SOURCE: Sant, Arvindra. “Surrealism and the Struggle for Identity in The Fixer.” Studies in American Jewish Literature 7, no. 2 (fall 1988): 177-88.

[In the following essay, Sant explains the significance of Malamud's use of fantasy and the surreal in his protagonist's imprisonment and eventual physical and emotional freedom.]

“I thought that if I could make the fantasy world real, then I could make Yakov's world real.”

—Bernard Malamud in an interview

The alienated self, cut off from society and even from itself, is nowhere more powerfully portrayed than in Bernard Malamud's The Fixer. Malamud's paradoxical philosophy of ultimate, internal freedom being achieved only through some kind of bondage is taken to an extreme in this novel, as we see the protagonist, Yakov Bok, imprisoned not only physically but also morally and emotionally. In fact, most of the action takes place while Bok is imprisoned for a heinous crime that he did not commit. Bok's memory of his relative “freedom” before his incarceration is acute in the prison, and that further complicates his immobile, hence intensely frustrating condition. Though there is a necessary narrowing of physical action, the compensating psychological action is enhanced by Malamud's blending of fantasy with reality, which is a representation of the form the inner conflict takes, and which lends a surrealistic touch to the narrative. Malamud's use of surrealism in this connection is important since, as Sydney J. Krause comments,

surrealism thrives on disparity, situations in which life begins to parody itself. Normal perceptions suddenly arrange themselves in strange and inexplicable relationships. … Hallucination passes for reality and vice-versa.¹

In his desire to live in a world other than the one to which he is physically confined, Yakov Bok escapes into a world created by his fevered mind. This switch from one world to another becomes more pronounced as his isolation from society becomes more definite. The fantasy, however, is not limited to Bok's world alone; many of the other characters, almost all of whom are his persecutors, weave a fantastical web of lies around Bok, in which he becomes hopelessly enmeshed. Distorting reality and maintaining blind faith in falsehoods characterize the figures who are resolved to crush Bok and extinguish his struggle to survive, as illustrated in the mad accusations hurled at him by Marfa Golov, mother of the murdered boy, and her lover, the accomplice of the actual murderer. Thus, the whole milieu which is trying to defeat Bok seems steeped in phantasmagoria. On the other hand, for Bok himself—his mind fevered by physical and psychological torment and the sense of injustice—reality no longer remains reality, and Malamud deftly employs surrealism to delineate his delirium, his wandering in a realm between waking and sleeping.

This phantasmagoric “reality” that Bok inhabits is best illustrated through his dreams concerning his oppressors. Time and again, Bok dreams of the Tzar's officials indulging in brutal, violent murders while the pale figure of the Tzar looks on; this is in keeping with the absurd efforts of the Tzar's officials to keep Bok in prison on charges that are flatly false. The falsity is further exaggerated by the officials, who consider the murder as a blood ritual practiced by Bok, a Jew. This quick shift, from the phantasmagoric world of dreams to the equally phantasmagoric reality of prison, mirrors Malamud's subtle blend of fantasy and reality, and his effective use of Bok's hallucinations portray the intensely chaotic world into which he has been plunged. For example, the dead Magistrate, Bibikov, who is sympathetic toward Bok, appears in one of his dreams and warns him that he is being poisoned by the prison officials; this finally explains the metallic taste that Bok has in his mouth during his waking moments. Thus, the dream state confirms reality, for the subconscious discovers truths that the waking self is too confused to comprehend. The rapid succession of dreams, once Bok is thrown into prison, is significant because it forms the structural pattern of the novel: the dreams illustrate the major thematic conflicts between right and wrong, and they highlight the significant motifs and symbols that run throughout the narrative, helping to unify it. More important still, through the dreams we see the “new” Bok emerging—a Bok who is able to cope with the disorder around him, and who through his suffering can redeem himself.

In order to establish the mood of disorder and unreason in Bok's world, Malamud employs several key motifs and images; some appear in most of his other works whereas others are exclusive to The Fixer and Bok's struggle for survival. The most prominent motif is that of the prison. As Malamud himself remarked in one of his interviews,

It's a metaphor for the dilemma of all men throughout history … there are the man-made prisons of social injustice, apathy, ignorance. There are others, tight or loose, visible or invisible, according to one's predilection or vulnerability. Therefore our most extraordinary invention is human freedom.²

As a dominant physical restraint, the prison also emphasizes what is yet left to man of moral and psychological constraint on the one hand and of freedom on the other. Three-fourths of the narrative in The Fixer revolves around Bok's thoughts and emotions while he is locked up in a cell. Malamud imposes maximal physical limitation on Bok's existence in order to create the ideal arena in which his motif of suffering can be played out. While in prison, Bok must deal with the tremendous torment and oppression imposed on him by the officials. In addition, after all the indignities, he still must cope with his own weaknesses, and he does. The torment has obviously strengthened Bok to the point that he can come to terms with himself as well as the world around him. Ironically, at the beginning of the narrative, Bok is healthy, but by the end he is physically a pale shadow of his earlier self though at last spiritually healed. Moreover, initially he is morally but a weak anticipation of the man who ultimately emerges from the dungeon on his way to the court for his trial. This contrast between our initial and final glimpses of Bok lends an extremely ironic dimension to the first section of the novel.

Like William Dubin in Dubin's Lives, and Roy Hobbs in The Natural, who are always running in circles trying to escape from their problems, Yakov Bok in The Fixer is trying to escape from his past (“the past was a wound in the head”)³ by moving to Kiev. His flurry of activity quickly ceases once he is imprisoned, and even his tools (his vocational identity) are taken from him. But another self, that of the wounded rebel, is awakened, fighting not only for life but also for what is right and for his dignity as a human being. Ultimately, the humble fixer must fix more than the physical things that are out of repair. Indeed, his will to survive is gradually strengthened in proportion to the imposed stillness of his physical movements. The more restrained he is physically, the more he wanders in his mind, until he begins to live primarily through his hallucinations, which become more evident as his isolation increases.

Up to the point of his imprisonment, Bok's isolation has overtones of pride, self-assertion, perhaps even arrogance, and a lack of compassion for others like his wife. But this isolation that he seeks changes with the isolation that is imposed. His physical imprisonment intensifies his emotional isolation, so that out of the two comes a strength that is a counterweight to the weakness implied by immolation of self. Bok becomes the irascible man with the courage to stand against his oppressors and fight for his identity and inner dignity as a human being.

Bok's initial journey to Kiev and his break with his past life can thus be ironically paralleled with his final journey to the courthouse. The cart and old horse of Shmuel, his father-in-law, are replaced by a coach and four. Shmuel, riding part of the way out of the shtetl with Bok, is replaced by the Cossacks, and Bok's movement from the familiar to the less familiar parts of the shtetl is replaced by his ride through the crowded streets, from the “home-like” familiarity of the prison to the totally alien courthouse.

Bok's crossing of the Dnieper when he first moves to Kiev marks his final break with his past life and bears considerable symbolic significance. The freezing black water and the black, portentous night with the half-moon reflected in the Dnieper again foreshadow Bok's impending doom. The river has been likened to the Styx by Sandy Cohen, and the ferryman to Charon,⁴ and fittingly enough, when the anti-Semitic boatman starts his tirade against the Jews, Bok's “bag of prayer things fell with a plop into the Dnieper and sank like lead” (24).

Bok, then, comes to Kiev with his dream of forging a new life, leaving his past, his culture, and his God behind. His disillusionment with his former life had made him give up religion long ago, but this drift from the spiritual and moral influences of his past is all the more predominant once his nightmarish existence in the prison begins.

The surrealistic blend of fantasy and reality is primarily to be seen in the prison scenes. Reality is redefined by Malamud here, and as Robert W. Warburton comments:

Bok's prison world, a nightmare of cruelty and sadism, is difficult to distinguish from the nightmare of life outside the prison. And both seem unreal. Almost the only reality that remains is Bok's endurance. Like Bober, Alpine, and Levin, Bok discovers that only in our endurance of the incredible disparities and sufferings of ordinary existence do we grasp and experience the more fundamental spiritual reality and identity of our lives.⁵

Bok's ensuing isolation and suffering in prison thus form the pivotal point of the external and internal action of the narrative. Reality and fantasy are inverted, and the external action, the harsh reality that has condemned the starving Bok to a stinking, freezing cell in Russian prison, is distorted to such an extent that it becomes grotesque. In this forced state of complete disorder and inversion, Bok can only retain some semblance of coherence by living in the world created by his mind. Malamud, thus, as Jay L. Halio comments,

adroitly intermingles fantasy and realism, at times combining them in his fiction with an end result that is greater than either because more complete, hence more real.⁶

This world, as the narrative progresses, becomes increasingly real not only for Bok, but also for the reader because it is the only one that the reader inhabits with him. Bok's nightmarish and solitary world soon assumes phantasmagoric dimensions. In his struggle to survive and retain his sanity, he turns this phantasmagoric world into reality, especially since he is shut off from reality as it exists and as he once knew it.

During his confinement for twenty-six months, Bok thus finds some release from his anxieties and yearnings through his dreams and hallucinations where, as Edwin M. Eigner comments, “the novel's important figures appear … more often … than in the ‘realistic’ action.”⁷ Normally a person suffering from fantasy is at its mercy, but Bok derives strength, even clarity, from the fantastic. The gradually increasing succession of dreams and hallucinations are in keeping with his increasing isolation and his concomitant confusion between fantasy and reality. As the narrative progresses and the indignities mount, his dreams gradually become more hallucinatory, taking us further into Bok's mind, until ultimately it is this “new” reality with which both he and we familiarize ourselves.

These dreams and hallucinations exhibit truths at a subconscious level that enable Bok to sublimate his misery and endure. They reinforce his sense of personal righteousness, hence representing some principle behind his perseverance. Furthermore, these dreams and hallucinations are not important only with regard to the internal reality of Bok's mind; they also function as the structural center of the narrative. Each surrealistic dream marks an important stage in Bok's transformation from a socially detached, ahistorical individual to a committed and suffering human being, while highlighting some of the relevant motifs and symbols running through the narrative. Appropriately, when Bok first hallucinates in captivity, his old life and the immediate past roll by him, encapsulating all his fears and confusion: his wife, Raisl, running after him with a meat cleaver; his imprisonment in Siberia for the murder of the boy; the hostility between Bibikov, the defense lawyer, and Grubeshov, the prosecuting attorney. Significantly, all of these figures are bathed in blood.

The surrealistic blend of fantasy and reality is obvious in his hallucination. Bok fantasizes about committing a brutal murder of which he is innocent, thus reflecting the insanity of the charges against him. The hallucination also introduces some of the conflicting forces and key images in the novel, which contribute to the thematic unity of the narrative: it highlights the Grubeshov-Bibikov conflict and focuses on the recurring window and blood images.

The reference to Grubeshov and Bibikov in the hallucination also is important as it exposes the conflict between the two men. The yellowness of Grubeshov's gaiters, like the link between the color yellow and the Judge in The Natural, represents the decayed inner self of the man. It is therefore significant that the sadistic Grubeshov should be contrasted to the law-abiding Bibikov. The dream also hints at the futility of Bibikov's efforts, when pitted against the ruthlessness of the blindly anti-Semitic Grubeshov.

As may be expected, Bibikov, the Investigating Magistrate for Cases of Extraordinary Importance (an ironic title, as the murder of the boy has been blown out of proportion and soon acquires absurd dimensions), emphasizes facts and reason in determining his cases, but this emphasis helps neither him nor Bok because he lacks the clout to make it effective. Besides, facts and reason are completely ignored by Grubeshov. Bibikov knows Bok is innocent since all logical evidence points away from him and toward Marfa Golov, the mother of the murdered boy. His rationality, and hence, desire for logic, draws Bibikov toward Spinoza and the latter's concept of “freedom” attained through involvement in society, which, of course, is a concept that Yakov Bok will gradually and painfully learn during his imprisonment. But Bibikov's focus on the thinking man is important since it is primarily his reliance on facts and reason that dooms Bibikov in the phantasmagoric world created by his opponents. For Bibikov, the law is ethically bound to protect the innocent, and he feels this principle must be scrupulously pursued or everyone will be imperiled. It is his inability to deal with the “law,” which is in the hands of the lawless, that finally dooms Bibikov.

In contrast to Bibikov, Grubeshov, Father Anastasy, and the Tzar together represent the overpowering negative forces in The Fixer. They constitute the power structure. Grubeshov is the corrupt, opposing force who collects evidence, both real and unreal, combining it in strange and unbelievable ways, in order to prove Bok guilty. Grubeshov's “reality” is riddled with the superstition and prejudice of the non-Jewish community. He does not fully believe the murder story himself, but he has political ambitions. He, along with Father Anastasy, inverts reality to pursue his own political purposes. Reality—undercut by superstition—is given a twist by the prosecuting attorney, and Grubeshov is largely responsible for creating the surrealistic world that Bok is forced to inhabit for over two years. Grubeshov, then, as his name implies (“Grub” represents both dirtiness and sliminess of character, while “shov[e]” hints at the debilitating forcefulness of character), is a vicious sadist who takes pleasure in humiliating Bok. For him, psychological victory over Bok is almost supreme, and Bok's death would ruin this achievement for him. Through his trying to degrade Bok, Grubeshov's own self-degradation as a sadist becomes apparent, especially since Bok, though dispirited, does not break.

It is therefore not surprising that Grubeshov is triumphant in his conflict with Bibikov, who is finally condemned for his defense of Bok and is thrown into prison. When he discovers the Defending Magistrate hanging from the window of a prison cell, Bok is devastated. It is important that Bibikov should hang himself from the cell window, for in doing so, he is illustrating the futility of escaping from the predatory nature of Grubeshov's “law.” Bibikov's broken glasses lying on the floor of the prison cell, then, symbolize his inability to accept the political opportunism or the subordination and subversion of justice.

The recurring window image represents the characters' tenuous hold on the external world. It is the window through which almost all of them peer while trying to escape from their fixed lives. Significantly, Bok's first hallucinatory experience occurs while he is lying sick near the prison infirmary window. The claustrophobic presence of the prison, which intrudes even on Bok's hallucinatory experience, has only one saving grace—it has a little aperture in the wall that functions as the window. Though the window is heavily barred, it is nevertheless an opening through which Bok can see a faint glimmer of light, can vaguely observe the grey sky and the changing seasons (his only tie with the pastoral world outside the prison), and through which, ironically, insects and flies escape as Bok painfully and enviously looks on. In short, the window is a dim aperture of hope that teases and torments Bok.

It is also important on another level: since Bok's life is distorted and limited in prison, his only view of the outside world is through a cracked and barred window. Thus, as Ben Seigel remarks, “Malamud's unfortunates often look at the life about them through flawed glass.”⁸

This distorted view of life and, in Bok's case, law, largely reflects the distortion of right and wrong by the authoritative figures, Grubeshov and the Tzar. Because of the great wrong done to Bok, it is not surprising that all of his dreams should be dominated by violence. The barbarity of the so-called ritual slaying is therefore prominent in all of Bok's hallucinations and dreams in the figure of the murdered boy, or a helpless child. As a result, blood dominates the narrative. The bloody slaying of Zhenia represents the starting point of Bok's oppression, which itself represents the historical persecution of Jews at the hands of the officials in Tzarist Russia. Consequently, the reference to the “magnificent liquid” in Bok's initial hallucination in the infirmary significantly implies his dual attitude of fascination and revulsion. It is both a life-giving source and a symbol of violence and suffering.

This constant reference to blood is not only reflective of physical and emotional violence, but it is also significant on the cultural level. The Jews, as represented by Bok, are incriminated mainly because the official interpretation of the crime is that Zhenia was murdered for Jewish religious purposes. The prosecution, then, obviously feeds upon the superstitious fear of the Russian peasants and their terror of blood with regard to the “mysterious” ceremonies of the alien Jews in their midst. Basically, of course, officialdom is after the Jews, not the murderer of the boy; the murder is merely an excuse for them. Therefore, the blood image also symbolizes Bok's blood-ties to Jewish history and culture.

The tie between blood and violence (which gradually increases as the narrative proceeds) is reiterated in Bok's second hallucination, while he is sick from ingesting the poison mixed in his prison food:

at night he had terrible dreams, visions of mass slaughter that left him sleepless, moaning. When he dozed again people were being cut down by Cossacks with sabers. Yakov was shot running into the woods. Yakov, hiding under a table in his hut, was dragged forth and beheaded. Yakov, fleeing along a rutted road, had lost an arm, an eye, his bloody balls; Raisl, lying on the sanded floor, had been raped beyond caring, her fruitless guts were eviscerated. …

(177)

The violence and gore of the dream gathers momentum as each scene evokes more horror in Bok's fevered mind, culminating in the image of his wife lying mutilated on the floor. The last horror, though a subconscious venting of Bok's anger, in his waking moments leaves him completely shaken. Thus it is fitting that in the next dream Bok confuses Raisl with Marfa Golov, the mother of the dead boy.

In keeping with the inversion of both physical and mental reality, Bok's hallucinations often reverse color symbolism: for example, white, normally associated with purity and innocence, is ironically associated with the Cossacks and the Tzar. Time and again, Nicholas the Second appears in Bok's dreams—sternly admonishing the latter for his “sin” and using it to defend his own desire to start a pogrom against the Jews—wearing a white uniform and riding in a coach drawn by six white horses. Like the warped exterior world, Bok's inner world has become inverted, thereby highlighting the corruptive power of the Tzar: as Bok sees it, the Tzar has corrupted innocence. Nicholas the Second, contrary to the title “Little Father,” is both a destructive ruler and an unhealthy father figure: in his hallucinatory relationship with Bok, the Tzar is responsible for the former's violent death; in reality, the Tzar is the father of a hemophiliac.

Bok's dreams about the Tzar (who appears in them at least three times) are important since they serve as milestones charting Bok's changing attitude toward himself, his situation, and the authorities who are attempting to subjugate him. All three dreams take place at crucial moments in Bok's life in the prison. His first dream occurs soon after he receives a long letter from Marfa, asking him to confess his guilt. She hurls incredible accusations at him while, indirectly almost confessing to the murder herself. The second time Bok dreams of the Tzar, he has just received his indictment. The third and final time he faces the Tzar in his dreams he is traveling to the courthouse at the end of the novel. Shortly before each dream, Bok is in an extremely excitable state, both mentally and emotionally. His fear of, and his anger against, the subjugating forces are thus reflected in the confusing and turbulent dreams involving the Tzar. This terror and rage also explains the confused application of the color white in his dreams.

Bok's attitude in his dreams steadily changes from that of the pursued to that of the pursuer of justice. In his first two dreams, Bok begs the Tzar for mercy, while the “little father” drones on about the need to do away with the Jews. By the end of the third dream, it is the Tzar who is appealing to Bok's sense of justice. The dreams also become progressively more violent: in the first two dreams, Bok is aware of his impending death, knowing the Tzar's men are waiting to kill him on order. In the third dream, the shedding of blood eventually takes place, but with a difference—it is the Tzar's blood that is shed when Bok shoots him, instead of the reverse. Again, fantasy and reality are inverted: in his dream Bok commits a murder for which there is no trial, while in reality he is being tried for a murder that he did not commit. This inversion reflects his rising sense of ethical outrage that leads to a feeling of inner dominance.

The last dream is extremely relevant to the change that has taken place within Bok. His intense suffering and humiliation in the prison strengthen him morally and spiritually. He painfully realizes that he is no longer the apolitical, ahistorical man who blindly respects his ruler. Instead, he accepts his culture and his place in the human world of suffering by not signing the confession that the officials hand him repeatedly. He also shows his acceptance of his culture when, earlier, he openly reads the smuggled Talmud in prison, knowing full well that he is being observed by the guards. In fact, by the time he confronts the Tzar for the last time in his hallucinations, he is totally engaged and as a result, comprehends the complete detachment of the Tzar from history:

… in you, in spite of certain sentimental feelings, it is missing somewhere else—the sort of insight, you might call it, that creates in a man charity, respect for the most miserable. You say you are kind and prove it with pogroms.

(304)

Bok here is referring to the kind of human bond and respect for others that he feels is egregiously lacking in the Tzar—a bond between him and the oppressed Jewish community that he has finally been able to acknowledge in his mind. The Tzar is morally and emotionally atrophied, incapable of “fathering” Russia or a healthy heir. Bok imagines the Tzar naked, with his meager phallus, stripped of all social and official mediation: “Permit me to ask, Yakov Shepsovitch, are you a father?” “With all my heart” (303).

Bok is more of a father figure by the end of the novel than the Tzar. His “growth” is gradual and painful. While in prison, he is forced to listen to one of his guards, Kogin, complain about his thankless and good-for-nothing son. Though initially Bok merely tolerates Kogin's complaints, he slowly learns to sympathize with the man. This ability to sympathize comes once he has accepted suffering on behalf of another human being, Shmuel, his father-in-law, and the other truly positive father figure in the novel: “… if I must suffer let it be for something. Let it be for Shmuel” (248). Fittingly enough, this turning point in Bok's life occurs immediately after he has dreamed of Shmuel's death: “Live Shmuel … live. Let me die for you” (247). Shmuel is the true “schlemiel” (as may be implied in the phonetic closeness of the two words) whom Bok pityingly considers a fool. But Shmuel is also a “Mensch”—he suffers for others, and is a true “father.” This acceptance of suffering is important since Bok wants suffering to mean something—he wants to suffer for somebody, and in his dream he would give his life for that other person. The ability to suffer and to sympathize with a father is significant since only after tremendous internal growth can Bok try to place himself, albeit still with some difficulty, in a father's shoes. Though he accepts on paper Chaim (or “life”)—the illegitimate son of his wife Raisl (an anagram for Israel)—as his son, he almost reneges at the last moment. Though Bok's nobility in his acceptance of Chaim is admittedly tempered, yet accept him he does.

The Tzar, as opposed to the new Bok, who has matured through intense suffering, exudes both social and personal unhealthiness. Here, the blood image becomes complex: it functions on the physical level of lineage—the unhealthy Tzar fathering the hemophiliac; it functions on the cultural level—the bloodying of the oppressed (the Jews) by their oppressors (the Russian officials); and it functions on the symbolic level—the inability of the Tzar to perceive and comprehend his human bond with his subjects, even the most miserable, who depend on him as children do on a father. By shooting the Tzar in his dream, Bok acts on behalf of all the other oppressed persons like Bibikov: “One thing I've learned … there's no such thing as an unpolitical man, especially a Jew” (305). Actually, what Bok does is execute a man already dead to human feelings and the needs of his dependent subjects, especially those who must look to him for justice. As William Sharfman comments, Bok finally “fixes” history:

If Bok's final significant gestures in the novel are mental, at least he has displayed the degree of freedom suggested when Bibikov summarizes Spinoza. Having become father in prison, Bok now becomes historical and political agent—a fixer. The point of this role is not Jewishness per se, but the catholicity of people (e.g. “blood”) and standing up to be counted.⁹

He is aware at the end that because he is one of the oppressed, he has been made to rot in prison. As a result, he learns historical necessity: to be a Jew is to suffer for it. But once he undergoes his test as a Jew and as an individual at the hands of the Russian officials, Bok emerges with his spirit and mind alive; he acquires a moral identity.

Ultimately, it is not thematically important whether Bok is physically free or not. Malamud deliberately leaves the conclusion of The Fixer ambiguous, ending the narrative just before Bok's trial, as, in the author's mind, Bok has already triumphed on two levels. Despite the weapons that the officials have used to break Bok, they do not succeed. In fact, Bok has his way in the end—he receives the trial for which he has been constantly fighting and hoping.

The surrealistic milieu is thus relevant with regard to the “growth” of Yakov Bok, and Malamud employs it effectively to enhance the inversion of reality and right versus wrong, portraying in the process the inner strength of the protagonist. Bok emerges in the end triumphant, not only because he has gained his trial, but also because he has emerged with a complete recognition of his moral identity and his dignity.

Notes

1. Sidney J. Krause, “The Surrealism of Crane's Naturalism in Maggie,” American Literary Realism (1870-1910) 2 (Autumn 1983): 253.

2. Leslie A. Field and Joyce W. Field, “An Interview with Bernard Malamud,” Bernard Malamud: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Leslie A. Field and Joyce W. Field (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970) 12.

3. Bernard Malamud, The Fixer (New York: Pocket Books, 1966) 10. All further references are from this edition and will be included in the text.

4. Sandy Cohen, Bernard Malamud and the Trial by Love: Melville Studies in American Culture, ed. Robert B. Pearsall (Amsterdam: Rodopi N.V., 1974) 77.

5. Robert W. Warburton, “Fantasy and the Fiction of Bernard Malamud,” Imagination and the Spirit: Essays in Literature and the Christian Faith presented to Clyde S. Kilby, ed. Charles A. Huttar (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1971) 406.

6. Jay L. Halio, “Fantasy and Fiction,” Southern Review 7 (1971): 641.

7. Edwin M. Eigner, “The Loathly Ladies,” Bernard Malamud and the Critics, ed. Leslie A. and Joyce W. Field (New York: New York UP, 1970) 102.

8. Ben Seigel, “Through A Glass Darkly: Bernard Malamud's Painful Views of the Self,” The Fiction of Bernard Malamud, ed. Richard Astro and Jackson J. Benson (Corvallis: Oregon State UP, 1977) 135.

9. William Sharfman, “Inside and Outside Malamud,” Rendezvous 7 (Spring 1972): 37.

Works Cited

Cohen, Sandy. Bernard Malamud and the Trial by Love: Melville Studies in American Culture. Amsterdam: Rodopi N. V., 1974.

Eigner, Edwin M. “The Loathly Ladies.” Bernard Malamud and the Critics. Ed. Leslie A. and Joyce W. Field. New York: New York UP, 1970.

Field, Leslie A., and Joyce W. Field. “An Interview with Bernard Malamud.” Bernard Malamud: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Leslie A. and Joyce W. Field. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970.

Halio, Jay L. “Fantasy and Fiction.” Southern Review 7 (1971): 641.

Krause, Sydney J. “The Surrealism of Crane's Naturalism in Maggie.” American Literary Realism (1870-1910) 2 (Autumn 1983): 253.

Malamud, Bernard. The Fixer. New York: Pocket Books, 1966.

Seigel, Ben. “Through A Glass Darkly: Bernard Malamud's Painful Views of the Self.” The Fiction of Bernard Malamud. Ed. Richard Astro and Jackson J. Benson. Corvallis: Oregon State UP, 1977.

Sharfman, William. “Inside and Outside Malamud.” Rendezvous 7 (Spring 1972): 37.

Warburton, Robert W. “Fantasy and the Fiction of Bernard Malamud.” Imagination and the Spirit: Essays in Literature and the Christian Faith Presented to Clyde S. Kilby. Ed. Charles A. Huttar. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1971.