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In recent years, it has been impossible to discuss the career of Bernard Malamud without mentioning his place as the second partner, along with Bellow and Roth, in the ruling triumvirate of Jewish- American literature, which Bellow has called the Hart, Schaffner and Marx of American letters. Those who do not discuss the Jewishness of Malamud feel obligated to explain why they have avoided the issue. It is true that most of his protagonists are Jews (only The Natural among his novels has nothing to do with Jews), but their Jewishness seems part of Malamud's attempt to portray a most Christ-like figure, homo patiens, the man who suffers. Malamud sees this suffering for others as the ultimate test of humanity, and he is only half joking when he recasts the New Testament phrase about the lilies of the field, "consider the Jewish lily that toils and spins." Malamud's heroes rarely unloose the shackles of suffering and many, like Frank Alpine and Yakov Bok, deliberately ask for more, but they acquire a spiritual freedom when they learn how their suffering relates them to the rest of mankind.
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