The Assistant - Hardcover

MALAMUD, Bernard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374106444 ISBN 13: 9780374106447

Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1957

Synopsis

Frank Alpine, an Italian -American drifter on the run from his past, stumbles into the orbit of struggling Brooklyn grocer Morris Bober.  Seeing a chance to atone for his sins, Frank becomes Bober's stock boy and runs the store when the owner takes ill.  But it is Bober's daughter , Helen , who gives Frank a real reason to turn his life around.  Considered one of the greastest Jewish novels ever written.  The Assistant is a classic look at social and racial divides of America in the early twentieth century.  Filled with riveting scenes of life on the edge, this is an enduring story of how love and the human spirit can triumph over any adversity.

About this title

About the Author

Bernard Malamud was born to Russian immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York, in 1914. His story collection, The Magic Barrel, won the National Book Award in 1958. The Fixer, a novel, won him another National Book Award in 1967, as well as the Pulitzer Prize. His other books include The Tenants, A New Life, Dubin's Lives, The Assistant, and The Natural, which was made into a highly successful motion picture directed by Barry Levinson and starring Robert Redford.

From the Back Cover

Bernard Malamud was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. on April 26, 1914, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia. By his death in 1986, he had won the Pulitzer Prize and twice won the National Book Award and his books (such as "The Fixer", "The Natural") and stories (such as "The Angel Levine," "The Jewbird") had become American classics. "The Assistant," published in 1957, represents this great writer's belief in the noble drama of everyday lives and the universality of the Jewish experience.

George Guidall, winner of the 1999 "AUDIE", the audio publishing industry's highest honor, has recorded more than 500 books on tape. They range from Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" to present-day best sellers. He has also spent 30 years in the theater as an actor, director and teacher. He replaced Eli Wallach in "Caf Crown" and played the lead in Neil Simon's "Chapter Two." Television audiences have frequently seen Mr. Guidall on "Law and Order."

Reviews

This new specialty-interest audio publisher is launching its line with two strong titles in addition to this one: Betrothed by S.Y. Agnon, read by Peter Waldren, and Miss America, 1945: Bess Myerson and the Year that Changed Our Lives by Susan Dworkin, read by Bess Myerson and Adam Grupper. Known especially for the craft of his short stories, Malamud (The Fixer; The Natural) published this novel in 1957. Frank Alpine is an Italian-American drifter who lands a job working for a humble Jewish grocer in Brooklyn. When he falls in love with the storekeeper's daughter, he is forced to reexamine his moral and spiritual beliefs. Guidall, one of audio's finest narrators, extracts a strong sense of atmosphere from Malamud's richly descriptive language. He throws himself into the many charged dialogue scenesAcomplete with the ethnic accents requiredAexpressing pathos and humility without overdramatizing.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Not one false moment mars George Guidall's resonant interpretation of the Pulitzer Prize winner's 1957 novel. With surprising lyricism and characteristic irony, the author writes of Frank, a young, Gentile nogoodnik, who comes to work for a Jewish ma-and-pa grocery in return for room and board. The family owners don't know that Frank was one of the thieves who previously robbed the place and clubbed Morris, the paterfamilias. For his part, Frank is at war with himself, ever vacillating between his good and brutal instincts. Guidall is totally in sync with this group, vividly portraying the inner life of each. He delivers the narrative with equal aplomb, making every moment seem effortlessly riveting. Y.R.Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Assistant

The early November street was dark though night had ended, but the wind, to the grocer's surprise, already clawed. It flung his apron into his face as he bent for the two milk cases at the curb. Morris Bober dragged the heavy boxes to the door, panting. A large brown bag of hard rolls stood in the doorway along with the sour-faced, gray-haired Poilisheh huddled there, who wanted one.

"What's the matter so late?"

"Ten after six," said the grocer.

"Is cold," she complained.

Turning the key in the lock he let her in. Usually he lugged in the milk and lit the gas radiators, but the Polish woman was impatient. Morris poured the bag of rolls into a wire basket on the counter and found an unseeded one for her. Slicing it in halves, he wrapped it in white store paper. She tucked the roll into her cord market bag and left three pennies on the counter. He rang up the sale on an old noisy cash register, smoothed and put away the bag the rolls had come in, finished pulling in the milk, and stored the bottles at the bottom of the refrigerator. He lit the gas radiator at the front of the store and went into the back to light the one there.

He boiled up coffee in a blackened enamel pot and sippedit, chewing on a roll, not tasting what he was eating. After he had cleaned up he waited; he waited for Nick Fuso, the upstairs tenant, a young mechanic who worked in a garage in the neighborhood. Nick came in every morning around seven for twenty cents' worth of ham and a loaf of bread.

But the front door opened and a girl of ten entered, her face pinched and eyes excited. His heart held no welcome for her.

"My mother says," she said quickly, "can you trust her till tomorrow for a pound of butter, loaf of rye bread and a small bottle of cider vinegar?"

He knew the mother. "No more trust."

The girl burst into tears.

Morris gave her a quarter-pound of butter, the bread and vinegar. He found a penciled spot on the worn counter, near the cash register, and wrote a sum under "Drunk Woman." The total now came to $2.03, which he never hoped to see. But Ida would nag if she noticed a new figure, so he reduced the amount to $1.61. His peace--the little he lived with--was worth forty-two cents.

He sat in a chair at the round wooden table in the rear of the store and scanned, with raised brows, yesterday's Jewish paper that he had already thoroughly read. From time to time he looked absently through the square windowless window cut through the wall, to see if anybody had by chance come into the store. Sometimes when he looked up from his newspaper, he was startled to see a customer standing silently at the counter.

Now the store looked like a long dark tunnel.

The grocer sighed and waited. Waiting he thought he did poorly. When times were bad time was bad. It died as he waited, stinking in his nose.

A workman came in for a fifteen-cent can of King Oscar Norwegian sardines.

Morris went back to waiting. In twenty-one years the store had changed little. Twice he had painted all over, once added new shelving. The old-fashioned double windows atthe front a carpenter had made into a large single one. Ten years ago the sign hanging outside fell to the ground but he had never replaced it. Once, when business hit a long good spell, he had had the wooden icebox ripped out and a new white refrigerated showcase put in. The showcase stood at the front in line with the old counter and he often leaned against it as he stared out of the window. Otherwise the store was the same. Years ago it was more a delicatessen; now, though he still sold a little delicatessen, it was more a poor grocery.

A half-hour passed. When Nick Fuso failed to appear, Morris got up and stationed himself at the front window, behind a large cardboard display sign the beer people had rigged up in an otherwise empty window. After a while the hall door opened, and Nick came out in a thick, hand-knitted green sweater. He trotted around the corner and soon returned carrying a bag of groceries. Morris was now visible at the window. Nick saw the look on his face but didn't look long. He ran into the house, trying to make it seem it was the wind that was chasing him. The door slammed behind him, a loud door.

The grocer gazed into the street. He wished fleetingly that he could once more be out in the open, as when he was a boy --never in the house, but the sound of the blustery wind frightened him. He thought again of selling the store but who would buy? Ida still hoped to sell. Every day she hoped. The thought caused him grimly to smile, although he did not feel like smiling. It was an impossible idea so he tried to put it out of his mind. Still, there were times when he went into the back, poured himself a spout of coffee and pleasantly thought of selling. Yet if he miraculously did, where would he go, where? He had a moment of uneasiness as he pictured himself without a roof over his head. There he stood in all kinds of weather, drenched in rain, and the snow froze on his head. No, not for an age had he lived a whole day in the open. As a boy, always running in the muddy, rutted streets of the village, or across the fields, or bathing withthe other boys in the river; but as a man, in America, he rarely saw the sky. In the early days when he drove a horse and wagon, yes, but not since his first store. In a store you were entombed.

The milkman drove up to the door in his truck and hurried in, a bull, for his empties. He lugged out a caseful and returned with two half-pints of light cream. Then Otto Vogel, the meat provisions man, entered, a bushy-mustached German carrying a smoked liverwurst and string of wieners in his oily meat basket. Morris paid cash for the liverwurst; from a German he wanted no favors. Otto left with the wieners. The bread driver, new on the route, exchanged three fresh loaves for three stale and walked out without a word. Leo, the cake man, glanced hastily at the package cake on top of the refrigerator and called, "See you Monday, Morris."

Morris didn't answer.

Leo hesitated. "Bad all over, Morris."

"Here is the worst."

"See you Monday."

A young housewife from close by bought sixty-three cents' worth; another came in for forty-one cents'. He had earned his first cash dollar for the day.

 

Breitbart, the bulb peddler, laid down his two enormous cartons of light bulbs and diffidently entered the back.

"Go in," Morris urged. He boiled up some tea and served it in a thick glass, with a slice of lemon. The peddler eased himself into a chair, derby hat and coat on, and gulped the hot tea, his Adam's apple bobbing.

"So how goes now?" asked the grocer.

"Slow," shrugged Breitbart.

Morris sighed. "How is your boy?"

Breitbart nodded absently, then picked up the Jewish paper and read. After ten minutes he got up, scratched all over, lifted across his thin shoulders the two large cartons tied together with clothesline and left.

Morris watched him go.

The world suffers. He felt every schmerz.

At lunchtime Ida came down. She had cleaned the whole house.

Morris was standing before the faded couch, looking out of the rear window at the back yards. He had been thinking of Ephraim.

His wife saw his wet eyes.

"So stop sometime, please." Her own grew wet.

He went to the sink, caught cold water in his cupped palms and dipped his face into it.

"The Italyener," he said, drying himself, "bought this morning across the street."

She was irritated. "Give him for twenty-nine dollars five rooms so he should spit in your face."

"A cold water flat," he reminded her.

"You put in gas radiators."

"Who says he spits? This I didn't say."

"You said something to him not nice?"

"Me?"

"Then why he went across the street?"

"Why? Go ask him," he said angrily.

"How much you took in till now?"

"Dirt."

She turned away.

He absent-mindedly scratched a match and lit a cigarette.

"Stop with the smoking," she nagged.

He took a quick drag, clipped the butt with his thumb nail and quickly thrust it under his apron into his pants pocket. The smoke made him cough. He coughed harshly, his face lit like a tomato. Ida held her hands over her ears. Finally he brought up a gob of phlegm and wiped his mouth with his handkerchief, then his eyes.

"Cigarettes," she said bitterly. "Why don't you listen what the doctor tells you?"

"Doctors," he remarked.

Afterward he noticed the dress she was wearing. "What is the picnic?"

Ida said, embarrassed, "I thought to myself maybe will come today the buyer."

She was fifty-one, nine years younger than he, her thick hair still almost all black. But her face was lined, and her legs hurt when she stood too long on them, although she now wore shoes with arch supports. She had waked that morning resenting the grocer for having dragged her, so many years ago, out of a Jewish neighborhood into this. She missed to this day their old friends and landsleit--lost for parnusseh unrealized. That was bad enough, but on top of their isolation, the endless worry about money embittered her. She shared unwillingly the grocer's fate though she did not show it and her dissatisfaction went no farther than nagging--her guilt that she had talked him into a grocery store when he was in the first year of evening high school, preparing, he had said, for pharmacy. He was, through the years, a hard man to move. In the past she could sometimes resist him, but the weight of his endurance was too much for her now.

"A buyer," Morris grunted, "will come next Purim."

"Don't be so smart. Karp telephoned him."

"Karp," he said in disgust. "Where he telephoned--the cheapskate?"

"Here."

"When?"

"Y...

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Publication date: 1957
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374106444
• ISBN 13: 9780374106447
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 246