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THE MALAMUD STREET CRAZY

A WRITER GOES OFF THE RAILS AT GRAND CENTRAL STATION

Philip Davis declares himself Bernard Malamud's posthumous publicist, meets a bookshop manager with a heart of cornflakes, and berates New York for letting this literary lion of Brooklyn fall from fashion ...

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At Grand Central Station bookstore I sat down and wept. It wasn't the fault of the young woman behind the counter. It had started well: God bless her, she was sitting there reading George Eliot's "Middlemarch". Where else in the world would you find that? I've come to New York for the launch of my biography of Bernard Malamud, in search of a renewal of American idealism and in defence of my guy. And there she was, reading George Eliot. And where did the great 19th-century English novel go to in the century that followed? It went into the serious hearts of those great Jewish American novelists.

My wife and I made a short film of this bookstore assistant for the Reader blog, as she read that greatest of all English novels. "Repeat after me the following words," I said to her, for the benefit of the tape: "If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence." She did so, with seriousness, and then, in the name of the importance of all ordinary human life, I solemnly pronounced her a member of the extended Reader family.

Her boss, a man with a heart of cornflakes, was not amused. I asked him how many novels by Bernard Malamud, "that great American heir to George Eliot", he had on his shelves. He motioned me dismissively in the general direction. There, as I crouched down towards the lowest shelf, were just three. That's when I broke down a little. But still I bought them all (and left "The Assistant" for his assistant). I didn't care so much that there weren't any copies of my biography. "Aren't you getting it in?" my wife asked loyally. "Only if somebody wants it and orders it," he told her. That was to take loyalty too far.

I don't care. Whisper it softly in the presence of the Oxford University Press publishing staff, but I don't care a passing blog if the book don't sell: what I care about is if it doesn't help to sell Malamud. And this is his own home town. If I can't make it here...

I do two things here in New York. One: I sit by the phone waiting in vain for a call from the OUP publicist, a man whose Christian name is Christian but who doesn't want to to be called Christian (which under the Jewish circumstances is okay by me, though neither John Bunyan nor Joseph Heller could have made this one up). Two: I give up on my Christian, and shlep round bookshops buying up all the odd copies of the works of Bernard Malamud that linger sadly on the shelves. Gradually, incrementally, sales will begin to rocket, I believe, if I keep it going. Though who will take over from me when I fly out on Thursday is the question that prompts this article. Wanted: a Replacement, an Assistant, a second Malamud street crazy.

For what, you may ask, do I do with all my Malamud copies? I am Malamud's publicist. I give his books away. I stand outside the very bookshops from which I bought them and I offer them to customers about to enter the shop. "Excuse me, sir/madam, but if you are going into this crummy joint to buy a copy of a novel by Bernard Malamud, as a reader of your manifest discernment surely should, let me save you the trouble. They ain't got any. But I have, and I want a reader such as you to take this book home for nothing, read it, and pass it on to others. Only don't go in there." Sometimes I throw in an apple. "This is America's emotional heritage," I cry to passers-by, brandishing the cover of my story of his life. "This is New York's finest son. To him, Brooklyn was the centre of the universe. America, I subsidise you." But always, after a while, the bookshop managers come out and move me on (Barnes & Noble belie their second name as much as Christian does his first).

At last I find someone to interview me about "our boy" (as Malamud used to call his own protagonists). She is a nice student from Baruch College, where my short friend Enid Stubin teaches with huge force and wit. "Why has Mr Malamud gone out of fashion?" her student asks me. I try out the usual reasons—he's old-fashioned-looking, he's not cool but warm, he's linguistically strong in defence of the human weak, he defends heroic Western values in unheroic little people who are not beautiful, et cetera, et cetera. And then I say, "Because of Fashion, that's why he is out of fashion. It is Fashion's Fault." And what I mean is: it's America's fault; it is because New York forgot its heritage; it's because you betrayed your emotional bones. But it isn't too late, my friends. I believe in you as I stand outside your bookshops and weep. I will go to the 92nd Street Y and preach the word. I fly home on Thursday.

(Philip Davis, biographer of Malamud and editor of the Reader magazine, will be discussing Malamud's life at the 92nd Street Y in New York at 7.30pm on October 31st.)