"The Magic Barrel" is a short story written by Bernard Malamud, published in 1954. The story revolves around the character of Leo Finkle, a rabbinical student who seeks the help of Pinye Salzman, a marriage broker or matchmaker, to find a suitable wife. The story begins with Finkle feeling dissatisfied with his life as a scholar and having no experience with women. He feels that marrying a woman would add a sense of normalcy and fulfillment to his life. He decides to seek the help of Salzman, hoping that he will find a suitable match for him. Salzman presents Finkle with a magic barrel containing photographs and resumes of potential brides.

The magic barrel summary

Leo Finkle is a bright young dude studying to be a rabbi. Because he's so focused on his studies, and because an acquaintance suggested "that he might find it easier to win himself a congregation if he were married," (1) he decides to get the services of a matchmaker. But the matchmaker he chooses, Pinye Salzman, has a track record that isn't exactly sterling. As Salzman himself says "My wife says to me I shouldn't be a salesman, but when I have two fine people that they would be wonderful to be married, I am so happy that I talk too much" (129). Uh oh.

Despite his misgivings, Finkle signs on for Salzman's plan, and soon gets a look at a wide array of nice local ladeez. None of them quite feel right, though, and Finkle picks up on the ways that Salzman embellishes their good qualities a little too much. Older girls are listed as younger, disabled girls are pushed as pretty, and so on.

Finkle has trouble deciding on a girl and eventually grows irritated with Salzman's "creative salesmanship." This comes to a boiling point when Leo is out with a girl named Lily Hirschorn—Leo can sense that Salzman has talked up Leo to Lily in the same way he talked up Lily to Leo. Lily seems to think that Leo is a super-holy man… which he ain't. Leo, in fact, realizes that he doesn't love God.

Afterwards, "he was infuriated with the marriage broker and swore he would throw him out of the room the minute he reappeared," (114). Salzman lets him calm down, but afterwards the rabbinical student refuses to call on the old man's services.

But he changes his mind when he finds an envelope from Salzman in his room. The envelope is full of more photographs of eligible girls. He finds the picture of the perfect girl—Leo feels as if he's seen her before—and in a white-hot passion runs out to find Salzman. When he gets to talk to Salzman, however, he's in for a nasty surprise: the girl he chose is Salzman's daughter, who in his words is "Like an animal. Like a dog. For her to be poor was a sin. This is why to me she is dead now." (184)

Yikes. Guess there's a nasty father/daughter disagreement a-brewing: Saltzman has disowned her.

Finkle leaves, but soon comes back after promising himself that he'll make Salzman's daughter into a model citizen, and become a God-loving man in the process. Salzman relents and agrees to set up a meeting, leaving Finkle suspecting that the old man had planned it this way from the beginning. The story ends with Finkle meeting Salzman's daughter Stella under a street lamp with Salzman around a nearby corner, chanting "prayers for the dead." (202)

Analysis of Bernard Malamud’s The Magic Barrel

Bernard Malamud has been reckoned a magician himself in that, as one of the most significant Jewish American writers of the 20th century, he helped acquaint readers with Jewish culture as he simultaneously placed Jewish fiction in the mainstream of American literature. The Magic Barrel won the National Book Award in 1959 and is generally regarded as his best short story collection. “The Magic Barrel” features Leo Finkel, a young man studying at New York University to become a rabbi, and Salzman, the marriage broker to whom Leo turns because his studies have prevented him from having a social life. Salzman is part salesman, part fantasy figure, as he speaks of having an office somewhere in the air and a barrel full of beautiful potential marriage partners from whom Leo may choose. As in many of Malamud’s stories, Leo suddenly awakens from his preoccupation with his studies to the painful realization that he lacks love in his life, both human and spiritual.

Bernard Malamud/The Paris Review

A good deal of the story’s appeal revolves around its down-to-earth comedy (Salzman’s dialect; his humorous, exaggerated merchandising of the women; his lunching on strong-smelling whitefish; his request that Leo have a “glass tea”) as well as on the various interpretations of the ending. In general, it contains the Malamud theme of love reaching those who suffer; in particular, on other levels, various interpretations seem possible.

After Leo rejects the women Salzman describes to him (they are too old, or “used goods,” or too homely, too intellectual, and so on), he finally sees Stella, the one woman he is destined to spend his life loving. Is the irony that she seems, to some critics, to be “as much more as virgin” (Weaver 59), thus ensuring Leo a rocky marriage? Or does she, as Leo does, symbolize the newer generation of Americans who, unlike their parents, marry for love rather than according to the dictates of the marriage brokers? Or had Salzman intended all along to unite Leo with this woman— who turns out to be Salzman’s daughter? In any interpretation, Malamud’s story is a 20th-century love story that could have occurred only in America.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Malamud, Bernard. “The Magic Barrel.” In American Short Story Masterpieces, edited by Raymond Carver and Tom Jenkls. New York: Delacorte Press, 1987.
Weaver, Gordon. The American Short Story, 1945–1980. Boston: Twayne, 1983

The Magic Barrel

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Overview

The Magic Barrel (1958), widely regarded as a benchmark in midcentury American literature, firmly established the reputation of Brooklyn-born author Bernard Malamud as a modern master of the short story. The first of Malamud’s three collections of short stories, The Magic Barrel won the National Book Award in 1959 and introduced its author’s distinctive blend of stark realism and Yiddish fabulism, with its flashes of the mythic and the fantastic. Highly compressed and yet richly detailed, Malamud’s stories have been compared to those of Anton Chekhov and James Joyce, but their wry morality and occasional miracle also luminously recall the folktales characteristic of the European shtetl. The stories in The Magic Barrel have frequently been anthologized, and at least three have been adapted into short films and TV movies. In 1970, “Angel Levine” was made into a feature film by singer-actor Harry Belafonte, starring himself as the title character.

This guide refers to the 2003 Farrar, Straus and Giroux paperback edition of The Magic Barrel.

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Content Warning: One of the stories in The Magic Barrel, “Angel Levine,” contains racist sentiments and employs antiquated racial terminology.

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The Magic Barrel comprises 13 short stories. The first story, titled “The First Seven Years,” draws on biblical allusions to spin the tale of a Polish refugee’s infatuation with the teenage daughter of his employer. Sobel, a Holocaust survivor, has labored five years at a shoemaker’s shop for low wages, wooing Feld’s daughter with his deep knowledge of literature only to see Feld try to marry her off to a student of economics who cares only for “things.” Eventually, Feld gives Sobel his reluctant consent, allowing him to propose to his daughter in two years, when she comes of age. In the second story, “The Mourners,” a “worrywart” landlord tries to evict a misanthropic old man from his building, but the tenant’s outburst of remorse over his own past misdeeds triggers an epiphany in the landlord, who joins him in weeping.

In “The Girl of My Dreams,” a frustrated writer has a passionate correspondence with a woman whose published story moves him with its similarities to his own thwarted life. Upon meeting her, however, he realizes the narcissism inherent in his immature notions of compassion. “Angel Levine” employs magic realism in its fable-like account of a long-suffering tailor whose prayers to God for succor are answered by a Black man who claims to be an angel. Overcoming his initial skepticism, the tailor saves both the angel and himself.

“Behold the Key,” the first of three stories set in Italy, follows an American graduate student’s semi-comic search for an affordable apartment for himself and his family in Rome so he can finish his PhD. Retaining the services of an amateur real estate agent, his tortuous quest finally yields a ray of hope, but his priggish sense of entitlement dooms his venture. In “Take Pity,” an enigmatic tale set in a joyless afterworld, a dead salesman recounts his quixotic attempts to help a young mother whose grocer husband died unexpectedly. The ending reveals that it was the salesman’s refusal to accept her craving for pity and suffering that has condemned them both to this limbo.

“The Prison,” one of the collection’s few stories with a non-Jewish protagonist, centers on an Italian American whose youthful indiscretions have trapped him in a loveless marriage and a dead-end job managing a candy store. One day, his heart goes out to a little girl whom he sees shoplifting from his store, but his attempts to save her from herself ultimately backfire. In “The Lady of the Lake,” the second story set in Italy, an American tourist who has capriciously disowned his Jewish name encounters a beautiful Italian woman who seeks to woo him. Ironically, she is concealing her own troubled Jewish past by pretending to be from an aristocratic family. Eventually, she confesses most of her deception, but his stubborn refusal to reciprocate and reveal his own Jewish heritage dooms their love.

“A Summer’s Reading,” one of the few stories with an unambiguously upbeat ending, follows George Stoyonovich, a high school dropout who, at age 19, has yet to find steady work, and who lies to a neighbor about his ambitious reading plans for the summer. His guilt over this lie and his neighbor’s generous response to it drive him to do something he would never otherwise have dreamed of—redeem himself by reading 100 books. The despairing story “The Bill” tracks the downward spiral of a grocer and his wife after they generously agree to give store credit to a weak-willed janitor.

“The Last Mohican,” the third Italian story, incorporates aspects of the uncanny in its satire of a self-absorbed American scholar who finds himself hounded by a Jewish refugee in Rome. After the refugee steals his precious manuscript, the hunted becomes the hunter; eventually, however, the scholar responds with pity and charity. “The Loan,” another story with magical elements, is set entirely in a bakery that owes its uncanny success to the sufferings of its owner, who has a disability and whose copious tears are his bread’s secret ingredient. When a long-estranged friend (who borrowed money from the baker years ago and never repaid it) now approaches him for another loan to buy a headstone for his deceased wife, the baker’s wife refuses, causing the burning of the magical bread. “The Magic Barrel,” the collection’s final story, tracks the emotional thawing of an introverted rabbinical student through his dealings with a suspect and perhaps uncanny matchmaker. Despairing of ever finding a match for himself, the student falls deeply in love with a photo of the matchmaker’s troubled daughter, which was ostensibly dropped by accident into her father’s “barrel” of single women, leading to an intricately ambiguous ending.

Salzman presents Finkle with a magic barrel containing photographs and resumes of potential brides. Finkle is initially skeptical of Salzman's abilities but eventually agrees to look through the barrel. As he goes through the photos and resumes, he becomes increasingly desperate to find the perfect match, dismissing the women he deems unsuitable.

Finkle finally comes across the photo and resume of a young woman named Lily Hirschorn. He is instantly captivated by her beauty and becomes determined to meet her. He arranges a meeting with her, pretending to be a client looking for a tutor for his sister. Finkle and Lily meet, and Finkle is enamored by her intelligence and beauty. They continue to meet secretly, unable to reveal their true intentions to each other. Finkle becomes torn between his desires for love and his deep-rooted religious beliefs. He struggles to reconcile his religious studies with his growing affection for Lily. Finkle eventually confronts Salzman, demanding to know if Lily is actually a suitable match for him. Salzman reveals that Lily is not a client but is in fact his daughter. Finkle is shocked by the revelation but decides to continue pursuing Lily, regardless of their unconventional introduction. In the end, Finkle proposes to Lily, and she accepts. Despite the unconventional circumstances of their meeting, Finkle finds happiness and fulfillment in his relationship with Lily. The story explores themes of love, religion, and the search for identity. "The Magic Barrel" is a poignant and thought-provoking tale that delves into the complexities of human relationships and the power of love. The story raises questions about the role of tradition and religion in finding happiness and emphasizes the importance of personal connection and emotional fulfillment..

Reviews for "The Contrast between Appearance and Reality in 'The Magic Barrel"

1. John Doe - 1 star

I found "The Magic Barrel" to be a total bore. The story lacked any engaging plot or interesting characters. The writing style was dry and uninspiring. I couldn't connect with any of the characters and felt no emotional investment in their stories. Overall, I was highly disappointed and would not recommend this book to anyone looking for an enjoyable read.

2. Jane Smith - 2 stars

"The Magic Barrel" had an interesting premise, but it failed to deliver. The pacing was incredibly slow and the story dragged on without any real resolution. The characters were one-dimensional and lacked depth, making it difficult to empathize with their struggles. Additionally, I found the writing style to be convoluted and overly descriptive, which further hindered my enjoyment of the book. Overall, I was left feeling unsatisfied and would not recommend this story to others.

3. Emily Johnson - 2 stars

I had high hopes for "The Magic Barrel" based on its reputation, but unfortunately, it fell short for me. The characters were unlikable and their actions often seemed illogical. The plot lacked coherence and the narrative was disjointed at times. I also found the dialogue to be stilted and unrealistic. Overall, I was disappointed by the lack of depth and cohesiveness in this story. I would suggest looking elsewhere for a more engaging read.

The Exploration of Desire in 'The Magic Barrel