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Pictures of Fidelman
Arthur Fidelman, Bronx-born and raised, is a self-confessed failure as a painter. When he goes to Italy to prepare a critical study of Giotto, a zany adventure ensues. Pursued through the streets of Rome by the refugee Susskind, forced to abandon Giotto, feeling a reawakening desire to create art, falling into the hands of art thieves, hand-carving wooden Madonnas for sale, becoming a pimp, attempting to sculpt the perfect hole, Fidelman is a comic creation of genius.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
9 people are currently reading
167 people want to read
About the author
Bernard Malamud
159 books487 followersBernard Malamud was an American novelist and short story writer. Along with Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, Norman Mailer and Philip Roth, he was one of the best known American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel, The Natural, was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford. His 1966 novel The Fixer (also filmed), about antisemitism in the Russian Empire, won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
March 20, 2025
Pictures of Fidelman is a reverse morality play. Think of Pilgrim's Progress written backwards. Or a Christian rewriting of Hogarth's 'Rake's Progress', as Stravinsky and Auden did, in words and music.
A Rake's Regress. A downward spiral into the murky sludge of Bunyan's slough of despond. I'd tried that pit, but it never helped me!
I preferred the sunlight -
When I turned twenty I saw all that clearly.
But when I was eighteen - and about to depart for the storied ivy-clustered but sadly utopian college which was the optimal comeuppance for a kid with less than star-quality marks and aptitude - I of course did not.
Green grow the rushes, ho...
It was a torrid summer. But I could afford (or so my parents' generosity in paying my tuition fees assured me) to coast now. And yes, disaster awaited, as baseless pride goes before every fall.
But THIS disaster of a book had a cool Jules Pfeiffer-clone line drawing on the cover.
And to be cool was what I needed in the heat...
Collegiate, collegiate -
Yes we are collegiate -
Nothing intermediate,
No ma'am!
But, I thought to myself when well into it - where was Mr. Malamud going with this?
"Well (heh, heh)... if you said back to the Empty Fountain of Youth at the end of the fabled old Garden Path... you'd be right.
"But do not ask what is it -
Let us go and make our Visit!"
We live on a failed planet, the books and other media of which is mercenary. And course all guys are a bit randy when they're young and green.
“But guess what? They all like it in the packaging of their own private fantasies, my dear - chacun a son gout!"
I hadn't learned that.
And I didn't want to.
I took it back to the library the next day -
Having suddenly been made aware that all writers are either cannibals or missionaries -
And that henceforth the latter role had become my métier of choice.
Don’t dwell on it, friends - cut your necessary losses!
Their sole value is to the Lost.
A Rake's Regress. A downward spiral into the murky sludge of Bunyan's slough of despond. I'd tried that pit, but it never helped me!
I preferred the sunlight -
When I turned twenty I saw all that clearly.
But when I was eighteen - and about to depart for the storied ivy-clustered but sadly utopian college which was the optimal comeuppance for a kid with less than star-quality marks and aptitude - I of course did not.
Green grow the rushes, ho...
It was a torrid summer. But I could afford (or so my parents' generosity in paying my tuition fees assured me) to coast now. And yes, disaster awaited, as baseless pride goes before every fall.
But THIS disaster of a book had a cool Jules Pfeiffer-clone line drawing on the cover.
And to be cool was what I needed in the heat...
Collegiate, collegiate -
Yes we are collegiate -
Nothing intermediate,
No ma'am!
But, I thought to myself when well into it - where was Mr. Malamud going with this?
"Well (heh, heh)... if you said back to the Empty Fountain of Youth at the end of the fabled old Garden Path... you'd be right.
"But do not ask what is it -
Let us go and make our Visit!"
We live on a failed planet, the books and other media of which is mercenary. And course all guys are a bit randy when they're young and green.
“But guess what? They all like it in the packaging of their own private fantasies, my dear - chacun a son gout!"
I hadn't learned that.
And I didn't want to.
I took it back to the library the next day -
Having suddenly been made aware that all writers are either cannibals or missionaries -
And that henceforth the latter role had become my métier of choice.
Don’t dwell on it, friends - cut your necessary losses!
Their sole value is to the Lost.
March 4, 2013
Close to where I live is a very cluttered antique shop. It is actually a house and every room is packed to the brim with odds and ends. At the back is a room full of second hand books. One wall is covered floor to ceiling with old penguin books, many of them first editions. They cost between £1 and £1.50 each. This book was one of those. If you’re ever in Lincoln it’s worth looking in.
This is the first Malamud I’ve read. It is a set of inter-connected stories about Arthur Fidelman, an American who moves to Italy to pursue his desire to be involved in art. It is also allegedly not one of Malamud’s better books and one critic has said that all that Fidelman manages to do in his escapades is to learn “pimping, glass-blowing and sodomy from the Italians”.
All the Fidelman stories are chronological with no recurring characters (apart from Fidelman himself and his sister Bessie who is in the background and in America). There are six stories;
1)Last Mohican; Fidelman, an American Jew and a failed painter comes to Italy to write a critical study of Giotto. He repeatedly meets a Jew called Susskind who steals his manuscript.
2)Still Life; Fidelman moves into a studio with a woman called Annamaria who mistreats him, until he finally discovers she has a “thing” about priest’s robes and dress (he keeps the biretta on!)
3)Naked Nude; Fidelman is working cleaning toilets in a brothel and is held prisoner. He has to make a copy of a Titian to buy his freedom.
4)A Pimp’s Revenge; Fidelman is trying to complete a picture of him and his mother. In the meantime he is living with a girl called Esmeralda and acting as her pimp.
5)Portraits of the Artist; Fidelman’s beliefs, reflections and reactions to Art (despite the fact that he really isn’t much good at it. Stream of Consciousness.
6)Glass Blower of Venice; Fidelman moves to Venice and starts an affair with a woman. Her husband, a glass blower discovers them and he and Fidelman start an affair. Fidelman learns glass blowing. He eventually returns to America and works as a glass blower, and has affairs with men and women.
They can stand alone and some were originally published separately, but work together.
I can understand why some of the critics didn’t like it and Fidelman is a difficult character to have any empathy with. He uses others without much feeling in his pursuit of art. However there is circularity to it and a sort of redemption at the end. Rome is the Rome of Caligula with decadence and excess, enjoyed by the Jewish Fidelman, in the heart of Catholicism. Fidelman even carves Madonna’s to make some money at one point.
There are clever nods to other authors and good use of tropes. There are serious flaws, but on the whole it was entertaining (sometimes irritating). Malamud’s women are certainly formulaic (mothers and whores), but the men are equally so. Apart from Beppo the glass blower, the women are on the whole more sympathetic characters as they struggle to cope with an impossible and deluded man (no lessons to learn here then!).
This is the first Malamud I’ve read. It is a set of inter-connected stories about Arthur Fidelman, an American who moves to Italy to pursue his desire to be involved in art. It is also allegedly not one of Malamud’s better books and one critic has said that all that Fidelman manages to do in his escapades is to learn “pimping, glass-blowing and sodomy from the Italians”.
All the Fidelman stories are chronological with no recurring characters (apart from Fidelman himself and his sister Bessie who is in the background and in America). There are six stories;
1)Last Mohican; Fidelman, an American Jew and a failed painter comes to Italy to write a critical study of Giotto. He repeatedly meets a Jew called Susskind who steals his manuscript.
2)Still Life; Fidelman moves into a studio with a woman called Annamaria who mistreats him, until he finally discovers she has a “thing” about priest’s robes and dress (he keeps the biretta on!)
3)Naked Nude; Fidelman is working cleaning toilets in a brothel and is held prisoner. He has to make a copy of a Titian to buy his freedom.
4)A Pimp’s Revenge; Fidelman is trying to complete a picture of him and his mother. In the meantime he is living with a girl called Esmeralda and acting as her pimp.
5)Portraits of the Artist; Fidelman’s beliefs, reflections and reactions to Art (despite the fact that he really isn’t much good at it. Stream of Consciousness.
6)Glass Blower of Venice; Fidelman moves to Venice and starts an affair with a woman. Her husband, a glass blower discovers them and he and Fidelman start an affair. Fidelman learns glass blowing. He eventually returns to America and works as a glass blower, and has affairs with men and women.
They can stand alone and some were originally published separately, but work together.
I can understand why some of the critics didn’t like it and Fidelman is a difficult character to have any empathy with. He uses others without much feeling in his pursuit of art. However there is circularity to it and a sort of redemption at the end. Rome is the Rome of Caligula with decadence and excess, enjoyed by the Jewish Fidelman, in the heart of Catholicism. Fidelman even carves Madonna’s to make some money at one point.
There are clever nods to other authors and good use of tropes. There are serious flaws, but on the whole it was entertaining (sometimes irritating). Malamud’s women are certainly formulaic (mothers and whores), but the men are equally so. Apart from Beppo the glass blower, the women are on the whole more sympathetic characters as they struggle to cope with an impossible and deluded man (no lessons to learn here then!).
June 19, 2011
I was extremely disappointed in this, having loved Malamud's The Fixer. These connected short stories were mostly terrible. Though funny at times, I found no depth; Fidelman remains unchanged at the end of the book. Nothing is accomplished except that the story becomes progressively more obscene and perverse. Usually impressed by Malamud, I was depressed after finishing this.
June 30, 2014
A wonderful, picaresque exploration of art, genius, and mastery. Certain sections had surprisingly experimental portions, bending form and structure.
April 3, 2024
Nice reading, funny at times, about a failed artist in a cruel and deceiving world, in search of his personal and especially artistic identity, under the heavy burden of the greatest maestros of painting in history.
January 12, 2018
A man travels to Italy to complete a study of an artist and gets involved in a number of adventures.
I found most of this book very dated / slow. The last 15 or so pages (reflecting on life / art / talent) were interesting.
I found most of this book very dated / slow. The last 15 or so pages (reflecting on life / art / talent) were interesting.
April 2, 2021
Un po' deludenti, questi Ritratti di Fidelmann. Forse, per approcciarmi a Malamud, avrei dovuto cominciare con Il commesso o Gli Inquilini. Questo lavoro sperimentale, acerbo forse, non mi ha convinto, sebbene lo stile dello scrittore americano sia magistrale, strutturato perfettamente. Nella sostanza, però, questi racconti ("ritratti", con il termine che inerisce sia alla tematica artistica contenuta nei testi, che al ritratto psicologico, umano del protagonista che si va pian piano delineando) che vanno a formare un unico romanzo a puntate mi hanno lasciato ben poco. I primi tre con un ritmo più serrato, coinvolgente, sono quelli che ho preferito, quelli in cui c'è più freschezza (Susskind, la pittrice Olivino, le peripezie di Milano), in cui il discorso sull'arte e gli artisti, sulle opere e l'emulazione raggiunge il suo apice. Da tutto ciò emerge davvero una crescita da parte di Fidelman, una formazione che non sempre ha segno positivo, che molto spesso fa regredire il nostro povero pittore fallito, simbolo perfetto della figura dell'antieroe. Con il quarto e quinto ritratto la situazione cambia: stile troppo autocompiaciuto, discorsi troppo ellittici o sconclusionati e tratti di stream of consciousness che, ahimè, non amo quasi mai. L'attenzione si risolleva con l'ultimo racconto, sebbene ormai la frittata sia fatta e l'attenzione sia calata sotto le scarpe. Questo percorso, insomma, che credo avesse l'intento di delineare in modo picaresco la parabola di un uomo, diventa a metà strada una salita ripida, che annoia e strappa sbadigli. Nonostante questo, però, ho apprezzato le atmosfere barocche, senza epoca che Malamud regala al lettore. Ci si ritrova in un'Italia che appartiene solo a sprazzi al XX secolo, mentre spesso pare d'immergersi nel tempo del Caravaggio, con grotteschi personaggi e gradevoli arabeschi nei toni e nello stile. Per tirare le somme, se dovessi fare una media, darei una sufficienza risicata. Spero di rivalutare Malamud - dal punto di vista dei contenuti, s'intende, perché che sappia scrivere non devo certo dirlo io - attraverso i suoi lavori più riusciti.
December 30, 2020
The first story is taken from the Magic Barrel collection and reasonably nice, but as the stories follow eachother they become more and more boring, presenting the same subject matter of the would-be painter struggling to survive in Italy. Not very memorable.
September 19, 2008
A sometimes-picaresque series of short stories about a failed artist adrift in Italy. More specifically, Fidelman is a failing artist, one who constantly refuses to learn from past failure and tries again, and always fails again except for a brief period when he becomed indigent and wanders from town to town making and exhibiting square holes dug in the ground. Eventually, Fidelman learns from a gay Venetian glass blower that there's no point in clinging to failure, and goes back to America where he apparently bungles along less tragicomedically. I've always liked Malamud's way of inserting the numinous into otherrwise more or less realistic narratives, mostly in his short stories, but here he pulls out all the stops and weaves a shaggy dog story full of intricate ironies, bizarre obsessions and riotous reverses. Enjoyable stuff, even if the more metaphysical flights seem a bit overdone at times.
August 31, 2018
Pictures of Fidelman by Bernard Malamud is one of the most humorless dreary dispirited novels I've ever read, like a long spell of rainy weather. And it went from bad to worse, with a modernist jumble of confusing concluding chapters.
By the last pages I uncharacteristically took to skipping through, looking only at snatches of topic sentences until the ending which has a last episode of futility with an unfulfilled lackluster moral of an ending.
Need I say more about how I didn’t understand or like this book. A far cry from The Natural.
By the last pages I uncharacteristically took to skipping through, looking only at snatches of topic sentences until the ending which has a last episode of futility with an unfulfilled lackluster moral of an ending.
Need I say more about how I didn’t understand or like this book. A far cry from The Natural.
February 7, 2022
I found this book sitting outside of the Blick Art Materials and took it with me because the blurb on the back was intriguing. It consist of six stories about a failed American painter named Fidelman who decides to go to Italy for a year to study the works of Giotto and to write a book.
The style and tone reminded me of Less by Andrew Greer or the The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I agree it might be difficult to sympathize with the main character, but I found him pretty relatable. He also seems autobiographical. I really liked the passages about artistic obsession, and about art and life. A lot of the book is about Fidelman and his complex relationship with painting, and how that influences his relationships with others in Italy. My favorite story was the 3rd, when he is commissioned to copy Venus of Urbino for a group of smugglers. The tension between art, his own survival, and his artistic integrity is very well explored and I loved the ending.
The last story is significantly more abstract than the rest of them, with an abrupt ending. I'm not really sure what to make of it but I would say its worth reading.
The style and tone reminded me of Less by Andrew Greer or the The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I agree it might be difficult to sympathize with the main character, but I found him pretty relatable. He also seems autobiographical. I really liked the passages about artistic obsession, and about art and life. A lot of the book is about Fidelman and his complex relationship with painting, and how that influences his relationships with others in Italy. My favorite story was the 3rd, when he is commissioned to copy Venus of Urbino for a group of smugglers. The tension between art, his own survival, and his artistic integrity is very well explored and I loved the ending.
The last story is significantly more abstract than the rest of them, with an abrupt ending. I'm not really sure what to make of it but I would say its worth reading.
March 10, 2021
Although I enjoyed reading this novel, there were too many times in which the overall structure of the book became patchy and borderline incoherent, and the writing itself was often slapdash. Parts of the novel read like scribbles from a notebook. Even Fidelman's characterization was rather thin and two-dimensional; the other characters come off as being considerably more well-rounded than Fidelman (who the third-person narrator sometimes referred to as F. for some odd reason).
March 12, 2025
Bernard Malamud这本短篇小说集的质量其实有点层次不齐，第一、三、六写得非常之好，第四章我本人不太能够理解得到内核。他也有些像成长型作者般，后面的作品的文笔和剧情都会比之前的要稍微好些。第一章的“自由”与“贫穷”以及“爱”，第二章的“性欲”与“施虐受虐”，第三章的“欲望”与“绘画真假之分”，第四章的“缪斯女神”与“现实”，第五章的高度意识流化以及第六段的“性别倾向”“家庭婚姻”以及“艺术”，每一章节都在把Arthur Fidelman这个主角变得越来越立体。当然这本小说章节内部之间的关系不是特别近，也可以当作是六篇相对独立的文章，但在此之中就能发现Fidelman对艺术和性的兴趣和欲望在不断的发展和调整，尤其是第六章Glass Blower of Venice更是推向了最顶端
April 13, 2025
Was in an Airbnb in Italy and this was one of the only books in English I could read. Lowk so good…gagged me at times! Have never really read anything like this, so episodic and experimental at times but still rlly funny and heartwarming and heart wrenching (that ending is fucking evil). Glad I found it.
December 26, 2016
Malamud's 1969 collection of all six Arthur Fidelman short stories is no magic barrel; more a mixed bag. A couple are are very good, a couple are pretty good, and a couple are very bad.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD
"The Last Mohican" from 1958 is good, recounting Fidelman's arrival in Italy and his being immediately set upon by the beggar Susskind. In this story Fidelman is researching Giotto, and when his manuscript is discovered missing, his creativity collapses like a house of cards. I enjoyed this story, even if it frustrated me as it wore on and Susskind seemed less and less a real person and more a dybbuk of some sort.
"Still Life" from 1962 is another good story, but almost oppressively bleak. To Malamud's credit, I could feel the damp chill of the studio by his vivid descriptions. How did Fidelman fall so low since the first story that he can suffer gladly the abuses of the unhinged Annamaria Oliovino? This story is sordid and takes a gratuitously irreverent turn and is ultimately unsatisfying, the weakest of the good stories.
"Naked Nude," which originally appeared in the August 1963 Playboy, is my favorite story of the book. Fidelman has fallen even lower, reduced to pickpocketing, then beholden to Scarpio and Angelo, a couple of criminals who run the whorehouse in which Fidelman finds sanctuary and an escape from the police. They confiscate Fidelman's passport and make his scrub toilets to earn his room and board. Noticing in Fidelman's doodlings his talent for drawing, the criminals coerce Fidelman into forging Titian's "Venus of Urbino." This story celebrates art and especially an artist's pride in his work. I will always recall Teresa the chambermaid, who posed nude for Fidelman, weeping when she beheld his unsparingly honest drawing: "I thought you'd make me beautiful!"
I suspect Malamud intended "Naked Nude" to be the last of his Fidelman stories, as it closes with the artist, his passport restored, sailing for Switzerland. Almost five years pass before Malamud published his next Fidelman story, "A Pimp's Revenge," in the February 1968 Playboy. The five-year gap and the fact Malamud peddled the story to Hugh Hefner's skin magazine is evident in the obvious distance between author and character and in the increasing raunchiness of the stories.
"A Pimp's Revenge" is especially sordid, as Fidelman befriends the 18-year-old prostitute Esmeralda whose services he solicited. She ends up moving in with him, to the chagrin of her pimp Ludovico Belvedere, who becomes a Susskind-like plague on their lives. Esmeralda and Ludovico are rich and full characters, and when Fidelman and his dedication to art remain the focus it is a very good story. It's a haphazard, overly long story, however. A protracted excursus on how to paint a kaddish grinds the story to a halt (and foreshadows the stylistic experimentation of the next story in this collection). Ludovico, it turns out, is a failed artist and interviews Fidelman in what is an enjoyable even if an artificial means for Malamud to express opinions on art. Fidelman's "voice" in this section doesn't ring true to how he's expressed himself in earlier stories.
The next story, "Pictures of the Artist," was published in the December 1968 Atlantic and appears to be Malamud's homage to Joyce's Ulysses, but comes off more as parody. I found it unreadable and by far the nadir of the collection.
The final story, "Glass Blower of Venice," is published here for the first time. It's an anticlimactic close to the Fidelman epic. The Fidelman of this story bears little to no resemblance to the Fidelman of the first four stories. There's no mention of his longsuffering sister Bessie or of his past adventures and acquaintances, a passing reference to which lent the preceding stories a thread of continuity. Here Malamud sprinkles in artist's names for effect, but they lay on the surface. This story is mostly concerned with Fidelman sinking to new depths of decadence, sleeping with his homosexual friend Beppo's aged and ugly wife, then being raped/seduced by Beppo himself! The abuse Fidelman suffers is reminiscent of Annamaria's, but that is about the only tenuous tie to the earlier Fidelman.
The story cycle resolves in the story's closing line--more an afterthought, hastily appended--assuring the reader Fidelman returned home to America. It was an unsatisfying finish to an unsatisfying book.
And despite Malamud's insisting Pictures of Fidelman is a novel, it's very much a collection of stories linked only by the title character and Italy as a setting. Calling it a novel doesn't make it so. A few years earlier Jean Shepherd similarly insisted In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash was a novel, though his book also was a collection of previously published short stories. But at least Shepherd created an original framing device--two old friends in a bar reminiscing--and wrote original material bridging the discrete stories. Malamud's book lacks any such mortar between the bricks. It reads like a short story collection, and unfortunately not a very good one overall.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD
"The Last Mohican" from 1958 is good, recounting Fidelman's arrival in Italy and his being immediately set upon by the beggar Susskind. In this story Fidelman is researching Giotto, and when his manuscript is discovered missing, his creativity collapses like a house of cards. I enjoyed this story, even if it frustrated me as it wore on and Susskind seemed less and less a real person and more a dybbuk of some sort.
"Still Life" from 1962 is another good story, but almost oppressively bleak. To Malamud's credit, I could feel the damp chill of the studio by his vivid descriptions. How did Fidelman fall so low since the first story that he can suffer gladly the abuses of the unhinged Annamaria Oliovino? This story is sordid and takes a gratuitously irreverent turn and is ultimately unsatisfying, the weakest of the good stories.
"Naked Nude," which originally appeared in the August 1963 Playboy, is my favorite story of the book. Fidelman has fallen even lower, reduced to pickpocketing, then beholden to Scarpio and Angelo, a couple of criminals who run the whorehouse in which Fidelman finds sanctuary and an escape from the police. They confiscate Fidelman's passport and make his scrub toilets to earn his room and board. Noticing in Fidelman's doodlings his talent for drawing, the criminals coerce Fidelman into forging Titian's "Venus of Urbino." This story celebrates art and especially an artist's pride in his work. I will always recall Teresa the chambermaid, who posed nude for Fidelman, weeping when she beheld his unsparingly honest drawing: "I thought you'd make me beautiful!"
I suspect Malamud intended "Naked Nude" to be the last of his Fidelman stories, as it closes with the artist, his passport restored, sailing for Switzerland. Almost five years pass before Malamud published his next Fidelman story, "A Pimp's Revenge," in the February 1968 Playboy. The five-year gap and the fact Malamud peddled the story to Hugh Hefner's skin magazine is evident in the obvious distance between author and character and in the increasing raunchiness of the stories.
"A Pimp's Revenge" is especially sordid, as Fidelman befriends the 18-year-old prostitute Esmeralda whose services he solicited. She ends up moving in with him, to the chagrin of her pimp Ludovico Belvedere, who becomes a Susskind-like plague on their lives. Esmeralda and Ludovico are rich and full characters, and when Fidelman and his dedication to art remain the focus it is a very good story. It's a haphazard, overly long story, however. A protracted excursus on how to paint a kaddish grinds the story to a halt (and foreshadows the stylistic experimentation of the next story in this collection). Ludovico, it turns out, is a failed artist and interviews Fidelman in what is an enjoyable even if an artificial means for Malamud to express opinions on art. Fidelman's "voice" in this section doesn't ring true to how he's expressed himself in earlier stories.
The next story, "Pictures of the Artist," was published in the December 1968 Atlantic and appears to be Malamud's homage to Joyce's Ulysses, but comes off more as parody. I found it unreadable and by far the nadir of the collection.
The final story, "Glass Blower of Venice," is published here for the first time. It's an anticlimactic close to the Fidelman epic. The Fidelman of this story bears little to no resemblance to the Fidelman of the first four stories. There's no mention of his longsuffering sister Bessie or of his past adventures and acquaintances, a passing reference to which lent the preceding stories a thread of continuity. Here Malamud sprinkles in artist's names for effect, but they lay on the surface. This story is mostly concerned with Fidelman sinking to new depths of decadence, sleeping with his homosexual friend Beppo's aged and ugly wife, then being raped/seduced by Beppo himself! The abuse Fidelman suffers is reminiscent of Annamaria's, but that is about the only tenuous tie to the earlier Fidelman.
The story cycle resolves in the story's closing line--more an afterthought, hastily appended--assuring the reader Fidelman returned home to America. It was an unsatisfying finish to an unsatisfying book.
And despite Malamud's insisting Pictures of Fidelman is a novel, it's very much a collection of stories linked only by the title character and Italy as a setting. Calling it a novel doesn't make it so. A few years earlier Jean Shepherd similarly insisted In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash was a novel, though his book also was a collection of previously published short stories. But at least Shepherd created an original framing device--two old friends in a bar reminiscing--and wrote original material bridging the discrete stories. Malamud's book lacks any such mortar between the bricks. It reads like a short story collection, and unfortunately not a very good one overall.
September 7, 2017
Series of related stories exploring art and life through a failed Bronx artist living in Italy. Though mostly straightforward, Malamud occasionally experiments with narrative form. While it's not as good as many of his novels, it's an often funny and engaging read.
Read
December 13, 2020A Bronx-born artist (Jewish, obviously) travels to Italy to pursue his craft, descends into penniless madness. A thoughtful commentary on the life of the Artist as depicted through Malamud's brand of dreamy absurdity, thoroughly enjoyable.
December 19, 2021
What a bizarre book. Malamud has a very fertile imagination and the gift to be able to capture it on paper. I really enjoyed these interlinking tales, most (but not all) of them amusing, clever and thoughtful
May 9, 2024
Failed American artist in Italy...his encounters and relationships. Reminds me of a Neil Simon play in a way, but darker. I'm thinking the last chapter caused quite a stir back when it was written.
Pretty good final line. "In America, he worked as a craftsman in glass and loved men and women."
Pretty good final line. "In America, he worked as a craftsman in glass and loved men and women."
December 15, 2025
''...ma finora tutto quello che ho imparato è che sei come gli altri, che te la fai sotto dalla fifa. Così è la vita, quando credi di non avere niente, incontri un altro che ha ancora meno...''
January 4, 2026
Stupid ending.
December 5, 2021
I am a fan of Malamud though this may not be the best place to start for a new reader. Malamud's characters can spend their stories sinking into mires of their own (or God's own) making, and Fidelman is on the less sympathetic side. This is best viewed not exactly as a "novel", but as a set of linked stories. I admit that at first my praise for this one was qualified but it stayed with me in my thoughts longer than most things. And this was my first introduction to the stories of Malamud though I had read some novels and as I read more and more of his stories my estimation of the Fidelman stories grew, admittedly in retrospect.
The first three stories make an excellent trilogy and there is at least some circumstantial evidence that Malamud meant to end Fidelman's adventures in Italy with the third, as we watch him on his way to Switzerland. The next three are more challenging as Malamud's "hero" sinks to his deepest moral depths and the black humor of the first three stories provides less relief. Still, there is little point in criticizing Malamud for presenting the story of an unlikable character who sinks into progressively miserable depths of amorality as a result of his uncompromising obsession - in this case, an art for which he only possesses mediocre talents. That's what the story arc is - it is what it is - it's a bunch of what it means. Wishing Malamud had written an uplifting book about a talented artist who traveled to Italy, who met his challenges but had some adventures and evolved as a person and eventually made himself a better human being? - that's not this book, or Malamud, rarely if ever. You might as well wish for one of his books to be made into a happy ending Hollywood movie starring Robert Redford. As if.
Anyway, a fun pastime it is (in a black humor sort of way) to keep track of the fates of Fidelman's "greatest" artistic creations as the stories move along - and to keep track of the variety of people who are willing to honestly evaluate his artistic talents. And to keep track of the pretentious babble he spouts when he converses about Art. One of the best moments is when one of the always-destined-to-be-disappointed women in Fidelman's life finally convinces him to paint her, then crying, disappointed, when she sees the result because she had hoped he would have made her beautiful, at least on canvas. Fidelman thinks he is blameless, just painting a truth he sees, but we are more likely to believe the result is an indictment of his meager abilities.
The first three stories make an excellent trilogy and there is at least some circumstantial evidence that Malamud meant to end Fidelman's adventures in Italy with the third, as we watch him on his way to Switzerland. The next three are more challenging as Malamud's "hero" sinks to his deepest moral depths and the black humor of the first three stories provides less relief. Still, there is little point in criticizing Malamud for presenting the story of an unlikable character who sinks into progressively miserable depths of amorality as a result of his uncompromising obsession - in this case, an art for which he only possesses mediocre talents. That's what the story arc is - it is what it is - it's a bunch of what it means. Wishing Malamud had written an uplifting book about a talented artist who traveled to Italy, who met his challenges but had some adventures and evolved as a person and eventually made himself a better human being? - that's not this book, or Malamud, rarely if ever. You might as well wish for one of his books to be made into a happy ending Hollywood movie starring Robert Redford. As if.
Anyway, a fun pastime it is (in a black humor sort of way) to keep track of the fates of Fidelman's "greatest" artistic creations as the stories move along - and to keep track of the variety of people who are willing to honestly evaluate his artistic talents. And to keep track of the pretentious babble he spouts when he converses about Art. One of the best moments is when one of the always-destined-to-be-disappointed women in Fidelman's life finally convinces him to paint her, then crying, disappointed, when she sees the result because she had hoped he would have made her beautiful, at least on canvas. Fidelman thinks he is blameless, just painting a truth he sees, but we are more likely to believe the result is an indictment of his meager abilities.
February 16, 2009
I had already read the first story many years ago and never forgot it so was glad to find the whole group of six stories. The bohemian life of an American artist living in mid twentieth-century Italy weaves its spell but at bottom the stories are about the relation of the artist to his art. Each story has a plot. The Lumen edition, a Spanish translation by Andres Bosch, maintains Malamud's style.
March 12, 2023
A very good novel about an artist Arthur Fidelman, that is searching for a better life by learning the secrets of art. In fact, the novel is about Arthur Fidelman searching for his own path in life, trying to discover himself.
The novel also have many many situation that are extremly funny for the reader. Good Book!
The novel also have many many situation that are extremly funny for the reader. Good Book!
August 6, 2012
The story of Fidelman, an American Jew who saves his money to study art in Italy. Each story finds him in a worse situation, but he never stops having epiphanies about art, love, and life. His romantic entwinement with a painter is reminiscent of an Anais Nin story.
November 5, 2012
I reread The Natural a couple of years ago and enjoyed it - a sort of half zen/fantasy view of the real world. Well Fidelman was a less successful effort to do the same. There wasn't the spark that made you care about the main character who seemed for most of the book just hopeless.
July 3, 2013
I was already thoroughly bored with the pretentious artist of the book's title when all kinds of weird stuff began to occur. At this point I almost about put it down, but glad I didn't because the ending's rather nice, in a twisted sort of way.
January 22, 2012
Malamud was best when he wasn't experimenting...
August 12, 2012
I may need to come back to this book as my memory of 20 years ago that it was not very good. It was pretentious and playing with form and structure for the sake of it.
Maybe I was too young?
Maybe I was too young?
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