And then in 1972 came ''The Silver Crown,'' a brilliantly reimagined treatment of the domestic dramas that throb through Malamud's work. In this story, a deepened reality replaces realism as Albert Gans pays the faith healer Jonas Lifschitz to save his dying father by creating a silver crown of remarkable powers. In one of the startling switches often found in Malamud's fiction, the comical, mysterious, disturbing hondling over the miraculous crown shocks Albert into a recognition of his real feelings about his father. Walter Goodman is a television critic for The New York Times. That was Papa s bag.
Art lives on surprise.
Once, at Yaddo, while I was writing it, a visitor knocked at my door. I had just written something that moved me. He saw my wet eyes. I told him I was enjoying writing my book. Later the legend grew that I had wept my way through it.