Gli inquilini, di Bernard Malamud, minimum fax, racconta la storia di Harry Lesser, scrittore che dopo l’esordio di successo si affanna a terminare il suo terzo romanzo, occupando uno stabile fatiscente che dovrà essere demolito per far posto a un condominio di lusso. Lesser è convinto che, dopo dieci anni di lavoro, la sua opera debba per forza essere completata lì dove l’ha cominciata, e i maldestri tentativi di Levenspiel, il proprietario, di farlo sloggiare, non riescono di certo a dissuaderlo dal suo proposito.
La storia si complica quando Lesser scopre che il palazzo è occupato anche da un altro “inquilino”, Willie Spearmint. Anche lui scrittore, finirà per incuriosire Lesser ma anche per contrapporsi inevitabilmente: afroamericano, motivato e con estro ancora grezzo il primo, ebreo con la penna più raffinata il secondo. A rendere ancora più difficili le cose sarà l’interesse di Lesser per la “pupa” di Willie, Irene. Ma questa non è la storia di un triangolo, piuttosto di un insieme di solitudini, quella di Lesser e di Willie, che cercano ciascuno con la scrittura di trovare qualcosa. Se stesso, forse, Lesser. La rivoluzione nera, Willie. Chissà.
Un romanzo a tratti surreale, con la scrittura vera protagonista: ossessione pericolosa, o forse unica occasione di redenzione? Chissà. Il finale, indubbiamente, stupisce e non poco.

فکر میکردم فقط خودم نتونستم با اخر کتاب ارتباط برقرار کنم ولی چندتا از نظرات کسایی که کتاب خارجیشو خوندن هم دیدم اونا هم همینطور بودن اکثرا، با توجه به این ترجمه ای که خوندم که خیلی از ترجمه راضی نبودم ولی کلا فضای کلی کتاب سوررئال بود که خب لذت بردم و خیلی جاهاش گیج کننده بود یعنی مثه یه فیلمی بود که هی میبردت توی تخیلات کرکتر بعد یه دفعه میاوردت بیرون تو باید حدس بزنی کجاش واقعیه کجاش نیست و این تکنیک رو دیگه یه جاهایی بیش از حد به کار برد. توقع داشتم اخرشو خوب تموم کنه یعنی وقتی اخرشو خوندم اول واکنشم این بود "الان چیشد؟" بعد به خودم اومدم گفتم "پس فاز متمدنانتون کجا رفت؟" میتونست یه اثر معرکه ی سوررئال باشه ولی نمیدونم واقعا... به نظرم اگه یه اثری میخواید که کمی اجتماعی، کمی دارک، کمی زندگی رو به تصویر بکشه رمان جالبیه اما خیلی پیشنهاد نمیکنم بیشتر برای کسایی که نویسنده هستن یا به نویسنده ها و افکارشون علاقه دارن پیشنهاد میکنم.

I love Bernard Malamud but I must say that this book does not date well. It is a product of its times (early 1970) and its dealing with race relations seems anachronistic. However, there are a couple of fascinating characterizations until their descent into madness. Read this as a time capsule and you will enjoy Malamud's always excellent writing and character studies

Yazdığı iki kitabının üzerinden geçen 9 yıldır üstünde çalıştığı kitabı bitirmeye çalışan, mükemmel “son sözü” arayan, biçem konusunda takıntılı, disiplinli olarak yazsa da istediği sona ulaşamayan, içten içe yazarlığı konusunda şüpheli ama hayatta yazmaktan başka bir şeyi olmayan bir yazar.
“…yanındaki pencerelere bakmadan dışarıdaki kış gününü zihninde canlandırdı; kristal berraklığında aydınlık, soğuk bir güzellik; varlığından memnundu ama o güzelliğin içinde ya da bir parçası olmaya… onu yaşamaya yönelik bir arzusu yoktu. Benliğindeki bu tür gelgitleri çok uzun süre önce bastırmıştı yoksa ciddi bir şekilde yazması hiç mümkün olmazdı”
“Fazlasıyla adanmışlık yüzünden nihayetinde kısıtlı hale gelen yazarlık yaşamından ölesiye bıkmıştı yine de güzel bir kitap yazmayı hayatta her şeyden fazla istediğini biliyordu”
Kendini adadığı son tüm dikkatini kitabına vermesini gerektirse de hayatına, yaşadığı ortama aniden ve rahatsız edici şekilde dahil olan bir yazar adayı sayesinde hayata dahil olmaya, aşka? duyduğu ilgiyi keşfederek istemese de ne yazardan, çevresinden, kendince aşktan da uzak duramıyor.
Malamud’ un kitabı yazdığı dönemde Yahudiler ile Siyah Amerikalılar arasında çatışma olduğunu, siyahi hareketlerin aktif olduğunu öğrendiğimizde, beyaz yahudi yazar kahramanımız ile siyah yazar adayının hikayesi başka bir çerçeveye oturuyor.
Umudu ve kurtuluşu yazmakta bulan, kendini yazdıklarıyla tanımlamaya çalışan yazar adayı “deneyim her şeyi farklı kıldığı için sözcüklerin anlamı da farklılaşır. Beyaz kurgu siyahla aynı değildir” iddiasında iken yazarımız kendisini insan deneyimi, karakter kurmaca, biçem, arayış ve geçmişle hesaplaşma aracı olarak edebiyat konularında mentorluk yaparken buluyor.
Arkadaşlıkları da kimlik, yazın dili, aşk ilişkileri üzerinden yakınlık ile nefret arasında savruluyor.
Yazarımızın yazar adayının öyküleri konusundaki eleştirilerine bolca yer verilmiş olsa da kendi kitabının konusu hakkında kısa bir bilgi bulabiliyoruz.
Yazarımızın “aşk” konulu “Vadedilmiş Son”adlı kitabının hayatının gereğinden fazlasını boşa harcadığı için endişelenen, sevgi konusunda sorunlar yaşayan, sevgiyi dil aracılığı ile yaratmaya çalışan, “kendisi yerine sevgi sunacak, bir açıdan onu da sevecek bir karakter” aracılığı ile kendisine sevmeyi öğretecek bir roman olması yaşananlar ile yazılanlar arasında bağ kuruyor.
Yazarımızın arkadaşının bitmemiş bir tablosu üzerine aşağıdaki görüşü kendisinin yazın macerası, ilişkileri, romanı üzerine de okunabilir bence.
“Belki o zaman yapabildiğinden fazlasını, o zaman içinde olmayan bir şeyi söylemek istemişti”
Toplumsal hareketlerin gündemi, fondaki mekanı anlatan kentsel dönüşüm çerçevesi, yazarın yaratma yolculuğu, kimlik, var olamayan kadınlar… derken dikkat de dağılıyor biraz, karakterimizi biraz daha derinlemesine tanıyabilseydik keşke..
“Sanat, eylemdir”

rasizam

absolute must-read

3,5

My God, that was a good book! I bought an old edition of Malamud's "The Tenants" at a used book sale a year ago because I am familiar with and like his work and have taught some of his short stories in my introductory literature courses. But none of my previous knowledge about Malamud's work prepared me for this edgy and disturbing masterpiece. The novel is set in the late 1960s, early 1970s in a borough of New York City in a run-down tenement building, and when we arrive in this world it is the dead of winter (give me urban decay and a winter setting during a time before computers and the internet, and I am instantly fascinated). The protagonist, Harry Lesser, is a struggling Jewish writer of some past successes and is the last tenant to move out of the building, a hanger on who insists that he just needs to stay until he finishes writing his third novel. Enter antagonist Willie Spearmint (pen name, Bill Spear), an African American writer who squats in the room across the hall with an old typewriter and a dream of becoming the next Black Arts success and his off-Broadway actress girlfriend, Irene (white and Jewish), and the plot thickens. This story is uncomfortable, nail-bitingly suspenseful, unsettling, disturbing, and at times offensive--all of the things a good book should be--but you will come away from it with a sense of wonder and terror about what human beings driven by love and the burning desire to create art are capable of. This is a story of love and friendship complicated by racial tension and betrayal. It's definitely worth reading because Malamud's writing style is sharp, clean, direct, and beautiful from beginning to end, and his story fulfills Franz Kafka's belief that "A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us."

Harry Lesser is working on his third novel and this one really needs to succeed. His first book was well received but his second didn’t fare so well. So he really needs to get his burgeoning career back in motion by doing well with number three. So he’s really taking great care to get this one right, so much care, that he won’t move out of his rent controlled apartment in a dilapidated building. The landlord, desperate to demolish the building so the site can be redeveloped, is offering Lesser, the lat remaining occupant of the building, big bucks to get the hell out. But Lesser won’t go. He fears such a disruption in his routing will throw his writing off the track. And as a rent controlled tenant, Lesser can’t be forced to move.

Suddenly, Lesser hears the sound of typing coming from another part of the building. It turns out another struggling writer, Willie, has squatted in a vacant apartment to finish his first book.

Harry and Willie ought to become best buds, or at least artistic comrades, so one would think. But not exactly. Harry is a white Jew. Willie is an angry black. And it’s the time in New York’s history just after controversy in Brooklyn’s Ocean Hill-Brownsville school district cause blacks and Jews, formerly political allies (an alliance of the oppressed), to turn against one another as they aligned, respectively, with the teaching union (where Jews were prominent) and activists seeking community control over the school district dominated by black families and students. ((Nothin about Ocean Hill-Brownsville is explicitly referred to in Malamud’s book; it’s part of the unspoken backdrop — which may be a negative for readers who don’t know about it.)

Harry and Willie sort of play out this drama. They want each other’s support and value one another’s opinion (they are, after all, struggling writers), but they resent the hell out of and in a way despise one another. Willie knows Harry can provide helpful feedback given that he is a more “successful” (at least compared to Willie) author. But Harry is not impressed with Willie’s work, a bunch of angry-black ranting. Willie is torn. He knows he needs Harry’s help, but he is unwilling to accept feedback because Harry truly doesn’t and can’t understand the black experience. A love triangle, when Harry moves in on Willie’s ex (?) on-again off-again girlfriend. And now, the shit-show accelerates.

In one sense, the Ocean Hill-Brownsville backdrop is really critical and almost makes the book dated, given how long ago that was. But unless on has a dog in that old fight, one might not know that the battle never really ended. The school politics evolved and settled into various new normals, as always happens. But the Black-Jewish tensions never really ended. Although segments of each community seem to have moved on, large and growing portions of each side continue to play out the drama to this day and over a wider range of scenarios, right through the Crown Heights riots of the early 1990s, which largely killed off the political career of David Dinkins, New York City’s first black mayor and ushered in the Giuliani era to the split in today’s democratic party that is making US Mideast policy increasingly challenging and even over to the Middle East itself where Palestinians (subbing in for New York blacks) and right wing Jews have been literally battling in the streets.

Seeing how far the basic controversy has evolved over the decades, it’s probably worthwhile to revisit this work, form its earliest days, and possible understand what, exactly, is going on. A lot of contemporary connections to and evolutions from Ocean Hill-Brownsville fights have been badly under-covered by a media, that a media that seems afraid to address these sensitive topics. (Had the Founding Fathers envisioned social media pressure of the future, they’d have probably skipped the First Amendment reasoning that commentators of the future will be too fearful and squeamish to take advantage of it. So I suppose my annoying radical right ultra orthodox Jewish relatives are good for something — expanding my awareness of otherwise obscure things.) This is a book that’s far more relevant today than many realize. That said, I do drop one star due to Malamud’s sometimes irritating tendency to get a bit too artsy in the writing.

Intriguing "endings" at the beginning and near the end of the novel. The bulk of the novel about two writers trying to complete their novels in an otherwise abandoned apartment building was interesting, but it fell apart as it entered into symbolism or the writers' stories or both. Seems to be a story of the inability of Jewish and Black people to mutually succeed (or succeed at all).

È una storia d'amore esclusiva e distruttiva tra uno scrittore e il suo libro. In mezzo un paio di personaggi inseriti in un ambiente xenofobo, razzista, maschilista. Dialoghi che intersecano la prosa.

This is a troubling novel that is sometimes brilliant and amazing, and sometimes too awkward and awful for words. We meet Lesser, a 36 year old novelist living in a tenement in the Bronx. His landlord would love to tear down the building, and offers repeatedly to buy Lesser out of his rent-controlled, but Lesser wants to finish his third novel first, something that might take only a few more months or forever. So he’s the last holdout. One day he sees one of the downstairs offices contains a small wooden table, a typewriter, and a yellowing manuscript. Lesser is confronted by the owner of these items, a Black man about his age name Willie Spearmint. Willie is filled with rage and distrust, and as the two become more acquainted Lesser learns Willie is a would-be novelist. They circle each other here and there and eventually, having read Lesser’s first novel and liking it, decides to ask Lesser to read his work. Further tension arises as both Lesser and Willie can’t determine what value or expertise Lesser is exactly able to bring to his reading.

As this happens Lesser and Willie (who becomes through his writing Bill Spear) enter into a furthering tense psycho-sexual relationship (in which Lesser sleeps with a Black friend of Willie as well as Willie’s white girlfriend) and the novel begins roiling to a large confrontation.

So as you can imagine, while there’s a lot of really interesting conversations about race and art and difference, this novel struggles to find authentic representation. It might even be so brilliant I can’t figure it out — ie is the novel failing on its own, or is the novel failing to represent Willie in exactly the same ways Willie tells Lesser that white writers can’t narrate Black experience? So at times, it’s rough going, and it’s hard to figure when and where this is a limit or a failure, as the novel often says the thing I feel, soon after feeling it.