Underdogs

By Paul Gray

THE PEOPLE AND UNCOLLECTED STORIES by Bernard Malamud

Farrar, Straus & Giroux

269 pages; $18.95

In a 1968 story called An Exorcism, Bernard Malamud wrote of Eli Fogel, a middle-aged author suddenly saddled with a young acolyte named Gary Simson. Fogel enjoys the veneration, up to a point; his work has garnered moderate recognition and less money. But Simson's relentless requests for advice, tips on writing and letters of recommendation distract Fogel from his own efforts, in this case his slow progress in finishing another novel: "Perfection comes hard to an imperfectionist. He had visions of himself dying before the book was completed. It was a terrible thought: Fogel seated at the table, staring at his manuscript, pen in hand, the page ending in a blot."

With hindsight this passage seems chilling. An Exorcism was not included among the 25 works in The Stories of Bernard Malamud (1983). But it appears in this posthumous collection, along with The People, a novel interrupted in its 17th chapter by Malamud's death in 1986.

In its truncated and unrevised form, The People will add little to Malamud's reputation, which hardly needs embellishment in any case. His novels, including The Natural and The Assistant, and books of stories such as The Magic Barrel and Idiots First long ago established his place among the best postwar American writers. This triumph was not easily won. Malamud never catered to popular tastes or expectations. His fiction was often as grim as it was enchanting. He wrote, and rewrote, slowly, with consummate care.

* Unhappily denied such attentions, The People is a rough draft of the novel it might have become. The year is 1870, and Yozip Bloom, a Russian immigrant and itinerant Jewish peddler, roams the Pacific Northwest. He is kidnaped by an Indian tribe that calls itself the People. For reasons not entirely clear, Yozip has been singled out as the spokesman, Yiddish-inflected English and all, who will defend the rights of the People against the perfidious, treaty- breaking whites.

In outline this story is pure Malamud. It sets a sympathetic vision of the underdogs and downtrodden against a backdrop of myth and spacious possibilities. When the narrative breaks off, the good guys are losing, a situation that is also typical of its author. But in the notes he left for the remaining four chapters, Malamud outlined a way for Yozip to be of further, and possibly victorious, service to those who had adopted him.

The best part of this volume can be found in the 16 stories following the unfinished novel. Five have never been published, and the rest were never collected in hard covers. It is difficult to imagine why not. Malamud hit his stride early, writing stories of old men trying to preserve their dignity amid the shambles of harsh circumstances. In The Literary Life of Laban Goldman, an elderly Jew attends night school to improve his English and get away from his nagging wife; he experiences a brief moment of triumph when the Brooklyn Eagle publishes his letter to the editor urging a relaxation of New York State divorce laws. The Grocery Store evokes the atmosphere in which the author, the son of a grocer, grew up in Brooklyn.

Almost alone among his contemporaries, Malamud was equally gifted at the novel and short story. In some moods he preferred the short form: "In a few pages a good story portrays the complexity of a life while producing the surprise and effect of knowledge -- not a bad payoff." All the stories salvaged here are good, and so is the payoff.