1955. The story was included in Malamud's first collection of short stories, ''The Magic Barrel'', published in 1958.
Plot summary
Kessler used to be an egg ...
" (1955), he had examined the fraught relationship between a tenant and a landlord. After he'd completed the novel, Malamud himself described ''The Tenants'' as a "tight, tense book, closer to the quality of short fiction."
[Davis, Philip. "Bernard Malamud: A Writer's Life." Oxford University Press,, 2007. . p 272]
When Malamud was asked, during an interview, what "set off" the writing of his novel, he replied: "Jews and blacks, the period of the troubles in New York City; the teachers strike, the rise of black activism, the mix-up of cause and effect. I thought I'd say a word."
Malamud's biographer explains the genesis of the novel this way:
Book summary
A quick synopsis of the book's story was provided in the book jacket:
As the story unfolds, all the building's residents have moved out with the exception of Lesser, who believes he's the sole remaining occupant and plans on staying until he completes his third novel. Lesser believes that it is crucial for him to remain in familiar surroundings so as not to break his writing routine. Then he hears the sound of a typewriter and soon discovers that it belongs to Willie Spearmint (who eventually adopts ''Bill Spear'' as a
pen name
A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name.
A pen na ...
) who has taken over one of the abandoned apartments as his writing space.
The time of the novel seems to be set in the final years of the 1960s, "a time of racial strife affecting both the book's Jewish and black characters." The novel's point of view is through Harry Lesser and "is rendered in third-person-limited narration."
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See also
* '' The Tenants'', a 2005 film adaptation of the book
Further reading
* Leslie Fiedler, "Negro and Jew: Encounter in America," in ''No! in Thunder: Essays on Myth and Literature'' (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1963), 241.
*Herbert Mann, "The Malamudian World: Method and Meaning," ''Studies in AmericanJewish Literature 4'' (Spring 1978): p 7
*David R. Mesher, "Names and Stereotypes in Malamud's The Tenants," ''Studies in AmericanJewish Literature 4'' (Spring 1978): p 62
*Cynthia Ozick
Cynthia Ozick (born April 17, 1928) is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist.
Biography
Cynthia Ozick was born in New York City, the second of two children. She moved to the Bronx with her Belarusian-Jewish parents from Hlusk, ...
, "Literary Blacks and Jews," in ''Malamud: Critical Essays'', ed. Field and Field, p 90
*Israel Shenker, "For Malamud It's Story," ''The New York Times Book Review
''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
.'' (3 October 1971): p 22
*Warren Rosenberg. ''Legacy of Rage: Jewish Masculinity, Violence, and Culture''. (Univ of Mass Press, 2009.
*Alvin Kernan, ''The Imaginary Library
''The Imaginary Library: An Essay on Literature and Society'' is a 1982 book by American literary critic and professor Alvin Kernan. In the book, Kernan considers literature as a social institution and considers ways in which the reigning Romantic ...
'' - contains a chapter on ''The Tenants''. : pp.153-206
References
External links
Race as a Cause for Discrimination and “Othering”, Bernard Malamud’s ''The Tenants'': a Case StudyCommentary Magazine review of ''The Tenants''Book Review: Library of America's Bernard Malamud volumes
in The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
March 21, 2014
Bernard Malamud: A Writer's Experience
By Celia B. Betsky, The Harvard Crimson
''The Harvard Crimson'' is the student newspaper of Harvard University and was founded in 1873. Run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates, it served for many years as the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Beginning in the f ...
: January 22, 1973
The Otherworldly Malamud
By Mark Athitakis in HUMANITIES, March/April 2014 , Volume 35, Number 2
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tenants, The
1971 American novels
Novels about writers
Novels set in Brooklyn
Novels about antisemitism
American novels adapted into films
Novels by Bernard Malamud
Farrar, Straus and Giroux books