The Fixer

During Yakov’s first days in the courthouse jail the accusation had seemed to him almost an irrelevancy, nothing much to do with his life or deeds. But after the visit to the cave he had stopped thinking of relevancy, truth, or even proof. There was no “reason,” there was only their plot against a Jew, any Jew; he was the accidental choice for the sacrifice. He would be tried because the accusation had been made, there didn’t have to be another reason. Being born a Jew meant being vulnerable to history, including its worst errors. Accident and history had involved Yakov Bok as he had never dreamed he could be involved. The involvement was, in a way of speaking, impersonal, but the effect, his misery and suffering, were not. The show more suffering was personal, painful, and possibly endless.

In early 20th century Tsarist Russia, a restless young Jewish man, a fixer by trade, leaves the shtetl for Kiev. Yakov Bok hopes to improve his mind, earn some money, and maybe emigrate to somewhere better like America. Yakov is not a religious man, but he is basically a moral man. A couple of good deeds involve Yakov in a chain of events much larger than himself. Accused of a crime he did not commit, Yakov spends months, years in jail resisting state pressure to confess for the welfare of all the Jews in Russia.

This novel’s religious themes and the suffering that Yakov endures as the state pressures him to make a statement against his will echo similar themes in Shusaku Endo’s Silence. Both novels wrestle with the silence or absence of God in the face of unrelenting suffering. Interestingly, both novels were first published in 1966. Maybe there’s a thesis there for some aspiring scholar of literature. show less

Of all the novels I've read in the last few years, the ones that could be termed 'Jewish American Fiction', the one I'd say Malamud's The Fixer most resembles is Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird.

Both of the novels are written in a style so earnest and even a little antiquated that it's almost too much for their respective pages. There's a gradualness to the proceedings, an iceberg like slowness that lends both stories a heightened sense of acute dread interspersed by jarring moments of both depravity and humanity that affects the reader so much it could almost be called painful, though not entirely negatively. Imagine left to thirst in a desert until the absence of water is all you have, and then falling into a frozen lake, something show more like that.

What Malamud does is present a character and break him, again and again, and give said character every reason, conceivable or not (he comes within a hair's breadth of madness towards the end) to confess to a crime he didn't commit if only to gain leniency for himself and his fellow Jews in the Pale of Settlement in Russia. But the character, Yakov Bok, doesn't. Much to the chagrin of his captors and tormentors and, I imagine, the befuddlement and even slight rage of his compatriot Jews. Not rage at Bok, but rather rage at their own impotence and place in history as Bok so lucidly (and towards the end wrathfully) elucidates.

This is a book of cruelty, with no real heroism to speak of. Bok is not a hero though his resistance and strength of will under horrific conditions in a Russian jail can only rightfully be called superhuman. It was interesting to read a book with a protagonist like this. He's more human than many might like to admit to admiring.

What fascinated me most about this book is the central question: why does Yakov Bok continue to live? It's certainly not for religion as he spites God regularly (and not without a certain cathartic pleasure) and certainly not out of love or pride, or out of a sense of brotherhood or unity with anyone or anything.

In fact, Bok fits in very well as a consummate outsider of the highest level, someone who, from conception, is destined not to fit, and to be constantly reminded of it and rankled because of it. But his outsider status only solidifies his Jewishness, even if, this is maybe only my interpretation, he is the only true Jew among Jews, as he suffers to a level that few other Jews in the story or in actual history can understand, or want to see or know too much about. The fact that Bok is a fictionalized version of a real person (who was quite different and more pious, apparently) does little to dampen his effect on me, he better serves the overall running theme in the novel as he is and I feel Malamud's character, though not a hero, is immeasurably more memorable and even important than a pious unquestioning gazer towards God's just reward.

Reading this book was, in a sense, refreshing. It was bracing to read a detailing of Jewish suffering that precludes the current 'trends' in American Jewish Fiction. The likes of Jonathan Safron Foer and Nicole Krauss have a disconcerting tendency to trivialize the shtetl experience (almost commidifying it for, gross, mass consumption) whilst waving limp hand to the intelligent sensitive strength of Jewish continuity in America and Israel. It's so disingenuous, like Walt Disney presents The Jewish Meta Narrative.

Though not without its flaws (the ending text/dialogue blocks detailing the Jewish plight smacked of lecture and a rush to give historical weight) this is a book to be read and contemplated. It's a powerful shot of a story that will stick with you and remind you to never completely forget humanity's capacity to torture and suffer, but to also bear and remain steadfast. show less

this is one depressing book. i consider myself awfully cynical and suspicious of the human race (it's what happens after doing anti-violence work for too long) but my worldview can't hold a candle to malamud's. or at least to what he allows to happen in this book - the depths of treachery are pretty astounding. certainly he tempers that with hope and with people seeking justice, but the unjust is overwhelming.

one of the things i most like reading about is oppression (i like a good downer), and this definitely fits the bill. in spite of being jewish myself, and that being the type of oppression experienced in these pages, this resonated with me even more with the parallels we can draw to racism in our country. and to so many other kinds show more of oppression, historical and current, in the world. this kind of book has a lot of reach.

overall, this is a well written, compelling read. there are a few parts throughout that were a little longwinded for me, but it's only a few pages worth in total. there were a couple of things that happened in the last quarter or so that didn't seem to fit so i'll be giving it a bit more thought over the next few days. i suspect that having knowledge of spinoza would be helpful in seeing where the story was going but also the meaning behind it.

this is my second malamud and i would definitely be happy to read more of his work.

"...a skinny worried man in clothes about to fall apart, who looked as though he had been assembled out of sticks and whipped air..."

"'There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.'"

"'There's something cursed, it seems to me, about a country where men have owned men as property.'"

"'Keep in mind, Yakov Shepsovitch, that if your life is without value, so is mine. If the law does not protect you, it will not, in the end, protect me.'" show less

"Se la sua vita non vale niente, non vale niente neanche la mia. Se la legge non la difende, alla fine non difenderà neanche me".

Basato su un caso reale, è il racconto della discesa all'inferno di un innocente, perseguitato a causa del razzismo, della superstizione e della burocrazia. Summa del "destino" di sofferenza legato all'essere ebrei, è un libro in cui fin dalla prima pagina pesa l'ineluttabilità di un fato nefasto. Forse solo "Uomo invisibile" di Ralph Ellison mi ha dato una così forte sensazione di identificazione nella sofferenza di una ingiustizia subita - ad accomunare i due libri del resto è il sopruso nei confronti di innocenti per motivi di discriminazione razziale.

What a difficult book to read, and, I can only imagine, to write. We start with the injustice of poverty and lack of opportunity in the shtetl and move almost directly into a variety of unjust accusations leveled against Yakov Bok, who has become a scapegoat for all the imagined evil deeds of all the Jews in Russia.

Bok leaves the shtetl with hopes of a better life in Kiev. At first, things look up for him. Serendipity finds him a good job, and he is able to afford some books, and even put away some money. The catch is that he has to live in a district from which Jews are forbidden from living. All goes well, although Bok is not a popular figure, until a young boy is found murdered in a cave nearby.

The police show up at his door, arrest show more him, and summarily throw him in prison. Things go from bad to worse as he is forced to submit to increasingly cruel and dehumanizing treatment, not least of which is having to repeatedly listen to the many crimes he is supposed to have committed. But he steadfastly declares his innocence, and it is this that is supposed to make him one literature's greatest heroes. I'm not so sure about this, but certainly he is a strong character.

His strength almost makes this book harder to read, though. I found myself almost wishing he would confess, even though I knew he was innocent, just so the horribleness would end. But he and I both knew that confessing to a crime that he didn't commit wouldn't help at all, either his own dignity, or the plight of the Jews in Russia. So we endured together until the trial, to which Bok is on his way at the end of the book. At first I was disappointed that we don't find out what happens at the trial, but then I realized that the result of the trial isn't the point of the book. It's the persecution and the strength that it reveals that really matter. show less

Based on a true story, The Fixer is the story of a Russian Jew who, in the early 1900s, is unjustly accused of murdering a Christian boy. Bernard Malamud’s 1966 novel won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Yakov Bok has a hard luck life as a handyman, or fixer, in the Jewish Pale of Settlement. Although political reforms following the 1905 revolution gave Jews new freedoms and political clout, life in the Pale had not improved. After his childless wife abandons him for a goy, Yakov leaves the shtetl for Kiev, where he ends up working in, and living above, a Christian-owned brick factory. With an assumed name, no papers to allow him to live in that part of the city, and anti-Jewish sentiments on the rise, Yakov is show more headed for trouble.

When the mutilated body of a neighborhood boy is found stuffed in a cave, the evidence – circumstantial and fabricated – mounts against Yakov. He is arrested and left to rot in prison while the sham investigation drags on for years as anti-Semitic authorities try to build a case of ritual murder. With no indictment, no lawyer, and no idea of what is to come, Yakov’s situation is a downward spiral of gloom.

Yakov is motivated by his dwindling hope of exoneration, only meagerly spurred on by a few rare contacts with the outside and tidbits of news about his case. Although claiming to be non-religious and non-political, Yakov worries that his case will spark violent retribution or even a new pogrom against the Jews.

Malamud incorporates Yakov’s tragedy into the larger picture by having characters discuss Russia’s anti-Semitic history and Tsarist politics. It is this contextual detail that raises Yakov’s story above that of one individual’s tribulations and makes it a morality tale about freedom and responsibility in the face of evil and suffering. One of the characters explains Malmud’s thesis:

I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist. Once often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempts to understand, and if at all possible, give order to; but one must not withdraw from the task if he has some small thing to offer – he does so at the risk of diminishing his humanity.

Or, as Yakov put it more succinctly as he was finally being taken to his trial, “[T]here’s no such thing as an unpolitical man, especially a Jew.”

Malamud is an incredible writer. Even though this story is horribly grim, he grabs the reader and does not let go. The Fixer is a book that everyone should read and, once read, ponder.

Also posted on Rose City Reader. show less

It seems like the book is asking for meditation on the concept of freedom and it does this on a couple of levels. One is Yakov's inability to be free of his Jewishness despite thinking himself distanced from that religious heritage. Another is in the unfairness of Yakov's imprisonment and consequent denial of freedom amid the false accusations of his part in the murder of a child. Then there is freedom in the sense of being free from necessity -- maybe a spiritual freedom.

The first two kinds of freedom unfold as you would expect. Yakov travels to Kiev and tries to hide his Jewish identity. When he is found out, he is persecuted and is the unfortunate focus of ignorant, hostile bias that derives from fear, superstition, and that is show more weakly justified on Christian religious terms. Yakov spends the majority of the book in prison, awaiting an indictment as prosecutors try to invent evidence and motive about his role in the crime. Yakov suffers cruelty and deprivation, and all of this is truly awful, but I don't really feel like I learned much from it.

The third kind of freedom had a bit more to it. Early on there are references to Spinoza's Ethics, enough that it was clear that this meant something to the book. I hadn't ever read Spinoza, so I spent a bit of time on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to learn enough to connect some dots. What I gather is that Spinoza sees freedom as a state in which one's being is not the result of being the object of another's need. In a way, all that is happening to Yakov, all the ways that he is not free can be traced to the way that he is positioned relative to others' needs, whether political, criminal, religious, domestic, economic, etc. The persecutions he faces reflects the needs that others have or imagine to have of him. And as Yakov begins to realize this he actualizes or imagines actualizing an effort to sever himself from those needs, to attain a kind of freedom of the spirit (maybe?) in defiance of his physical fettering.

Ultimately, this positioning seems to put responsibility for our freedom in our hands and it suggests that even in situations of abusive denial of personal freedom there is still an individual choice to make that preserves freedom -- in this case radical social and cognitive disassociation. Maybe that is supposed to be an uplifting part. I don't know. The author did choose to end the story before any acquittal that would have restored a kind of freedom. show less