61 pages • 2 hours read
Bernard MalamudA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Nineteen-year-old George Stoyonovich, a high school dropout ashamed of his lack of a summer job, tells a neighbor that he is using the summer months to educate himself by reading 100 books. The neighbor, middle-aged Mr. Cattanzara, works as a cashier at an IRT station and is an avid reader. Every evening, he reads the entire New York Times from front to back. Sometimes George sees him walking home drunk, his eyes wet. George, who reads nothing but magazines and the odd newspaper, impulsively tells Cattanzara the lie about the books because he wants his kindly neighbor to respect him. As the days pass, other neighbors become friendlier and more respectful to George, and he guesses that Cattanzara has told them about his ambitious reading plans. He begins to feel better about his neighborhood, which he has never liked very much. George’s older sister has also heard the rumors and shows her new pride in him with small acts of kindness, such as giving him some of her hard-earned money. Occasionally George uses it to buy paperback novels from the newsstand, but he never gets around to reading them, since books with “stories” always lose his interest.
Because of his lie, George now feels awkward around Cattanzara and tries to avoid him, but this does not go unnoticed. Soon, George loses interest in reading magazines and newspapers and begins to feel depressed. On his walk one night, he sees Cattanzara coming his way. Cattanzara recognizes him and asks him about his reading, challenging him to name a single book he has read. Confounded and embarrassed, George closes his eyes. When he opens them, Cattanzara has gone, but the older man’s last words ring in his ears: “George, don’t do what I did” (143). The next day, George shuts himself in his room, and his sister, who has guessed that he was lying about the reading, calls him a “bum” and says she won’t be giving him any more money. For a week, George stays in his stifling room. One night, he takes a walk and meets a neighbor who asks him if it is true that he has finished reading the hundred books. George realizes that Cattanzara must have spread this more favorable rumor. One evening in autumn, George runs to the library, counts off 100 books from the shelves, and begins to read.
Just like “The Lady of the Lake,” the tale of George Stoyonovich, whose very name obliquely suggests the word “story,” revolves around a deception. Ashamed of his idleness and lack of education and estranged from disapproving neighbors and family, George seeks to impress Mr. Cattanzara with the boast that he plans to read 100 books over the summer. This lie is designed to appeal to Cattanzara’s own love of reading and gaining knowledge. However, this lie toys with the older man’s hopes, for Cattanzara, like Tommy in “The Prison,” grimly wears the chains of his youthful mistakes and often drowns the sorrows of his wasted years in mournful drinking binges. Thus, Cattanzara’s decision to spread George’s plan around the neighborhood reflects his own excitement to see what he believes to be the boy’s ambitious plan to better himself. As George blithely reaps the harvest of his unearned esteem—just as Willy Schlegel in “The Bill” lives opulently on credit from a trusting grocer—he fails to foresee the shameful moment in which the older man sees through him. Thus, like many of Malamud’s stories, “A Summer’s Reading” is also deeply imbued with rueful regret over poor decisions. However, unlike the darker tales of The Magic Barrel, the negative effects of George’s deception do have a chance of being reversed.
As George’s guilt over this broken trust makes him a prisoner in his own room, he ironically now finds himself unable to read story books because their “made-up” narratives remind him of his own ill-considered lie. Meanwhile, Cattanzara’s enigmatic warning not to “do what I did” (143) haunts George and makes him ashamed to face the world. The hellish heat and isolation of his stifling room are designed to invoke a humdrum version of purgatory itself, and his belated remorse becomes, like Manischevitz’s suffering in “Angel Levine,” a misery that goes “nowhere, into nothing” (49). As always in The Magic Barrel, salvation comes only from the characters’ responsibilities to people, not from monkish study or self-flagellation. Accordingly, it is not until George’s wretched reemergence into the world of people that he is finally able to discover that Cattanzara has done him another kindness, this time at the expense of his own integrity, by spreading the false word that George has indeed read 100 books. This unlooked-for generosity and pity from a man whom he has wronged incubates warmly in George until the fall, when it hatches suddenly into a ravenous desire to make good his lie. As with Mitka in “The Girl of My Dreams,” whether George completes his reading is less important than the resolution itself. By seeking to redeem Cattanzara’s lie on his behalf, George has in turn restored the older man’s integrity. “A Summer’s Reading,” like most Malamud stories, therefore chronicles a transfiguration. In this case, a random lie transforms into a potentially life-changing reality, emphasizing again that salvation can have small, quotidian beginnings. Here, it is George’s evolving sensitivity to Cattanzara’s hopes, suffering, and small kindnesses that constitute his most profound “reading.”
By Bernard Malamud