SOURCE: Malin, Irving. “Portrait of the Artist in Slapstick: Malamud's Pictures of Fidelman.” Literary Review: An International Journal of Contemporary Writing 24, no. 1 (fall 1980): 121-38.

[In the following essay, Malin suggests autobiographical elements in Pictures of Fidelman that allow Malamud to explore his role as an artist.]

Although many critics have written about Bernard Malamud as an American-Jewish author—I plead guilty to this kind of grouping—they have not seen that he is also concerned in his fiction with the relationship of art and life. In the recent Dubin's Lives we have, for example, the double meaning of “lives”; the hero is a biographer-critic who cannot easily reconcile art and life; he persists in regarding his own middle age as a troubling artwork; he is at times an “autobiographical character.”

Malamud's earlier novel, Pictures of Fidelman (1969), demonstrates that Malamud is “obsessive” about the functions of art and criticism, and helps us to see, by implication, that Dubin's Lives—or, for that matter, The Tenants—is not a silly aberration or a freakish experiment. Indeed, Pictures of Fidelman may be one of Malamud's best novels because of its very confrontation of the problems of any artist who, while loyal to his religion, people, or sex, must sit alone and create (for whom?).

Pictures of Fidelman is subtitled “an exhibition.” These words can be taken two ways—they suggest that Fidelman exhibits pictures (he is an artist) and that pictures of him as artwork are displayed. He is active creator and passive object. Malamud quotes lines from Yeats as one epigraph: “The intellect of man is forced to choose / Perfection of the life, or of the work. …” Yeats, obviously, implies that there is a choice between life and art, but he does not reveal how such choices are made. Nor does he explain why an artist cannot have both. In his novel Malamud explores the nature of these choices.

When we first meet Fidelman in “Last Mohican,” the opening section, he is said to be a traveller. He has arrived in Italy; he carries a “new pigskin” leather briefcase; he wears “new” shoes. He is virginal, as it were, and his possessions signify his position. He seems to be faithful—notice his name—to his roles as critic (of Giotto) and traveller, but he is comically out of place because his role-playing does not take account of such “accidents” as the heat and the crowds.

Fidelman is a “visionary,” as are most of Malamud's heroes, and he exalts in his perception of the Baths of Diocletian. He remembers Michaelangelo having converted “the baths into a church and convent. …” The detail is important. Fidelman sees only the shadows of history; he clouds present views. The various transformations of the bath suggest that he will also be transformed. Will he change as radically from earth-bound (baths) to spiritual (church) being?

Fidelman views the historic Baths, but he also sees himself. There is a “double” effect, the sudden sight “of seeing himself as he was, to the pinpoint, outside and in. …” He reminds us of Narcissus. He thinks of himself not as flower but as sculptured object. He is pleased, even more exalted than before, but he soon gives way to a kind of depression. He changes moods rapidly!

Fidelman is suddenly aware of a stranger—a “skeleton with bones”—staring at him. The other man “loiters” near the “stone pedestal of the heavy-drugged Etruscan wolf suckling the infant Romulus and Remus.” He is almost a wolf as he devours the hero with his eyes. He wears rags, contrasted to the hero's tweed “uniform,” and when he speaks, he says “Shalom.” Susskind then proceeds to talk at length, dragging out unconscious needs and fears of Fidelman. He is surely an “experienced” artist who can sculpt conversations; he plays upon words.

Susskind is sweet, as the first part of his name implies, and he continues to be “lighthearted.” His words are contrasted to his slightly sinister, odd appearance. He is a creature of contrasts and changes. Unlike Fidelman he is so swift—he is always “running”—that he apparently lacks substance. His roles shift rapidly.

Susskind suggests that he would like to be a guide. He will advise Fidelman; perhaps he will be his “father” (as the creator of diversions and visions). But he is not a Morris Bober. He soon asks for a suit.

Fidelman is disturbed. Although he says some amusing, slightly insulting things to the guide, he quickly realizes that the man is unusual because he does not fit into any traditional role. He can't be “criticized” like Giotto or the Baths; he is free of history.

Freedom is, indeed, a word that comes up in the conversation. Susskind claims that he is free in Rome, despite his poverty and thinness. (He coughs as he speaks!) Fidelman thinks that he, unlike Susskind, is really free because he has money, knowledge, clothing, but as he turns to leave the “skeleton,” he stares in his eyes—another reflection—and becomes uneasy. Their first meeting ends abruptly. Fidelman had “the uneasy feeling that the refugee, crouched low, might be clinging to the little tire on the back of the cab; however he didn't look out to see.” The stage has been set for further appearances (and disappearances); the men are bound together not only as fellow Jews but as artist and artwork. In their mysterious relationship lies the meaning of freedom (within?) necessity.

Fidelman gets himself “quickly and tightly organized” when he returns to his hotel room. He is a creature of habit—this explains his routine perceptions of Italy—and he prefers to think of schedules, deadlines, and work hours. But he must fight secret desires for play and luxury. He is, as Malamud has subtly implied, a creature of contrasts.

Fidelman sees “flights of angels” in the sky because he uses his eyes for so much close reading. He has confused vision; he promises not to work so hard. It is dangerous to explain the sources of his “angels.” Can we not, however, suggest that they represent his own desire to fly away from his rigid habits? At one point he recognizes that he is artist (visionary) and critic. He tells himself that “excitement was all right up to a point, perfect maybe for a creative artist but less so for a critic.”

Susskind reappears “instead of an angel.” His swift entrance into the room underlines not only his “running” but his mysterious transformations. He is surely ghostly—a symbol, perhaps, of the hero's unconscious fears and desires—and he tells Fidelman to give him a suit. The change of clothes is symbolic. Susskind wants him to “undress” and remove his “role.”

When Susskind claims that he needs money and clothing because he is out of work—he has lost his passport—he acts as super-ego and compels Fidelman to be somewhat guilty. His comments about his past life in concentration camps; his threats about “responsibility”; his down-and-out appearance—all these details put the critic against the wall. Fidelman refuses the “obligation”; he wants to be free without taking on “everybody's personal burden.” Perhaps he also fears that he, secretly like Susskind, is an outcast and shell.

Fidelman offers money and promptly moves out of the hotel. (He shirks “final solutions.”) But Susskind soon follows him, and tells him that he must find his own peace of mind.

One night Fidelman returns to his new room and discovers that the door is slightly open. His suit is still there! His manuscript is not! He realizes that Susskind has taken it. Fidelman dreams. He pursues the refugee in the Jewish catacombs, threatening him with “a seven-flamed candelabrum”; Susskind, a “clever ghost,” eludes him. Then the candles flicker and die; he is “sightless” in “the cemeterial dark.” The dream alerts us, if not the critic, to his unconscious needs. He fears Susskind not only as stranger but as spiritual brother—the refugee insists upon his (or rather their) Jewishness, and it is this burden which is seen as a punishment. He cannot be faithful to his heritage—to the “candelabrum”—because it limits his freedom. But without the “candles” he is sightless.

When Fidelman wakes, the sun winks “cheerfully” in his eyes, but it does not possess the power of the candelabrum. It is, indeed, a false sign of confidence.

Now the tables turn. Fidelman becomes the hunter of Susskind, trying to discover his whereabouts and his own briefcase. He gives up his “routine research and picture viewing,” and takes to the “open air.” He pursues his ghost, seeing his image everywhere. And the fact that he becomes a man of the streets indicates that his old sense of mission (and role) has disappeared. He is no longer confined in ivory-tower criticism; he visits movies, shops, and “real” corners.

Fidelman uses the search as an excuse. By spending the whole day outside, he does not have to write criticism, and he is pleased, although he curses the refugee. He is now the refugee-“brother” of Susskind.

One Friday night he wanders into a synagogue. The faces and rituals unnerve him (as did Susskind) because they force him to acknowledge his Jewish heritage, if not to understand and embrace it willingly. He does not love the religion; it seems, ironically, less enthralling than the angels of Giotto. He looks in the ghetto. (The mazed streets are dream-like and suggest his private mysteries.) He even enters the Jewish cemetery, but he hardly pauses to study the tombstones. He is obsessed with Susskind, neglecting the fact that his refugee is, in extreme ways, related to the dead Jews and to him.

Fidelman remains an innocent despite his fall into history. He is spell-bound by false hopes; he refuses to accept the reality principle, indulging instead in a kind of double-talk. It is ironic that he wants to create criticism because he is such a sterile, well-meaning person. But he knows soon that he seeks Susskind for magical reasons.

Fidelman sighs and begins to “sketch little angels flying.” Why? He sees himself as a possible painter—he once was before he turned to criticism—and as a “flier.” He hopes to transcend his divided nature, frustrated search, and compulsive routines. But he quickly finds himself back in churches, in “studied” surroundings. He swings back and forth.

In St. Peter's he studies a mosaic “as it had been before its many restorations.” The detail alerts us to his own “restorations” as he moves from would-be critic to would-be artist to would-be moralist. He beholds at the bottom of the stairs—the story stresses highs (angels, aspirations) and lows (unconscious needs and fears, depressions, ghettos)—Susskind selling rosaries.

Susskind is the confidence man. Here he looks “ageless,” contrasted to Fidelman's youth, as he sells faith to tourists. He feigns loss of memory. He jokes ironically. He puts Fidelman on the defensive by his questions: “Rome holds you?” He remains the slightly sinister shadow. Although he seems to have no belief, unlike Fidelman, he deceives us because he does remember his refugee position, his outcast role; and he understands the role of suffering.

Fidelman follows Susskind. He sneaks into his ghetto-home the next day like a thief. It is a “pitch-black freezing cave”—so unlike the sunlit churches he admires. It contains the rubbish of life and an unexpected fish bowl “with a bony goldfish swimming around in Arctic seas.” This fish is a perfect pet and talisman, suggesting the persistent swimming of Susskind. He does not find his manuscript, but he “never fully” recovers from his expedition.

Fidelman dreams once more. He links Susskind with the cemetery. The refugee is a guide, a Virgil-figure, who leads him from the cemetery to the ghetto to the synagogue. Here he sees a “saint in fading blue, the sky flowing from his head, handing an old knight in a thin red robe his gold cloak.” Fidelman is the “saint”—he is pleased with himself still—who “fades” as he exchanges cloak (and role?) with Susskind. He acknowledges his earthly ties to the knight. (Perhaps there is a dream-pun on night?)

When Fidelman wakes, he rushes to Susskind and offers his suit as an item of trade for the stolen manuscript. But he receives in return only an empty briefcase. He rants, especially when the refugee admits that he burned the chapter—this chapter is the whole manuscript, a mere shadow of finished work!—because “the words were there but the spirit was missing.”

Fidelman runs—now he is the man running!—after Susskind. Suddenly he has a “triumphant insight,” one more lasting than the angels he has seen. He recognizes the truth of the refugee's statement (and act). He says: “All is forgiven.”

Fidelman comes to a “dead halt.” (We remember the many references to death.) He is no longer alive as critic. But he is, oddly enough, reborn at the same instant because he appreciates his relationship to real life—to suffering Jews and to responsibilities. Fidelman is, however, alone as the story ends. He must make his own way without the guidance of “running” Susskind.

In “Still Life,” the second self-contained chapter, Fidelman searches for a studio. He is now beginning to paint seriously, having heeded Susskind's words, and he wishes to find an appropriate home. Although he shares his studio with another artist—a woman, in fact!—he is inspired by the thick clutter, the aromatic smell of paint. He has found a heaven on earth.

The woman, Annamaria, is restless, businesslike, and “attractive if not in truth beautiful.” She becomes a kind of muse to him; in her own feminine way she is another guide to Fidelman who, despite his fears of danger, begins to fall in love.

He is inspired by “real life,” although he has a “renewed desire to create art.” He is passive. We are told that he is “already a plucked bird, greased, and ready for frying.” The metaphor suggests the comic dangers involved: he is trapped; he will not fly as an artist. Their meeting occurs in “the dead of winter” and this season reinforces his “burial.”

But there is also fire—again Malamud employs simple contrasts—because Fidelman is warmed by his new love: the “art student shivered but was kept warm by his hidden love. …” The references to heat and cold increase as the two painters work.

Annamaria is painting “a monumental natura morta of a loaf of bread with two garlic bulbs. …” The painting seems to lack her passionate spirit. She is more at home with “huge lyric abstractions” which contain burning, exploding reds and golds. These paintings are “built on, entwined with,” and conceal small religious crosses. She is a secretly devout person; she covers the crosses as Fidelman hid his Jewish heritage in “Last Mohican.”

Like Fidelman, Annamaria is superstitious. She believes in “the Evil Eye.” The reference alerts us to her vision of the world (and, for that matter, to his earlier, clouded, dreamy perceptions). She compels him to “touch his testicles three times to undo or dispel who knew what witchcraft.” (We remember that he passively accepted Susskind's magical powers.) There is a mixture of religious and sexual meanings. The effect is comic because Fidelman is aroused by his gestures. He must caution himself to remember Annamaria's “theological” need.

The agent, Augusto Ottogalli, is old enough to be her father. He arrives for almost-daily conferences. She drops her paints and rushes into another room with him. Fidelman is, typically, alone and mystified. He looks through the keyhole—he always wants to see things, but he never can interpret fully his visions—and sees them whispering passionately. The ritual intrigues him—it is as if he has entered a mysterious church.

Fidelman is so distracted by these events that he cannot paint. He thinks of traditional subjects like “Mother and Child”—his role is constantly childlike, spellbound, passive—but he lacks the daring originality to transform the subject into his own creation. He is sterile.

Annamaria, on the other hand, is a furious worker, using many different paints, sea shells, mirrors. She constantly changes lines and tones. But her activity apparently lacks considered thought, and her paintings also lack originality.

It is only when they stop painting (or planning to paint) that they are somehow true to themselves. They now work, as it were, on each other. He offers presents; she allows him to look at her “soft belly.” Their ritualistic behavior warms their souls. But when the agent arrives, Fidelman again sits alone, staring at icy skies.

The courting ritual goes on. Fidelman is true to his name as he buys presents, cooks meals, but he does not get the desired results. He decides, then, to create paintings. Perhaps these will inspire Annamaria's assent: “He all but cheered. What more intimate possession of a woman!” He rises above the confused, real world—his spirits are “elevated.”

Fidelman paints a “labor of love.” He portrays her as “Virgin with Child.” (Does he see himself as the child?) When she gazes at the finished product—which, interestingly enough, has taken nine days to create (a pregnancy?)—she is “undone.” She says: “‘You have seen my soul.’” They kiss.

The revelations continue. Annamaria thinks of herself as a virgin because she was seduced by the agent, who turns out to be “like a father.”

Malamud plays with the “incestuous” undertones throughout these pages. Fidelman is a passive “son.” He regards Annamaria as a Mary-figure, a loving mother. She, on the other hand, thinks of Augusto as father. By sleeping with her, he will break a taboo. The Oedipal “triangle” is present. Perhaps Fidelman realizes the nature of his “transgression” because he is impotent: “Overwrought, Fidelman, though fighting himself not to, spent himself in her hand. Although he mightily willed resurrection, his wilted flower bit the dust.”

Now Fidelman becomes even more passive. He does everything to serve her needs. He tries to affirm his existence: “In fact he did not exist for her. Not existing how could he paint, although he told himself he must?” But, as the twisted syntax informs us, he cannot create a willed pattern, a real self. He freezes.

Annamaria decides one cold night to take him to a “lively” party. He does not enjoy himself; he does not know how to respond to noise, other women, abstractions. The party soon becomes a revel. There is “black magic.” Shoes are smeared with mustard; sausages are pinned to dresses. Transformations occur. After Fidelman is knocked unconscious—in a way he has been unconscious for many days and nights—he is made the subject of a painting—a nude, no less! “And if he wasn't painting he was at least being painted.” He is proud of his ultimate passivity.

Fidelman is painted by Annamaria and Balducci—he is the object of female and male attention—and he finds that he has inspired a representational painting by her: “A gigantic funereal phallus that resembled a broken-backed snake.” It shows his confused impotence and her distaste for him.

The next morning Fidelman has a “nasty cold.” His soul is frozen like the outside weather. He cannot continue living. He contemplates suicide, looking for ways to leave the world. But just as he nears death, he decides to paint himself. He turns to creation.

Fidelman regards himself as “priest.” Instead of hearing Annamaria's confession (as he did earlier), he will reveal his own soul on canvas. He buys and wears “the priest's vestments.” (We remember his previous changes of clothing in “Last Mohican.”) It is ironic that he achieves his desired, forgotten end with Annamaria as a result of his transformation.

She rushes into the room; she sees him not as Fidelman but as “Father.” (Susskind also could not see him as an individual but as the Jew or the American.) She confesses. She informs him—where is Fidelman?—that she is cursed by past sins with Augusto and the murder of their child. She is suddenly cleansed as Father “forgives” her.

The comic shifts continue. Fidelman likes his new role. He is no longer the passive son but the authority-figure, and when he “forgives” Annamaria, he becomes potent. The mixture of religious and sexual details, which has been underneath, rises to the surface.

They make love. Annamaria undresses (as she has bared her soul) and Fidelman wears the vestments: “Pumping slowly he nailed her to her cross.” The line fascinates us. He is now the “Roman,” the crucifier, the murderer. She is Christ. The roles are reversed, and this brilliant transformation creates an odd, comic effect. Perhaps Malamud is too easy here in resolving the tensions between the lovers—love and crucifixion mix—but he certainly suggests that there is “still life” (his chapter's title) in Fidelman.

As “Naked Nude,” the third chapter, opens, Fidelman “doodles listlessly.” He seems extremely tired, more than he was in the previous adventures, and he lacks the ability to chase refugees or court women. His fortunes have turned once more.

Fidelman plays cards with two men who regard his doodles as trash. They, in fact, think of him in the same way. Their comments and their appearance suggest that they are criminals, but their roles are superior to his. They know what they want; they create patterns, not “botched words” or “esoteric ideographs.”

Scarpio and Angelo are lovers—there has been an undercurrent of homosexuality throughout the novel; we think possibly of Fidelman and Susskind—and they share a closed world of smiles. They hold secret conversations. They imprison Fidelman, who has barely escaped going to jail for theft. Scarpio has “one good eye”—another reference to vision—and uses it to follow the artist's aimless movements. The criminals hold power.

They decide to transform Fidelman—who has changed so much from “Last Mohican” that we hardly recognize him—into a copyist. They want him to duplicate a Titian painting—they will use it to hide their theft of the real one—and they are willing to allow him to get his passport back. The “copying” takes up much of the opening pages. Fidelman lacks the power to create his own art (or criticism). Although he doesn't want to “steal another painter's ideas and work,” he is really not good for any independent work, even if he were free. It is ironic that, like Susskind, he has become a thief.

Angelo counters Fidelman's weak arguments by claiming that stealing is “the way of the world.” Art itself “steals” forms and themes from other art. People take things from others. He even implies that there is universal desecration: “Everybody desecrates. We live off the dead and they live off us.” His remarks are melodramatic and illogical; they remind us, however, that Fidelman himself has desecrated religion by becoming a priest in “Still Life.” There has been an intermingling of life and death, creation and destruction throughout the novel.

Fidelman and Scarpio visit the island to see the real Titian. The nude is said to be a “woman of the real world”—another intermingling!—and it dazzles them. He has another vision. He worships the painting (as he had worshipped Annamaria and Rome?). But he is so moved by the “magnificent tones” and “the extraordinary flesh that turns the body into spirit” that he cannot copy Titian. He experiments with designs; he uses a real model (the chambermaid), but he is blocked.

Fidelman tries to escape from Angelo and Scarpio. He dresses as a woman—another sexual change of identity—and walks out of the door. But he is caught in the “act” and collapses under the assaults of a rubber hose.

Fidelman lies in bed “three days”—is he Christ-like?—and refuses to get back to work. The criminals suggest free-association, deep dreaming. And he begins to dream of his sister Bessie as a nude. He is now fourteen and he loves her body, but instead of mounting her, he steals money from her purse. He wakes. Although he interprets the dream as a confirmation of Angelo's earlier remarks about universal theft, he neglects other meanings. Are we supposed to believe that there are none? Is he deliberately avoiding them? Malamud does not help us—he hopes to advance the plot—but surely we can see that Fidelman has always thought of himself as a “thief,” a “user” of the world. Perhaps his artistic temperament grows out of the need to take real life and spend it (not sexually?) on canvas. When he dresses as priest, he “steals” for his own ends; when he fears and respects Susskind as a reflection, he behaves like a thief.

Fidelman decides to outwit Angelo and Scarpio by stealing the Titian. First he paints the copy, apparently inspired by his sudden assertion of independence. He views himself as a traditional, creative artist (once again); he puts into the copy all of his “remembered lust for all the women he had ever desired. …” He paints his unconscious desires; he seduces the nude. He discovers eternal bliss in his activity; and he is so pleased with the nude, which, oddly enough, reflects his past, that he proclaims: “The Venus of Urbino, c'est moi.”

The rest of the chapter is a “fall.” When Fidelman goes to the island with Scarpio, he exchanges paintings. Although the criminal maintains that he can tell the difference, he has, after all, only one eye: “The trouble is with my eyes.” We assume that Fidelman “steals,” instead of the Titian, his own painting because he rows away furiously. He has saves his “handiwork”—who cares about money?—and, consequently, the image of himself as creator. Thus, like the end of “Still Life,” “Naked Nude” is affirmatively comic.

With the beginning of “A Pimp's Revenge,” Fidelman changes identity once more. He is now “F,” A Florentine, who is preparing to achieve a real masterpiece, not a “copy.” He works on a painting of mother and child from a photograph sent years ago by Bassie. He is furious. He kicks and rips the canvas—the gesture has occurred many times—because he cannot find the right way to paint it.

Fidelman fears derivative work. He refuses to use others' styles and forms, to be a “thief.” Although he quotes the maxims of Picasso, Whistler, and others, he lacks their inspirations. He is not a “master” of himself and his art. He continues to wander—notice that he has even changed cities again!

Fidelman earns money by his fake Madonnas. He sculpts these, saving his energy and frustration for painting. He is, ironically, taken as a master of copying by the art-dealer; but such commercial remarks do not help lift his despair.

One day he sees a young whore, Esmeralda, and rescues her because he wants to find inspiration. (The Madonna-whore contrasts are underlined.) But his gesture (of self-love?) is not appreciated by Ludovico who, like Annamaria's uncle, seems to have secret powers of persuasion.

Ludovico is a former “art dealer” who discusses morality. He will exchange favors: “The basis of morality is recognizing one another's needs and cooperating.” He looks at Fidelman's unfinished “Mother and Son” and informs him that he will allow Esmeralda to stay—perhaps in return for selling the painting?

As in the previous chapter, there is an alternation of styles. The Ludovico and Esmeralda sections are briskly and efficiently done, but they seem less important, except for plot purposes, than Fidelman's “solos” as he paints. Now, for example, he stands at the canvas and talks to himself—and to Bessie and Momma. He free-associates, trying to find out his true relationship to Mother (and all women!). He pursues deep reflections of his childhood. He comes at last to Momma's death: “I remember so little, her death, not even the dying, just the end mostly. …” He recognizes that he is obsessed by his loss: “The truth is I am afraid to paint, like I might find out something about myself.” And he turns again to his statues of the “Madonna without child.”

The tensions rise. Fidelman discovers that the photographic link to the past is missing. Without it he cannot ever paint a true likeness of his unconscious relationship to women (and life itself). Although he finds the photograph at last, he is unsure who has placed it under an art book. Was it Esmeralda, who is envious of his “other” life as artist? Did he do it? These questions remain unanswered as he and his whore-daughter-mistress discuss art. Again Malamud counterpoints “solemn” commentary to crazy, haphazard adventure.

Fidelman claims that he is interested in releasing his mother from “the arms of death.” He wants to resurrect her and, at the same time, save himself. Christian imagery is suggested. But he knows that although he has this life-saving hope, he is more interested in the painting as painting. The phrase “still life” echoes in our minds; it can mean both death (stillness) and life still breathing. Fidelman, as artist, hangs between both meanings.

Esmeralda cannot see such contraries (or marriages). She prefers one thing—either life (preferably) or death; either a “man” or an “artist.” She objects to abstractions, symbolism, ideal forms. She cries.

In order to emphasize these comments Malamud incorporates an “interview” between Ludovico and Fidelman. It is wide-ranging, funny, and thoughtful, but it doesn't advance the plot. Perhaps this is deliberate. Malamud, like his artist, is less interested in plot (history) than theory; he paints a “still life.” During the interview Fidelman makes essentially the same points he underlined with Esmeralda: He implies that although art deals with forms, colors, etc., it is, nevertheless, moral and life-enhancing because it “gives value to a human being as he responds to it. You might say it enlarges his consciousness.” (It does the same to the artist.)

Fidelman tries to fuse his life with his art when he uses Esmeralda as the model for “Momma.” He will transform her young beauty, but he is again blocked because he is unable to see and paint such miraculous paradoxes. He turns once more to petty tasks (of stealing, faking statues, masquerading himself). He runs into a world of cheap, commercial thievery.

Fidelman becomes a “pimp.” His role suggests that he uses Esmeralda's beauty; it underlines his passive state once more. But pimping is also the wonderfully chosen symbol of his “criminal” attitudes toward himself. He clashes with Ludovico, who insists that he owns Esmeralda. The men are reflections; both resemble, in a way, Susskind, the confidence man.

Esmeralda acts more forcefully than the men. She burns the photograph to assert her freedom. She now inspires Fidelman to paint her (and himself) as they are in their present roles as “Prostitute and Procurer.” (We have come a long way from “Mother and Son”!) She is a wise muse.

The painting is done. It is a “Holy Sacrament. The form leaped to the eye.” It transforms their sordid lives into “religious” vision. But Malamud cannot rest with simple irony. He has Fidelman dissatisfied with the painting.

And Fidelman begins to paint over it. He changes colors, lines, shadows, and he realizes that in the attempt to reach perfection (and to bring back Momma), he destroys the painting. He is about to be stabbed by Esmeralda—she calls him “Murderer!”—and he lifts her knife “into his gut.” He atones, like Christ, with his own blood. The chapter ends with this “moral act,” implying that Fidelman (who, all along, has courted death and passivity) is, for the first time, pleased with one simple, hard truth. He earns “comic” wisdom.

“Pictures of the Artist,” the fifth chapter, is the most experimental one in the novel. Malamud again stops the “action,” as it were, for a series of soliloquies and dialogues. His style mixes abstract art criticism, maxims, Yiddish expressions—there is a “whirling,” fragmented, mosaic-effect. I assume that Fidelman has reached a climactic point in his career. Unsure of his next step—can he love a real woman like Esmeralda? should he paint realistic, psychological portraits of Momma or other muses?—he digs into his mental soil, looking for buried, valuable objects. But there is a self-conscious quality to his (and Malamud's) thoughts, and it disturbs us because we forget the real conflicts which are present.

Fidelman broods about “holes”: “Ah, to sculpt a perfect hole, the volume and gravity constant, Invent space.” He prefers to dig in the earth, creating “natural” works of art. He wants to lose himself in the ground. On one level he is a conceptualist who believes that by allowing nature to fill in his creation—that is, by sifting earth into holes—he permits things to happen: “And it was as though nature, which until now acted upon the Art itself, an unexpected but satisfying happening, since thus were changed the forms of a form.” But such abstractionism—matter, space, etc.—merely “deadens” the art because it neglects human comedy (the very object of this novel). Thus he buries himself—again he “dies”—as he tries to create earthworks. His sermons are cover-ups of underlying fears and desires.

When Fidelman turns to imagined mosaics, he pictures Susskind as a Christ figure—he has him preach to multitudes—and he pictures himself as another Christ. Often he intermingles the figures. The significant point is that he does not paint these transformations. He simply dreams them because he lacks the courage to work through their complex meaning. He swiftly turns to other pictures.

When Fidelman contemplates watercolors, he asks himself about his tentative subjects: “What is this horror I am or represent? Painter can think of none, for portrait is of a child and he remembers happy childhood, or so it seems.” He puzzles matter. Once he thinks of doing a woodcut about “forbidden love”—the homosexual subject asserts itself—but he frightens himself. He then decides on another subject and form—he will do circles, triangles, Cubist constructions. Fidelman wants, in effect, to offer a gift to Bessie and Momma—really the gift of perfection, immortality—but he cannot find either the right subject or form. He cannot save them or himself.

Therefore, there is an irresolute, desperate series of “moves” in the chapter. We never know what Fidelman will paint or say. Nor does he. Questions abound; matter “fades.” The chapter, in many ways, reflects the holes he is obsessed with because connections are broken and space triumphs. Although we are fascinated by the artistic questions raised and the inventive, reflective prose (which mirrors the art), we are not elevated; indeed, we know less about Fidelman than we did before. He empties his soul in the pursuit for formal perfection. He is “between something and nothing.”

In “Glass Blower of Venice,” the last chapter, Fidelman is on the move again. (He surely is running more than Susskind.) This time he is in Venice, the city of movement. It is said to be the “floating city of green and golden canals.” He, like Venice, floats between “canals”—the word makes us think of grottos, ghettos, caves in previous adventures—and he seems eternally suspended: “he kept no track of tide or time.”

Fidelman is “dead” as an artist because he never was able to resolve the contraries of life and art. Now he views funeral scenes, haunted by the notion that corpses do not hunger for answers. He feels part of the winter cold—we remember “Still Life”—and he looks at the “high water glinting like shards of broken mirror in the freezing winter sunlight.” He ferries back and forth, carrying passengers on his boat; he has no real destination (as he did in his island journeys in “Naked Nude”).

One day Fidelman falls in love with an “attractive, longnosed, almost oriental-eyed” Venetian woman. He sees “himself reflected in her large dark eyes” as he pursues her. He follows her into a glass blower's shop. She disappears. He thinks: “Eh, Fidelman you old cocker, there was a time you would have held on longer. Onto what? I had nothing. I gave up nothing.” Fidelman sees her as another muse.

When he captures her at last, he learns that she is a married woman (married to a glass blower) named Margherita. She sympathizes with his plight—like most of the women he has met, she regards him as a “son” or “brother” who must be protected. They meet again. (Fidelman thinks “this time is different, this one loves me.”) They make love.

Fidelman discovers that she is an older woman: “Her shapely legs were veined, splotched purple here and there. … She was forty if she was a day.” She is ill. But her physical condition only enhances her attractiveness because he views her as an “equal.”

When he meets Beppo, we sense slowly that Fidelman is also attracted to him. The glass blower is strong, handsome, and talkative. He is also interested in art, unlike his wife, and he is a sympathetic listener and talker. There is an odd quality to Beppo. Soon we learn that Fidelman sees him as looking “like his mother” (the glass blower's). He wants to paint his likeness; he hopes to “paint Beppo to his core,” and his desire is “sexual.” Malamud doesn't explain Fidelman's sexual longings in any psychological way; he merely accepts them. But we can assume that the glass blower is attractive because he (more so than the men in the other chapters) represents some kind of “fatherly” ideal of wisdom, beauty, and strength.

Beppo slashes Fidelman's canvasses. He says: “It's for your own sake. Show who's master of your fate—bad art or you.” He knows, as Susskind did earlier, that he must teach the painter. And when he pounces on Fidelman (who is making love to Margherita), and enters his body, he is doing the same kind of thing. He wants him to express his real feelings, to admit his need for love: “Think of love,” the glass blower murmured. “You've run from it all your life.”

Fidelman stops running; even Venice slows down. There is a “still point” because he accepts his love for Beppo as a natural creation. He “invents” life, not the second-rate patterns of paints: “If you sneeze at life it backs off and instead of fruit you're holding a bone. If I'm a late bloomer at least I've bloomed in love.” But even in love he must work at something. When he becomes an “apprentice” at the glass factory—he has been an “apprentice” all along—he senses that he is creating art with a sexual force. He sees himself as a kind of Prometheus, “poking into the living substance of the sun for a puddle of flowing fire.” He is a visionary, seeing hot and cool forms. And he is not trapped in the false, abstract earthworks he had earlier made, although he still makes “holes.”

Fidelman shares his art with Beppo. They work together. He blows the glass; his lover shapes it: “Every move they made was in essence sexual, a marvelous interaction because, among other things, it saved time and trouble: you worked and loved at once.” Their communal patterns seem eternally fresh and “alive.”

Then Fidelman begins to experiment on his own. Although he works compulsively (as he did before) and makes all shapes, he is dissatisfied. It is his nature. Finally he creates a “slightly hump-backed green horse for Beppo, the color of his eyes.” The gift is a farewell offering. (His lover sells it and gives him the money.) He sails from Venice. In America he continues to be a lover and “craftsman,” if not artist. He has come home; he has rewritten his own history (not of Giotto); he has been true to himself.

Pictures of Fidelman is a comic novel. It has a “happy ending” because the hero “lets himself go.” He surrenders to his deep longings, emerging as a passionate lover and craftsman. Although he seems “immoral,” he is really as moral as he ever was—perhaps more so—and he understands the need for commitment to life and art. He accepts “imperfections,” limitations, “perversity.” No longer does he demand perfection. Thus he, like most of Malamud's heroes, learns responsibilities, the need for assistance.

We may object to the lighthearted, breezy adventures in this novel, but we cannot deny that they are masterfully described. The individual chapters are self-contained; yet they gain an advantage when brought together. There is a definite progression from “Last Mohican” to “Glass Blower of Venice” as Fidelman moves from critic to craftsman. Perhaps at times we do not know enough of his motivations—there are “jumps” between chapters—but our very lack of knowledge, in effect, merges with his spiritual spaces.

Pictures of Fidelman is, consequently, a “portrait of the artist” which asserts, through slapstick, bedroom farce, and fantastic adventures, the seriousness of art and life. It is a complex achievement, pointing the way toward “miraculous” possibilities.