The Fixer in Never too Late to Read Classics

Mar 19, 2017 Chrissie rated it really liked it

Shelves: religion, audible-uk, 2017-read, hf, classics, philo-psychol, soviet-union, ukraine

I am going to start with some quotes. Taste them, enjoy them and then roll them around in your head.

“If I have any philosophy”, said Yakov Bok, “it is that life could be better than it is.”

“One thing I’ve learned", he thought, "there’s no such thing as an unpolitical man, especially a Jew. You can’t be one without the other, that’s clear enough. You can’t sit still and see yourself destroyed.”

Yakov reflects as he goes to his trial, “What is it Spinoza says? If the state acts in ways that are ab ...more

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Dec 02, 2012 Yair Ben-Zvi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

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 dep 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 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.
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Apr 26, 2022 Kelly_Hunsaker_reads ... rated it really liked it

Shelves: 60-before-60, pulitzer, national-book-award-winners, read-in-2022, historical-fiction

The Fixer by Bernard Malamud is a beautifully-written and compelling story, but one which is difficult to read. At times the story is brutal, and its discussion of anti-semitism is shocking, sad, and at times felt like a punch in the gut. I am very glad to have read this book, but I will never re-read it. My stomach churns at the thought.

Set in Tsarist Russia, during the Jewish pogroms, it feels both long-ago, and ongoing. Shouldn't we be much farther into learning and healing?

Do not read this o ...more

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Jul 31, 2017 Sarah rated it liked it

Shelves: owned

Honestly, I didn't like it and could not give it a single star on the "enjoyment " scale. It was "misery porn" it starts out bad for Yakov, gets worse, and never lets up. I fully understand that Malamud wants me to understand the depth of Anti-semitsm at this time. The level of ignorance of the Russian peasant was astounding (though I just read a news article that claims 62 percent of Americans have never met a Muslim). The level of ignorance in all of Europes poor helps explain Hitler's easy ri ...more

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