Collected Stories is a book of mourning, an anthology, one might say of elegies. Even where there is no death, characters cloak themselves in talliths and recite Kaddishes for the living, as Salzman the matchmaker does for his client, Leo Finkle, in "The Magic Barrel" and Kessler the egg candler and Gruber the landlord do for themselves at the end of "The Mourners." Malamud has written stories of other kinds but has selected these for reissue, as if to honor that region of his imagination that is most accustomed to grief. The singularity of this grieving marks the book as a testament, a memorial, we may suppose, to the world that disappeared into the crematoria of Auschwitz, the memory hole of Russia, the suburbs of America. This book, then, is an act of Yiskor, an admonition to remember. Like other Jewish American writers haunted by the experiences of their immigrant parents -- a state of mind not exclusive to Jewish American writers alone -- Malamud 's subject matter and themes were anchored in memories of the family past.
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