The Magic Barrel (1955)

by Bernard Malamud (Author)

Other authors: See the other authors section.

Members	Reviews	Popularity	Average rating	Mentions
439	5	21,569	(3.9)	12

Add to your library

Add to wishlist

all members

▾Members

Recently added by	jphamilton, jwhenderson, alcottacre, groeng, Libahunt, itsirc
Legacy Libraries	Ralph Ellison, Flannery O'Connor

numbers

show all

▾Tags

(2) 1950s (3) 2 (2) 20th century (7) American (8) American literature (15) B2 (4) Bernard Malamud (3) fantasy (3) fiction (80) Italy (5) Jewish (17) Jewish fiction (4) Jewish literature (4) Judaism (2) literature (7) Malamud (4) mmpb (2) National Book Award (10) New York (6) novel (4) paperback (2) short fiction (2) short stories (55) short story (2) social life (2) stories (11) to-read (5) unread (6) USA (4)

▾LibraryThing recommendations

The Assistant by Bernard Malamud (1957)
The Tenants by Bernard Malamud (1971)
A New Life by Bernard Malamud (1961)
The Family Moskat by Isaac Bashevis Singer (1967)
Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow (1969)

In My Father's Court by Isaac Bashevis Singer (1980)
Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories by John Updike (1962)
Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth (1966)
Shosha by Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978)
The Dean's December by Saul Bellow (1982)

see more recommendations for this work

refresh

▾Member recommendations

None.

▾Will you like it?

▾Member reviews

date ▼ | votes

Showing 5 of 5

Mildly classic.

I mean, he has some skill, but I just don't see what he does that we shouldn't have expected him to do, at least.

(8/10) (

)

Tullius22 | May 7, 2012 |

Thirteen stories about Jewish lives in the 1940's and 1950's.

Folkshul | Jan 15, 2011 |

Book Description: Pennsylvania: The Franklin Library, 1978. 23x15cms. Limited edition (The Collected Stories of the World's Greatest Writers) hc full, tan leather with elaborate gilt decorated boards & spine. raised bands, all edges gilt with yellow silken endpapers and matching ribbon marker. 453pp incl colour illustrations by Silverman and authors port. by Walter Rane. minor offset from marker on pg 241/215 o/w clean text. tight binding.

Czrbr | Jun 7, 2010 |

Fine, readable, and compressed short stories, often involving uprooted or transient people (travelling writers, immigrants, tourists) and written in the early 50's with the memory of WW2 and the holocaust still firmly placed in the minds of the protagonists and the author. Deftly examines themes of Jewish spirituality, honesty, and how people treat one another. (

)

abirdman | Aug 17, 2009 |

3197. The Magic Barrel, By Bernard Malamud (read May 17, 1999) This is a book of short stories which won the 1959 National Book Award. This was a sheer delight to read. Ordinarily I shy away from books of short stories because every few pages one needs to get started all afresh on the story. But the stories in this book have such a sure and seemingly authentic touch that one needs to read only a few paragraphs and one is thoroly caught up in the story. This was a sheerly worthwhile and enjoyable book. (

)

Schmerguls | Dec 5, 2007 |

date ▼ | votes

Showing 5 of 5

▾Published reviews

1 review

add a review

thingScore 100

What a masterpiece of compression—yet with the lightness and swiftness of a Rembrandt sketch.

added by Shortride | editNational Book Foundation, Liz Rosenberg (Jul 14, 2009)

▾Other authors

» Add other authors (2 possible)

Author name	Role	Type of author	Work?	Status
Malamud, Bernard	Author	primary author	all editions	confirmed
Coutinho, M.	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed

▾Work-to-work relationships

Is contained in

Bernard Malamud: The Magic Barrel & Idiots First by Bernard Malamud

view history

▾Common Knowledge

You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.

For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.

Series (with order)

Canonical title

Information from the Dutch Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to the English one.

Salzman, de huwelijksmakelaar

Original title

Information from the Dutch Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to the English one.

The magic barrel

Alternative titles

Information from the Dutch Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to the English one.

De huwelijksmakelaar en andere verhalen

Original publication date

1955

People/Characters

Important places

Important events

Related movies

The Angel Levine (1970 ∙ IMDb)

The First Seven Years (1998 ∙ IMDb)

Awards and honors

National Book Award (Fiction, 1959)

Epigraph

Dedication

First words

Feld, the shoemaker, was annoyed that his helper, Sobol, was so insensitive to his reverie that he wouldn't for a minute cease his fanatic pounding at the other bench.

Quotations

Last words

Disambiguation notice

Publisher's editors

Blurbers

Information from the Dutch Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to the English one.

Romein Meyer, Henk

Kazin, Alfred

Publisher series

▾References

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English

None

▾LibraryThing members' description

Book description

Haiku summary

▾Book descriptions

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0374525862, Paperback)

Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction

Introduction by Jhumpa Lahiri

Bernard Malamud's first book of short stories, The Magic Barrel, has been recognized as a classic from the time it was published in 1959. The stories are set in New York and in Italy (where Malamud's alter ego, the struggleing New York Jewish Painter Arthur Fidelman, roams amid the ruins of old Europe in search of his artistic patrimony); they tell of egg candlers and shoemakers, matchmakers, and rabbis, in a voice that blends vigorous urban realism, Yiddish idiom, and a dash of artistic magic.

The Magic Barrel is a book about New York and about the immigrant experience, and it is high point in the modern American short story. Few books of any kind have managed to depict struggle and frustration and heartbreak with such delight, or such artistry.

(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:29:52 -0500)

(see all 3 descriptions)

▾Library descriptions

No library descriptions found.