Oregon daily emerald., August 07, 1972, Page 5, Image 5

In the tradition of town criers, and cracker barrels
Bernard Malamud: setting his pen to voice
By MICHAEL PETRYNI
Of the Emerald
The modern tradition probably extends from
Dickens to Yevtushenko. Its origins probably go to cro
magnon man, lie institutionalised in ancient Greece and
at its peak, the tradition embodies the whole fraternity
of town criers.
For many years in the United States, it was centered
on front porches, verandas, and in general stores around
cracker barrels, before being transferred to the stage.
Mark Twain was its master. Faulkner created Rad
cliffe—the itinerant salesmen of sewing machines and
gossip—of the Snopes trilogy to try to catch its spirit.
The South probably maintained the tradition for the
longest. One thinks of the farmers gathering on Satur
day, visitin’, they would say. Will Rogers certainly had a
large share.
Storytelling. The word seems to dance on a nerve
ending. To say it in a flat voice gives it an aura, a
mystery similar to Jean Shepard’s gasping the simple
dream word. “Maine.” to say it with exclamation gives
it a gusto, an exhilaration similar to an excited fisher
man’s lie.
Oral tradition
The oral tradition always came first. Its tales and
myths seeped into all corners of life, modified and
^.arged upon with each new telling, always changing,
®Rays vibrant and alive. Inevitably the writers come
along and set it all into printed word, giving the tale a
body. There was a tension edge there for the writers too.
James Agee, a wordslinger, who would talk with the
same rolling, passionate language of his books. Walker
Evans recalls the temptation to put a pen in Agee’s hand
so that he could save it all. Brendan Behan certainly was
caught in the web between the traditions. Dylan
Thomas, maybe.
James Dickey paid his dues—when asked on the
Cavett show why the South had produced so many fine
writers, he replied: “I suppose my generation was the
last able to sit around and actually hear a story .”
To save it all, Evan said, yes, that has its usefulness.
To read a book and tremble is to later have a tingle on
the ridge of the spine, and welling tear on the edge of the
eyelid when you tell about it to a friend. Or to have a
lump in the throat, as Stanley Kauffmann once said of
Bernard Malamud’s book of stories, Idiot's First.
There seems to be an increased yearning for that oral
tradition, to hear a story. Talk shows are a rather half
hearted expression of that yearning. Hal Holbrook’s
Mark Twain and James Witmore’s Will Rogers are
certainly expressions of that yearning. Poetry reading
at the Odyssey, in fact poetry readings anywhere. But on
a smaller scale there seems to be something going on in
Eugene’s bars—Blitz has an idea what’s happening—a
lot of people are sitting around a lot of tables, talking to
each other.
Some of that yearning may have been expressed last
Thursday night when a standing room only crowd
•'mmed into PLC 180 to hear Bernard Malamud read
lee short stories.
The guy next to me whispered to his date: “Big name
draws a crowd.” But in so saying he excluded himself
from such a category. Why was he there?
Granted the tea and crumpet crowd was there. A
certain culture status clings to Malamud. But I won 't put
that down. Culture status is easily diminished by a sigh
at a certain voice inflection or the power of a word.
Welcome to my web, the storyteller would say, and
devour with a human contact.
Malamud is a small, gnomish man with dark-rimmed
glasses that seem to barely hook back over his ears. He
taught at OSU for a number of years and finished them
off with a novel His voice is flat, nasal and makes one
think of a cobbler inquiring what kind of sole you prefer
on your shoe
He explains that he writes stories after completing a
novel to see “what else is new, what have 1 learned? To
assess certain meanings that I have lived through.”
“I tend to be a fabulist, not a self projector,” he says.
Inevitably, one wonders. The informal usage of
“storyteller,” means a prevaricator, pleasantly a liar.
So we forgive a fiction writer so that we can get on to
another truth.
He says he imagines an "invisible figure" on whom he
tenuously hangs his story, his hand describing the figure
with the deaf and dumb language for falling rain. The
“invisible figure” tickles the mind with an intrigue of an
apparition Of the story’s finish, he says, “When it says
what it has to, it ends, but the meaning goes on.”
"The Letter"
The first story, “The Letter” concerns a man named
Newman who goes to visit his father in an institution, an
asylum, 1 guess. Newman sits with his father in the ward
for some two and a half hours. Newman brings the old
man “one pineapple tart and one strawberry but the old
man wouldn’t eat them. " Newman at one point said “Do
you want me to come back next Sunday, or do you want
to have next Sunday off?”
“The old man said nothing Nothing meant yes or it
meant no. If you pressed him to say which, he wept.”
Hmm . . .
The old man can’t remember that his wife is dead and
when his son tells him, he won’t believe “that one." We
can pick and choose the lies we will or will not believe.
When Newman leaves, he runs into Teddy, who stands
by the gate with a letter in his hand. Teddy was “fifty or
more and maybe so was his letter.” The envelope was
blue and inside were four blank sheets of cream paper.
He wants Newman to mail the letter for him, but
Newman won’t because there is nothing in it. “That’s
what you say,” Teddy says.
Teddy, having fought at Guadalcanal, always asks
Newman where Newman fought. “Nowhere yet,” he
answers.
Newman humors Teddy on the letter, which Teddy
still thinks will take three cents to mail. Inflation doesn’t
affect the insane. Newman asks what kind of letter is it?
“Blue with white paper inside of it,” Teddy answers.
Newman: “Saying what?”
Teddy: “Shame on you.”
Then one Sunday, a tall, lean old man looking aboul
eighty years old and wearing a WW I overseas cap, stood
with Teddy at the gate. His name is Ralph. He is Teddy’s
father. He, too, tries to get Newman to mail Teddy’s
letter.
Newman is astonished that Ralph is Teddy’s father:
“Neither of you resemble the other.”
“Who do you resemble?" Ralph asks, twisting the
question back on Newman, who can’t say.
“What war were you in?” Ralph asks.
“None so far.”
“We’re stuck here because we fought the wars. Teddy
at Iwo Jima. I fought in the Marne and in the Argonne
Forest I had both lungs gassed The wind changed and
the Huns were gassed. That’s not all that were.”
“I'm sorry you were gassed,” Newman says.
“Tough turd,” Teddy says.
Again the pleas to mail the letter. But no.
“I better be going,” Newman said, “or I’ll miss my
train.” The guard let him through the gate and then
closed the gate.
llmm .
“W ho do you visit here,” Ralph yelled to Newman
“My father.”
“What war was he in?”
“The wars of life.”
“Has he got walking privileges?”
"No.”
“What I mean, is he crazy9”
“Yes.”
“So are you,” Ralph said. "Why don’t you come back
in here and stay around with the rest of us."
Each Malamud story seems to hang on the “invisible
figure" of human loss, of pain. They ride on ripple of
sadness Spoken, they caust» a fidgeting in the crowd, a
shifting of position. They seek out the chill of a cold
sweat.
"In Retirement"
The second story, "In Retirement, concerns a lJr,
Morris. 67, wife dead, daughter in Scotland, just retired
and seemingly content with his loneliness. Concern like
the animal—old age—sits in his lap "Where else can I
go," he asks himself, “67 is not 80."
In the narrow deep lobby of the building where he lives
he sees a woman drop a letter and he picks it up and in
curiosity puts it in his pocket.
Reading it, he finds it is a father-to-daughter letter. It
is filled with words like “You have slept around long
enough easy lay . . find a husband . . your life is
that of a semi prostitute .. men use you ... '29 is not 16."
Her mother appended to the letter: “Your sex life fills
me full of fear ”
Dr. Morris, a train of thought rubbling by about the
girl, finds himself slipping into erotic wishes. He
becomes overwhelmed with emotion and the torments of
nights of erotic dreams.
He must find out more about the girl He gets another
letter, one from a manfriend, which was a bore except
for the last line: "Be in bed, wearing white panties, 1
don’t like to waste time." Dr. Morris didn’t know who he
was more disgusted with this fool, or himself.
So Dr Moriris begins to make it a habit to watch the
girl pick up her mail, watch her put some letter away,
embrace others with suppressed excitement.
Finally, thinking more and more about her, he com
poses his own letter, a doctor’s clinical rendering of his
own affectionate interest. He composes it in excitement.
Rejects the idea of writing the last line . “Be in bed,
wearing white panties, 1 don’t like to waste time.”
He mails it and waits to see her pick it up.
To his horror, she comes down with a man beside her.
She reads the letter, the scrawl of his eagerness, and
hands it to her companion. Dr Morris blanches.
Taking the letter back, the girl, with spite, tears it up
and throws the pieces in Morris’ direction “likea blast of
wind-driven snow."
His expectations are crushed in pain His hope flit
tered away.
Getting into the elevator at one end of “long, deep
lobby,” he tells the elevator man: “There’s no way for
setting old age aside, or death,” and rides up 15 floors.
Techniques
Storytolling has its techniques. Hal Holbrook, for
instance, using the charm of Mark Twain taking a break
from his lecture to go out back to have a cigar when he
has been smoking all along Malamud relies on his
words. Keeping his voice understated, he lets his word
pack the wallop He lets the phrases hang in the air, like
clouds taking on the shape of ships
Storytelling is mini-theatre, but closer to the
playwright as actor There is the direct contact between
the artist and his audience Malamud shakes hands with
people during a break They whisper their compliments
to him No doubt, it is instant gratification. A sharing of
thought, of feelings, sitting on edge of a tradition.
The last story, “The Silver Crown,” had much to do
with the lack of faith The meddling over and the
muddling through of human life. A man lets his father
die because he does not believe a mystic’s charm
Hut I am tired of writing so 1 will let the last story
depend on verbal exchange. It is a good story and
probably can be better if you find someone who was
there and is willing to share it with you. A fine story to tip
a beer over
Both Rings
$250
Student Charge Accounts
Welcome
<_/ JEWELERS
Valley River &
Downtown Eugene
DAIRY—ANN
343 2112 1810 Chambers
Breakfast served anytime
Dinners and Luncheons
Homemade pies and soups
:13 varieties shake and sundae
flavors
Best burgers in
town
i XU* IIP'™
Srvrfi(M<'. a »*»»
"Wwn m*»» i all wart
{A Nicf Pi*
Nicf Pioce To Go
German
auto smmviCK
fjSSi VOLKSWAGEN
MERCEDES & PORSCHE
DATSUN & TOYOTA
FACTORY TRAINED EXPERTS
GUENTER SCHOENER 2045 FRANKLIN BLVD.
Bus. Ph. 342-2912 Eugene, Oregon 97403