A New Life

Rating:
Summary: terrific.
Review: I first read this book in college - I found it in the stacks in our library and chose it as a recreational read. Needless to say, it has become one of the most memorable novels I have ever come across; so much so that I bought the book to read again last month. Malamud's talent lies in his effectual portrayal of true to life characters and situations: S. Levin has a history of making the wrong choices, struggles to do what his conscience tell him is the correct path in life and battles to maintain his personal dignity -- all while living in a new state without emotional support. The administrative tug of war that defines his experience as instructor at a small state college are realistic and well portrayed - but also, they are written with a good deal of wit, making this quite the enjoyable read. I recommend it without any reservation!

Rating:
Summary: "The mysteries of the infinitive" if not the infinite
Review: Jonathan Lethem's preface shouldn't be read first but last, as it--albeit subtly--gives away the ending for any reader who makes it to the latter third of the novel. While I did not support the choice made by the protagonist, Sy, at the end, and sympathized more than perhaps I was supposed to with the antagonist, I found this evocation of the Cold War period as spent at a cow college in a small town in the Northwest gripping and surprisingly convincing in its indirect narrative style, which mimics not only the patterns of thinking in Sy's mind, but springs off at times into Joycean reverie.

I have only read Malamud's The Assistant, and that in college, so my pleasure at his plot became all the more pronounced when I found so much of the setting alarmingly familiar--I teach English too at a non-liberal arts college, run by number-crunching techies, so Sy's predicaments--although now I doubt if he could land his position without a PhD--stayed fresh despite happening half-a-century ago.

Issues of academic freedom, nourishing of the soul, escape into nature and ideals vs. the mundane may be new material for those used to Malamud's urban explorations of often NY and Jewish characters, but here it all works. I was mildly intrigued that Sy's Jewishness never gains but one mention, near the end of the novel, but is assumed, I suppose, throughout as he is marked by his beard and his "East Coast" origins as an outsider all the time. The near-absence of religion and the substitution of a longing for nature, perhaps a Wordsworthian sort of wonder, permeates much of the lyrical passages interspersed with the more tormented episodes--which gain as the book lengthens.

The book has a bit of slapstick and a lot of farce in the predicaments Sy gets himself into, but I can testify that much of Malamud's take on such an institution remains relevant today, in a much more constrained academic job market for such profs-to-be. Again, a measure of the skill Malamud brings is both the detachment the third-person p-o-v offers of Sy (who never leaves our sight) and the engagement with the other characters we see through his jaundiced eyes, and the fact, as I stated, that your sympathies may not be fully with Sy by the book's close.

Rating:
Summary: A charming novel about the possibilities of change in life.
Review: Malamud has written an entertaining novel about the attempt by the "hero" Levin to begin life anew in Cascadia (Oregon) in the 1950's, an era it is hard to imagine interesting - but it is here! And the end creates its own questions about new beginnings, love, the meaning of life, and all sorts of serious subjects, without ever feeling weighed down by them.

Rating:
Summary: A Good Picture of a Real Person
Review: Malamud's book is the story of a man who moves across the country to try a new life as a college instructor. As a college instructor myself, the politics he deals with rang true. I was mainly impressed, however, with the thoughts inside this characters head. I often read novels in which I come across something and think "No man I know would ever think this", but I never felt that way here. I didn't like the ending (I thought the character made a bad choice) but Malamud is under no contract to clear his endings with me first. A good solid read.