Malamud's lives:

...him but the youth, understandably, is not But those are the externals, and that's The crackup, the slow, steady, im- quite persuaded...

...her father" (in fact somewhat older than everyone supposes, there can be no With Fanny, Dubin is in full regalia all Dubin, and black to boot), as at moments wronger subject for Dubin...

...and none colonel in the Union Army...

...none of the Civil War, the youngest breveted "soft" femininity...

...There are other evidence that he won't go on doing so...

...No tricks, nothing omit- too generously bestowed on Dubin by a Fanny, of an age with his own daughter, ted or scanted: vintage Malamud written kindly writer, possibly in recompense for violently alive, adrift in freedom, a true straight from the heart out of that abso- old and future losses and the scars he believer in a new life daily, more often lute integrity which is his distinguishing bears-the stepson's feelings toward his when possible, and despite her tender mark as a writer...

...Dubin's second episode, which is even Moreover-and this is a gratuitous gift Into that, as if summoned, walks more scalding...

...The Lawrence herself a respected psychotherapist and sufficient repayment of all grievous losbiography will receive a respectful press author of influential papers in the field, ses, including the final one, the work of on the whole, though a few surly sorts turned her father onto the great man's composing enduring lives stroke by will ask why we needed another one (an celebrated daughter...

...Inanition has would have escaped behind a screen of clarified in exile, out of the range of our set into Dubin's marriage...

...And the most likely to become an American spect, including (or especially) arroboth classes of reaction-that of hero- Mussolini...

...Thursday to Sunday...

...and Dubin will go with his Lincoln, there will be much son," one of the "good conditions" of back to Kitty and the state of marriage head-scratching when his Anna Freud work, a contingency), work as motive from which he has episodically exiled appears but one of the same loyalists will justification, redemption and salvation, - himself, and will receive a full amnesty, guess that Maud, a young widow and the supreme personal vindication and few questions asked...

...burst), is wide open to multiple under- resisting a powerful "inclination to a Not for the first time, she asks him standing, none more so than Fanny's cur- confined lonely life," an extension and why he stayed married to her all these tain line...

...panionable novelist for his aging hero as tor of lives, a kind of necrophiliac, driven And what better mentor than Fanny who a just reward for work well done...

...he knows he has not to the choral bang and soaring of "Eine fully moving, a harrowing cry of the Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott...

...Try as he may to restore scene and then virtually disappears from humbly ask Dubin, after the success of order to his life by returning to accus- consciousness...

...things...

...until in the end, one calling it a qualified vic- income Jewish jokes and other very sad she crops up as her father's future col- tory, the other a Pyrrhic one...

...Vigorous without, disciplined life provides the best sus- disenchanted operative for the KGB in within he is sick-unto-death, dying of tained writing in the novel, quite the Moscow, who sees the error of his ways subjectivity...

...Dubin replies, as if the to complete his biography of D.H...

...essentially imaginative literature- And then back to work, unremitting Sooner rather than later, we feel sure, fiction-will elicit howls of protest in the work, Dubin's true and abiding passion, Fanny will be gone from Dubin's life- academic journals, and the full assent of consuming, imperious necessity and inanother "life" appropriated and trans- those same two critics who will wonder dissoluble marriage, the work of creating muted into nurturing memory...

...Dubin is plots for it, courts it, defends it zealously 'Dubin's Lives, by Bernard Malamud, Farrar, good at kidding himself, and his life against the world's encroachments, inStraus & Giroux, $10, 362 pp...

...survey of artistic epiphanies associated with popular music After the surface cleanliness of the '60s when machineover time...

...Franklin ity in the Philippines and was conman, perhaps the most gifted with natural Roosevelt deemed him in 1932, " the sequently removed from his military talent of all the generals America most dangerous man in America" (Huey command-but he remained the perfect has produced, who all his life long Long was the "second most danger- hero in the eyes of his youngest son, aroused in myriads of beholders extreme ous"), meaning that he was, of all men, Douglas, who emulated him in every reand opposite emotional reactions...

...But how heart-provide indeed some of the SAUL MALOFF, a novelist and critic, is a regu- long does this last...

...forces in the Philippines...

...sure he wants to know, he has plunged scending from tepid to freezing, the sub- Maud, the daughter, is another matter, from that most chaste observer of minute terfuge, lies and deception...

...Moreover, as if his inner life into full life...

...But Malamud lets her go too magazines...

...ever found out...

...but not on any Twain, Thoreau), ransacking them for nately, with the whole of his clotted, terms...

...Se- With Dubin's children Malamud is not The external evidence of his life tells a rially cuckolded even before the fact, as quite so authoritative...

...For Dubin is by profession, inner made him a reasonable proposition, that Every word and gesture in this am- necessity, iron fate, a biographer, a thief he abide with her from Monday to Wed- biguous scene, and the brief consummat- of "lives" come to the craft by way of nesday each week and with his wife from ing, obscurely moonlit one which fol- composing obituaries for a newspaper...

...drill team arrogantly showing their manipulative rifle dexterity "Chapters and Verses" was frankly presented as a series of during a confrontation with "flower children...

...However, after the Mickey Mouse Club, can "Three Dances from the film Hair"-the film opened in the romantic pas de deux, suitably modified, be far behind...

...She has just plies in his behalf: "He said he did...

...The brave paradox of a man, noble and ig- DOUGLAS MacARTHUR, 1880-1964 act which brought him his initial fame, noble, inspiring and outrageous, arrog- however, was also an act of insubordinaant and shy, the best of men and the worst William Manchester tion...

...his work has evasive tactics, Malamud meets the surveillance, and we must take on faith not been going well of late...

...lievable if sometimes nutty one...

...another gift for Dubin...

...pulse, can't possibly understand...

...I had my work to do...

...We open the upstairs window and shouts not only an essential condition of his had kids we loved...

...too, the long, slow passages between quickly: a pregnant Maud, returned from 27 April 1979: 245 Berkeley with the glad news, abruptly blood-spattered pages the evidence of the color his English with the miraculously leaves the parental house to go off to New titanic life-and-death struggle waged expressive American art-song which York to have her baby and there's an end there...

...and when without pausing to allow time with an overview of his life's work, morning and thickly overcast, is making the small, decisive shift in terms to regis- The Art of Biography, and follows that his farewell to Fanny Bink, his mistress, ter she returns io the more familiar music with a biography of Anna Freud, in the as she might have been called in another and asks the immemorial question: "Do writing of which he is assisted by Maud country...

...Dubin, fast ap- lows it (a characteristic Malamudian An "odd inward man," by his own acproaching the far shore of sixty to her stroke: the human complexities of the count, "held together by an ordered twenty-five, doesn't think his wife would narrative held in.suspension and com- life," he has "given up life to write "agree...

...He was again less and endlessly (often foolishly) conother became, through the compulsions a national hero in 1898 (and after) as niving in her pursuit of ambitions realizof an imperious nature, so great a threat Major General MacArthur commanding able only through Douglas after her husCommonweal: 246...

...gance and chronic insubordination...

...The slyly embeds in the bibliography apBernard Malamud's new novel,' perplexed Fanny, hopelessly tied to an pended at the end, where we learn in a William Dubin, the wounded, suffer- outmoded vocabulary, persists: "But do fast flourish that Dubin does indeed go on ing but resilient, sometimes oddly you love her...

...For work, not love (which is, librarian, her faithful swain, who will by to Dubin for establishing it (they will as Dubin reflects, "a means of making a virtue of his youth and persistence outlast hope) once and for all...

...taken as a whole offers no compelling cluding those of his wife and children...

...When the youth reapnot where Dubin (nor any other Malamud placable, hour-by-hour dismantling of a pears (via a smuggled-out letter) it is as a character) lives...

...and if he's desolated by the "famished for lives" to provide what he most powerful emotions, those of long- abandonment we must exult, for it results himself feels he never had: a life, lives...

...was somewhat tarnished in the public eye Thus does William Manchester begin Kenneth S. Davis when he refused to obey civilian authorhis masterful full-length portrait of a to our free institutions...

...and so were the acts which brought of men, the most protean, the most Ltde, Brown, $15, 793 pp...

...Books: BRILLIANCE, DEFIANCE, AMBITION g HE WAS A GREAT thundering AMERICAN CAESAR.- U.S...

...after him either as friendly advice or dire work as a writer...

...Isolation is "It wasn't so hard...

...These jottings appear to be an autobiographical plete satisfaction...

...What When he is not writing them (Lincoln, Dubin responds to Fanny's call inordi- she wants, she wants...

...Again the fragments from a longer work that may eventually comprise a fragmentary nature of the presentation worked against comfull evening...

...Humiliated by a near-discovery in their secrets, he's reading them, repressed, buried life, exploding the the very act by Kitty Dubin, she leaves feverishly, one after the other, a man bonds of his "ordered life," swept by his Dubin again...

...Fanny is no mere convenifreedom...

...the unceasing little together...

...As Dubin vanishes into the acceptance, with a sense almost of grim, years...

...Dubin asserts his love for Thoreau, to dash off a biography of him...

...though spreading of girth, loveliest and most convincing break- and wants out-a dismaying and undeep inside and gnawing on vitals there is down in contemporary fiction, save for characteristic piece of sheer melodrama...

...I'm a family man...

...and Dubin, a patriot of the state of night, homeward bound, bearing an un- cold pleasure, of a melancholy, desolate, marriage despite everything, explains: expected gift for his wife, Fanny throws isolated boyhood and youth...

...It featured a tom- DON McDONAGH LOVELIEST BREAKDOWN IN CONTEMPORARY FICTION Malamud's lives SAUL MALOFF Conditions were good...

...The final commitment to mainstream concerns...

...Commonweal: 244 He sees it as his ideal state: necessity as so much "picked" his subject as been outbursts...

...The deeply esdifferent story: an attractive wife, an he will be after, and the principle of order tranged, greatly troubled stepson, a adored daughter, a well-loved stepson, collapsed, Dubin breaks down: his mar- Vietnam wartime deserter (from Gerfriends, an honorable career, a measure riage, his work, his life, his very sanity, many) to Sweden, is given one unhappy of celebrity-didn't Lyndon Johnson all a shambles...

...The unisex approach to portions featured disco music and the exquisite Sara Rudner male and female dancing in which each does virtually the same slipping and sliding tirelessly through its rather relentless beat.steps still exists...

...His shining heroism ridiculous, the most sublime...

...No highly controversial General Arthur a Virginia cotton broker, raised in the American general served his country MacArthur...

...Malamud silences Dubin, D. Perrera, his estranged, sad, then predo not know, though with Dubin the lifts the great weight from him, and re- sumably reconciled, beloved daughter...

...there's Mahler ing...

...mid-March-completed the new work...

...In his 'teens, Arthur MacAr- "charm" tradition of the Southern belle, more greatly than Douglas MacArthur in thur became one of the authentic heroes was hard as nails beneath her manifested his purely professional capacity...

...they are in bed thrashing as in one scene, .mother, or at least his wife, are powerblood calls to blood...

...ing, yearning, loss, remorse, in the great literary riches of his nearly In others' lives, as if "hunting for burn- jealousy -emotions Fanny, given as she terminal breakdown: a mesmerizing dising bushes on Sinai," he asks to discover is to the immediate enactment of im- solution of the susceptible biographer...

...tomed ways, nothing avails...

...She, daughter of dantly justified by objective fact...

...but at Fanny's urging says he pressed into a single lurid pictorial lives," a way of both cultivating and might ask...

...in short, the relentless detail, all vividly imagined his early boyhood...

...Life isn't Bach only...

...Whether it is a last goodby we you love me...

...By now the affair has surged we must go on the assurance Malamud JUST BEFORE the astonishing end of and lapsed on and off for years...

...Both will see that Dubin triumphed Dubin derived from it, fill his head with of it: out of sight, out of mind...

...Lawbuoyant central figure, having recently distinction were universally understood, rence, which has tormented him emerged from the dark night of his soul especially by the very young: "I love her throughout the novel, follows it in due where it is always three o'clock in the life...

...worship, that of villain-hating-would He was very much the son of his Yet Douglas MacArthur was also very seem in retrospect to have been abun- father, the brilliant, famous, always much his mother's son...

...Where another writer mother and Dubin have mysteriously years richly experienced...

...And so with the disintegra- hand, Dubin puts it out of his mind and had been telling him something he isn't tion of the marriage: the temperature de- returns gladly to Fanny's bed...

...his thinning dramatic, narrative, scenic requirements alone, and against the evidence, that he is hair reminds him, as if he needed remind- of his unfolding tale head-on, detail by once again the dutiful and loving son of ing, of the perilous decline...

...a hunger-artist starved for a new life...

...She was utterly ruthother made greater blunders...

...his career to a close...

...the small irritations more of her, and of father and daughter own minute observations of the New En- absurdly magnified...

...the slights, though here too one wishes we had seen changes in season, Thoreau (Malamud's injuries, indignities...

...Shocking news in stage is set...

...dances lacked the same tension, however, and seemed like Other portions had interesting stylistic touches such as a silent friendly intruders in search of a context for full realization...

...novel's most beautiful bursts of pure feellar contributor to Commonweal and other it isn't even all Mozart...

...picked by it: there's something, Dubin ence, amiably manufactured by a comYet at the same time Dubin is a collec- believes, Lawrence wants him to know...

...A section called "Nursery" used cloyingly senti- made, hard, finished dances demonstrated the unsentimental mental musical selections from the '50s television serial de- rigor of Twyla Tharp's approach, these new pieces are further voted to the Mickey Mouse Club, but the piece was sensitively evidence of a desire for the human touch that strengthens her shaped, particularly the solo for William Whittier...

...it is his heart's desire: he warning: "Don't kid yourself...

...worst is always possible...

...Dubin's declarations of love for gland landscape are superb-a revela- quarrels about nothing at all which are the marvelous girl unhappily entangled tion), to that electrically-charged field of really about everything unspoken, the in an affair with a man "old enough to be force, Lawrence, than whom, as abrasions of a lifetime...

...how men hold themselves together...

...Between books, stroke against the heaviest odds-work is objection which Dubin anticipated), and Dubin will take much joy in his gifted, the essential subject of Malamud's most only two of the horde will see in the tawny grandson, teach him Yiddish and ambitious and richest novel...

...But Dubin the time, especially but not only when she seems old enough to be Dubin's knows what they do not, his inner life...

...Dubin's stories, and once a year take him to visit, laborator in a bibliographical note, a brilliantly-argued thesis, in The Art of and there pay homage at, the gravesites happy ending a bit too facilely achieved, Biography, that all good biography is of the boy's paternal grandparents...

...Once again, as useful assumption about another perall of Fanny's Dubins...

...she's a by a "hunger to live many lives," so already knows more than Frieda's boy woman in her own right, an entirely belong as they are both illustrious and dead...

...married how anyone could have missed this self- "lives" out of that disorderly, bad novel, no doubt, probably to a dull dog of a local evident truth, while tendering gratitude the world...