The Assistant.

Bernard Malamud’s The Assistant, part of the TIME 100, tells the story of a drifter, Frank Alpine, who shows up mysteriously at a failing grocery store in a declining neighborhood in Brooklyn before World War II. The store is run by Morris Bober, a sixty-year-old Jew who appears unable to catch any sort of break in life. Morris wants to be able to provide enough for his daughter to be able to attend college instead of working in a clothing store, and to see her marry well, preferably to the law student Nat Pearl, but at least to a young Jewish man. Frank ends up becoming Morris’ assistant when the owner takes a fall and can’t work.

Of course, the daughter, Helen, ends up developing feelings for Frank, the dark and brooding type strip-mined by Hollywood in the last few decades. Frank, always coy about his past, is left to consider his options: make a clean break by owning up to his history, or blowing a potentially good situation and leaving town after a few months, which is the pattern of his life to date.

The Assistant is understated, although I’m not sure whether it’s fair to call it dull. Malamud’s prose moves despite his use of the broken English of Jewish immigrants from the early 20th century, and there’s enough “action” (although much of it comes in the form of words) to keep you turning the pages. But by the time you reach the end and look back on what actually took place, it doesn’t add up to much. Yet at the same time, it’s not a detailed character study of Frank, nor is it a comment on the plight of immigrants who saw their neighborhoods begin to rot from under them. If anything, the lead character in the book is Judaism, or perhaps Jewish-ness as a cultural rather than religious identity. Perhaps if you grew up Jewish, it would resonate more strongly than it did with me.

Next up: A rarity for me, a re-read. I first read Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews in the same college class that introduced me to The Master and Margarita, but I didn’t care for it and forgot pretty much everything about it. About two years ago, I tackled Fielding’s magnum opus, Tom Jones, and loved it, so I thought I should give Joseph another shot.