*2.5

Now this is a novel that packs a punch. Short but so compelling.

I loved the writing in this book. It is that type of fine literature where, even though it uses contemporary language, the writing is just so precious and artistic... when you are reading this novel, you just want to linger and "taste" every single word, it is just so mesmerizing.

As for the themes brought up by this novel, this is definitely a story that is worth examining even today, as these topics are still debated on in society. It talks about the nature of art and about the art of writing / being a writer as a professional in such a nuanced way. I feel as if, still today, there is a camp which is advocating creative writing classes and the notion that writing should be taught and that you need to follow a lot of rigorous rules to have your work considered worthy... and also there is the camp that is all "natural raw talent vs studied calculations", and real art is visceral. Here, in this novel, we can see the embodiment of the two camps fight each other, and also, the two main characters to contemplate whether their own ideas about talent and good literary works are right or not.
Our two main characters also perfectly show us the nature of the maniac artist, who goes insane as a result of fanatically pursuing perfection.

The novel is also exploring racial / ethnic / religious socio-economic situation in 70s USA. Like how finally achieving some results in the fight for black rights is spawning such different attitudes from black people... how some end up being a really extremist, borderline supremacist activist / justice warrior type of personality, and also, how communities define who is really black, and what people would do to reinforce their blackness. It also shows how Jews are seen in the society, and how they are the embodiment of the greedy Caucasian in a lot of the minorities' eyes - this being the reason for some representatives of the minorities feeling distrust for them. We also see a Jew and a more extremist black person seemingly connecting over their shared love of writing, but having underlying issues of distrust, which is eventually resulting in havoc, chaos and tragedy.

I also liked how the novel handled the notion of justice, how justice can so different from different aspects. How the reader can understand both Lesser for not wanting to give up his safe writing space, but also Levenspiel, who would need Lesser to leave in order to be able to sell the building, in order to have the money to start a better life (of course, with the reader, pulling for either of them more, but you can understand where they are both coming from).

A pretty interesting story about dysfunctional city-dwellers interrupted by radical, obnoxious race politics.

A very suspenseful novel. Authors (especially aspiring authors) would relate best to the characters. Although it is painfully outdated in certain concepts, the story itself is strong. Minus one star for its vastly ambiguous ending. I would have liked to see some of the storylines end properly. I felt an absence of closure for some secondary plots but for the most part, this was a very gripping piece of work.

I read this book for a book club. It was chosen by a friend who is a fan of the author, but hadn't read this particular book. I listened to the audiobook at double speed, which says a lot about what I thought of it. This is a book about two men writing books, or rather failing to write books, and their obsession with their own art. Also debating the essence of art. (Descriptions of art in books is pretty much my least favorite thing to read). Throw in some race relations and a love affair and you get The Tenants.

This book is all right. It is definitely dated, with its late-1960s New York themes of urban renewal, rent control and race relations, but that probably actually adds to the story's interest today. One peeve of mine...writers writing about writing is almost always a sign of a stalled artist.

torturous high school read. why any sane person would cut up their dick is absolutely beyond me. It is self mutilation and like female circumcism, it is utterly disgusting! Such things should never be inflicted on either gender, ever. And adults that choose to do it are nuts. period.

A surprising departure if one is only familiar with works like The Assistant or The Natural. Novel is the story of the relationship between two novelists: Harry Lesser and Willie Spearmint. Lesser is a Jewish squatter who takes advantage of favorable tenant rules to try and finish his most recent work in a building where is the last remaining renter (the landlord wants to demolish the building and put up something else). He ends up making the acquaintance of Willie, who is working on a memoir-cum-fictional account of his own upbringing, when Willie comes to camp out in one of the empty flats in the building. Harry is an established, if not entirely successful writer (financially speaking) desperately trying to finish the work he thinks will make a proper artistic mark. His solitary nature is challenged by the arrival of Willie and his sometime girlfriend: Willie asks Harry to give him feedback on a draft of his work and responds negatively to Harry's evaluation. Conditions between the men deteriorate and Harry seduces and eventually begins a relationship with Willie's woman. The book as a whole ends up being a surprisingly engaging and even-handed window into race relations between Jews and Blacks at a particular historical moment.

Two blocked writers, An American Jew and a very militant African American share an abandoned tenement as they try to finish their books. There is an imperfectly attractive young white woman, oozing vulnerability, available for rescue as part of the triangle. Trouble ensues.

The main problem for a reader of this novel in 2021 is that it is set at a very specific point in history, not a generation, not an era, a point. Liberal Jews and militant Blacks clashed in New York City. This book at publication time was a microcosm of this clash; it was probably also written as a cautionary tale. The intensity of this clash will be lost on most contemporary readers as this blip in history happened long ago and didn’t last long. Otherwise, we have a compelling story of two ineffectual guys not being able to write nor form a strong relation with a woman they both desire. Much is said about writing and blocked writing along the way. There is a total absence of humor.

Malamud doesn’t use his earlier surrealistic style very much here. It pops up, now and then, but it is a primarily a unhelpful distraction in a rather straightforward story. The book is well written and powerful, but it is hard to empathize with the self destructive characters

Oooook. So the pacing of this book is gorgeous- deliberate and fascinating- particularly how it speeds up like an out of control train that flies off the tracks at the end upwards of a thousand miles per hour. The ending of this book is intensely terrifying, and also brilliantly justified.

Harry and Willie, a middle aged white man and a middle aged black man, are passionate writers essentially squatting in a decrepit tenement building slated for demolition as they painstakingly type their novels- Harry Lesser searching for the perfect ending and Willie Spearmint only just beginning. The desperation and loneliness of the monastic and driven days become too much for the men, and they retreat more and more into the shells of their selfish selves. Will they be able to support one another and each reach their goals and find further success with the written word? Or will the racial differences between them cause conflicts that will drive each man to his darkest hours- while a building crumbles around them, brick by brick?

n  ” Una cosa che succede quando scrivi un libro è che tieni la morte al suo posto;
l'ideale è continuare ininterrottamente a scrivere. “n


In una Brooklyn in piena trasformazione edilizia, uno dopo l’altro si sbriciolano palazzi del primo novecento per far posto a nuove abitazioni che significano altri soldi per gli speculatori.
Non è così per Levenspiel, proprietario di un condominio che proprio non riesce a tirar giù. L’ostacolo è umano ed ha un nome e cognome: Harry Lesser.

Forte di un contratto che lo difende da ogni sfratto, Harry è l’ultimo inquilino rimasto.
Fa lo scrittore e si rifiuta di lasciare l’appartamento finchè non avrà terminato il suo libro:
una creatura che ha in gestazione da ben dieci anni.

Tutto sembra procedere con un’assodata routine finchè un giorno tornando dall’alimentari sente echeggiare nei corridoi un ticchettio familiare: il battere sui tasti di una macchina da scrivere.
Scopre subito che, in uno degli appartamenti abbandonati, uno scrittore afroamericano sta scrivendo il suo romanzo, il suo nome è Willie Spearmint...

Ecco che l’intreccio della storia inizia ad inerpicarsi su una spirale metaforica e metaletteraria.

Innanzitutto le dicotomie della scrittura: Willie che trasporta sulla carta tutte le brutture della sua vita di afroamericano povero nel paese in cui è nato e cresciuto ma che lo tratta come nemico.
Scrive pagine che “puzzano”; un odore di marcio scaturito da tutta la violenza rappresentata e dalla rabbia che lo scrittore cova verso il mondo bianco.

La scrittura è per entrambi salvezza.
Mentre per Willie è la sublimazione dell’odio razziale, per Harry, invece, la scrittura diventa una nicchia dove travestire la propria capacità di amare inventando un ”personaggio che in un certo senso amerà per lui, e in un certo senso lo amerà; come dire, poiché le parole salgono e scendono in tutte le direzioni, che in questo libro lo scrittore di Lesser, creando l'amore meglio che può, portandolo alla luce con l'immaginazione, espanderà il proprio io e il proprio spirito; e così con un po' di fortuna potrà amare la sua ragazza reale come vorrebbe amarla, e qualunque altro essere umano in un mondo folle..”

Un destino non facile quello della scrittore: spesso non compreso e, soprattutto, dilaniato da un continuo tormento.

Quarto romanzo che leggo di Malamud: uno più bello dell’altro per me.

Consigliato a chi ama riflettere sulla letteratura e la sua annosa lotta tra forma e contenuto.



” La casa è dov'è il mio libro. Davanti al cadente edificio dipinto di scuro - una volta una casa decente, ora la casa di piacere di Lesser, era lui che la animava - c'era un solitario bidone ammaccato che conteneva quasi esclusivamente la sua spazzatura, migliaia di urlanti parole strappate e torsoli di mela marci, fondi di caffè e gusci d'uovo, un bidone di spazzatura letteraria, rifiuti del linguaggio diventati linguaggio dei rifiuti.”

(First, for the record: the review that posted a couple of days ago was incomplete. The mistake was mine, not GR's. Thanks to Alan & Shane for helping me notice this)

Bernard Malamud brought off some of the most finely-balanced American short stories of the 50 years, tent-shaped angularities of terror vs. magic vs. the stubborn quandary over what's right. "The Magic Barrel," "The Jew-Bird," these & other stories tug at the neck-hairs beautifully. Yet the work of this author that taught me most -- & that haunts me most, still -- is this novel of Manhattan from about a generation back. New York here suffers, above all, the perturbation of two races who spent most of the century suffering & then began taking out their pain on each other: the Jews & the African Americans. In an apartment building that may be condemned any moment, two all-but-failed artists: the black Bill or Willie, the Jewish Lesser, both thoroughly Noo Yawk. They first reach out to each other, in part to fend off a landlord who wants them gone, but then before long, given the spur of unequal artistic success & a woman whose discernment & decisions provides yet another measure of that success, these brothers in twinned struggles (for shelter, for expression) stumble into a tragic spiral of hurting each other. So much for airless plot summary. So much for skewed synopsis. A thumbnail version like the above, you see, does an injustice to the imagination at play in this story, an egregious injustice. The vision of Willie's & Lesser's turmoil, rooted though it is in pain & venality that goes back centuries ("Ishmael & Israel," as Malamud puts it), nonetheless offers surprise & laughter & even blinking chills, throughout, via a kaleidoscope's shifting fragments of stories-w/in-stories, fantasies-w/in-disappointments, always brightly colored by the fragility of both these men, weaknesses that nonetheless can't hold back their impulse to bring out what's best in them. Few novels of vast & intractable urban dilemmas offer such sprightliness, even as they cry out for mercy.