Bernard Malamud at the Edge of Ethnic Humor

The first draft (1973) of Bernard Malamud's Dubin's Lives (1979) opens with the protagonist, William Dubin, encountering a man by the name of Malamud. 1 "They sometimes met on country roads when there were flowers or snow, " the August 1973 draft begins; "Dubin had his circular route" while "Malamud wandered along various roads." On these "snowy, windswept fields" the two share a joke: "'Did you hear the one about the two Jewish gentlemen in Central Park?' Malamud [Dubin] asked.'One picked a flower and asked the first other, 'What's this?' The other answered, 'How should I know, am I a milliner?'"(First Draft of Dubin's Lives).The opening of this draft closely follows the novel as it was eventually published, albeit with several key differences.The "Malamud" character of the first draft, a writer of fiction, becomes "Greenfield" by the second.While the published novel likewise begins with a joke, Malamud ultimately opted for a different comic standard: "Had [Dubin] heard the one about the rabbi who, when his sexton prayed aloud, 'Dear God, I am nothing, You are everything, ' remarked, 'Look who says he's nothing!'" (Dubin 7).This joke is well-known-a version of it even appears in Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish (1968) under the entry for "k'nocker" (boastful person) (188-89).While the second joke may be funnier, the first is likely more apposite to the novel, poking fun as it does at the supposed distance that these diaspora Jews have from the natural world.In place of an appreciation of beauty, the two men are only able to draw on the language of commerce-flowers are part of the milliner's trade and are valued for their ability to adorn hats.In the context of Dubin and Malamud meeting on their country walks in frozen Vermont winters, the joke also wryly highlights the unlikeliness of these "two Jewish gentlemen" living out their lives in this landscape.What has taken them from the city to rural Vermont?What took the two men of the joke across the world to Central Park?