Pictures of Fidelman
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Pictures of Fidelman is a short story collection by Bernard Malamud, which gathers six stories dealing with Arthur Fidelman, an art student from the Bronx who travels to Italy, initially to research Giotto, but also with the hopes of becoming a painter. The collection, published in 1969, includes stories from Malamud's earlier collections The Magic Barrel (1958) and Idiots First (1963), plus three previously unpublished stories.
Contents |
The Stories
Aside from Arthur Fidelman, the only character that appears in more than one story is Bessie, his sister, a mother of five living in Levittown, who occasionally sends him money.
"The Last Mohican"
First published in The Magic Barrel; Fidelman arrives in Italy and is repeatedly accosted by Shimon Susskind, "a Jewish refugee from Israel."
"Still Life"
First published in Idiots First; Fidelman moves into a studio with Annamaria Oliovino, whom he is attracted to though she repeatedly mistreats him.
"Naked Nude"
First published in Idiots First; Fidelman finds himself working as a toilet-scrubber in a whorehouse, at the mercy Scarpio and Angelo, who convince him to forge Titian's Venus of Urbino in exchange for his freedom.
"A Pimp's Revenge"
Fidelman tries to complete a painting that has tormented him for years, of himself and his mother, and though he finally manages to create a masterpiece, it does not convey what he had hoped it would.
"Pictures of the Artist"
Fidelman's stream-of-consciousness, heavy with quotations, revealing his thoughts about life, art, and truth.
"Glass Blower of Venice"
Fidelman learns about love and glass blowing, and finally returns to America.
Reception
When the book came out Anatole Broyard of The New York Times compared it unfavorably to Malamud's previous book, The Assistant:
What [Malamud] has done in Pictures of Fidelman is to reverse the principle of his most successful book, The Assistant. There he thrust an Italian, Frank Alpine, into the thick texture of Jewish life, where he functioned as a kind of perspective by incongruity, a green pepper in the chicken fat. Now Fidelman, a "Classical" Jew from the Bronx, is put down in Italy presumably for the same purpose.
But where Alpine learned the nobility of suffering from the Jew, Fidelman learns, as far as one can discover, nothing but pimping, glass blowing and sodomy from the Italians. And perhaps it is this poor return for his years of expatriation the robs Pictures of Fidelman of the moral breadth, the grand lugubriousness, that distinguishes Malamud's best stories.
Broyard concludes that "Malamud is too talented a writer not to make this book a joy in many of its details. But there are too many unanswered questions, too many glib capitulations to the modern canon, which absolves the author of all responsibility for his stories."
