The Tenants is one of the most complete novels by a Malamud writer who is one of the best post-war American novelists. The novel describes the confrontation between two writers, one Jewish and the other African-American, and investigates the nature of the art of writing. His novels show an intertwining of fantasy and reality with equal importance to moral obligation. The setting of the novel in question is New York City, where the theme of self-exploration is gradually developed through the contrast between two writers, one Jewish and the other black, struggling to survive in an urban ghetto. Their discussion of artistic standards brings out the essential theme of how race influences cultural identity, the purpose of literature, and the conflict between art and life. Malamud blends gritty realism, absurdist comedy, and fantasy to address social issues and the nature of the creative writing process. The Tenants tells the story of a writer working to complete a novel he's been struggling with for the past decade. He lives in a dilapidated building in Manhattan of which he is the only tenant. It remains there much to the chagrin of its beleaguered owner who is eager to demolish it. The situation worsens when an aspiring black writer sneaks into the building and begins his literary quest. Although the two characters Harry and Willie are polarized and stereotyped, their relationship is defined with remarkable psychological precision. The surreal quality of the novel suggests the way in which art in the form of romance conveys the true essence of the human experience. The process of urban renewal is rendered with a certain nightmarish quality that depicts a sort of wasteland. The following description is part... center of the article ......selection of Critical Essays.Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1975.---, Eds. Bernard Malamud and the critics. New York: New York University Press, 1971. Howard, Leon. American literature and tradition. Garden City: Doubleday, 1960. Levine, George. “Realism reconsidered”. The theory of the novel, ed. John Halperin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.Malamud, Bernard. The Assistant. 1957; rpt. New York: Dell, 1971.---. The tenants. 1971; rpt. New York: Pocket Books, 1972. Olderman, Raymond M. Beyond the Waste Land: The American Novel in the Sixties. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973.Pinsker, Sanford. The Schlemiel as Metaphor: Studies in the Yiddish and American Jewish Novel. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971.Roth, Philip. Reading myself and others. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1975.