One favorite writer speaks of another

 Vivian Gornick, a favorite essayist, has written on Bernard Malamud, a favorite short story writer.

People like different things in fiction. I think most readers of stories would say they like a good plot. Malamud liked situations, as opposed to plots. Gornick put it this way:

 

In each of these tales, as in a fable, the situation is the story: The settings are elemental, the characters have no agency, human psychology is on hold.

 

I just hadn’t seen that, but her observation seems right to me. She also had this insight into Malamud’s characters:

 

Emotional deprivation — that which prevents the development of an inner life — is what twists each and every one of them out of shape. Without an inner life, human existence remains primitive — infantile and primitive. Malamud’s gut understanding of this equation is beyond heartbreaking.

 

I'm still thinking, but I suspect she's right about that too. So many of the people I knew as a young man had no inner life, which seemed like a tragedy to me. I loved Malamud's stories without being able to say what it was that made them so vital to me. 

• Source: Vivian Gornick, “Tales of Life: The magic of reading and rereading Bernard Malamud”; The Nation, February 2024. It’s here:

https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/bernard-malamud/

Gornick wrote the essay because Library of America’s is publishing its third volume of Malamud.