Pukipukilolololo

Ricardo Padilla
Ms. Simpson
English III

The Magic Barrel Draft
Quotes:
1- According to Lawrence Jay Dessner , “There is a sentimentality to these tales, as well as a condescending cuteness which mars them seriously . . . Except for their settings . . . they might have been published in one of the women's magazines, so sentimental, so treacle-laden are they. In short, they are emotionalclichés” I think Lawrence says it all with this quote. Most of it is all clichés.
2- According to Brian Adler, The final scene of the story, with Salzman, "leaning against a wall, chant[ing] prayers for the dead" (214), signifies that Finkle has been returned to his community and has now begun the process of living fully within it. I didn’t really get this quote but thanks to Brian Adler I cansee what Bernard Malamud meant when he said the matchmaker started doing a prayer to the dead.
3- According to Benjamin Goluboff, Sara dreams of receiving a secular American education and becoming a teacher, but to do so she must defy the will of her father: “More and more I began to see that father, in his innocent craziness to hold up the Light of the Law to his children, was a tyrant moreterrible than the Tsar from Russia. I think what Benjamin means by this quote is that Saras father was too hard on her while all she really wanted was to be a teacher.
4- According to STEPHEN BLUESTONE, Salzman is a "marriage broker who has neither office nor magic barrel filled with dossiers of choice brides. [... Finkle] was little more than an impostor himself until the impostor made itnecessary for him to find his vocation" (15). What Stephen is saying here is that Finkle was an impostor since the marriage broker did not approve of him going out with his daughter.
5- According to David Robertson, Most critics pay no further attention to this strange fact, which suggests that this detail, which is insisted upon a number of times in the text (e.g., p. 200, where he eats a smallsmoked white fish; p. 208, where Salzman's briefcase "stank offish"; p. 211, where Salzman's apartment is full of a "odor of frying fish"; p. 213, where Salzman is sitting in a Broadway cafeteria "sucking the bony remains of a fish") has mostly defeated interpretation. Here David just tried to look at some flaws in the book. I personally think this quote is a weak one with no sense what so ever.6- According to Sanford Pinsker, Rather, the "much-handled cards" of Salzman's portfolio make it clear that others also suffer the loneliness and indignation of being damaged, passed-over goods, and Finkle's traumatic meeting with Lily Hirschorn forces him to realize, for the first time, "the true nature of his relationship to God, and from that it had come to him, with shocking force, thatapart from his parents, he had never loved anyone. In this one, Sanford is saying that Finkle found out that he and God had a very valuable relationship in which he never thought of. Finkle now realizes how he should love God before loving anyone else.
7- According to Joel Salzberg, Malamud observed in an interview that his work in progress was following a different line from what he hadpreviously written: "My next book will be an `American' novel. It's different from anything I've done.... It'll be something new for my readers, and the first time for me: a romantic love story, with warmth and richness." Here Joel is just saying how Malamud was describing his own point of view of his own short story.
8- From Bernard Malamud; “Leo hurried up to bed and hid under the covers. Underthe covers he thought his life through. Although he soon fell asleep he could not sleep her out of his mind. He woke, beating his breast. Though he prayed to be rid of her, his prayers went unanswered. Through days of torment he endlessly struggled not to love her; fearing success, he escaped it. He then concluded to convert her to goodness, himself to God. The idea alternately nauseated and...