Sprinters do not ordinarily sign up for marathons, nor do lonely long-distance runners enter the crush of 100-yard dashes. But some authors perform an analogous feat by writing both short stories and novels. Instead of being complimented on their versatility, though, they frequently encounter a peculiar problem: facing themselves as competitors….

Under such difficult conditions, [Bernard Malamud] has been racing himself for a long time…. The Stories of Bernard Malamud includes 23 pieces selected by the author from … past assemblages, plus two previously uncollected stories. The book not only offers substantial evidence that Malamud's stories are better than his novels; it makes the distinction seem irrelevant. In sufficient concentration, small objects achieve critical mass, enough fast victories add up to a triumphant long haul.

Malamud's world reveals itself bit by bit: a place of stony certainties and infrangible laws, brightened occasionally by enclaves of unexpected magic. Those who live here are predominantly poor, oppressed by hard work. Most are men without women. More than half the heroes in these stories are bachelors or widowers…. The main character in a story called The Model speaks for most of Malamud's men: "Is there nothing more to my life than it is now? Is this all that is left to me?"

These people must bear Old Testament burdens, punished not just by life but by the suspicion that they somehow deserve all the troubles heaped upon them….

In Idiots First, Mendel has been approached by Ginzburg, a messenger of death, and warned that his life expires at midnight. Mendel must somehow raise the train fare to send his son Isaac, who is 39 and unable to care for himself, to an uncle in California. He succeeds, and the fierceness of his determination frightens even death himself….

This is one of the handful of happy endings in Malamud's stories. Yet all the tales radiate a joy that has nothing to do with consequences. The author consistently portrays a kind of heroism devoid of self-consciousness or sentimentality. Convinced that their fates have already been determined, characters go on stubbornly behaving as if their actions mattered….

Malamud is probably the most severe writer of his generation, a trait that may explain why his work has been extensively admired but less widely loved. Still, the gathering of these stories reveals a gentleness in Malamud's art that was not always clear before. He admires the sheer cussedness of his characters, their backs to the wall, squabbling in the maw of annihilation. He relishes the cranks and eccentrics who, destined to suffer and die, still insist on making noise in a vast, indifferent universe. Mendel, grappling with his fate, screams, "You bastard, don't you understand what it means human?" This book offers 25 vivid and unforgettable answers.