The Magic Barrel Tough-o-Meter

(1) Shoreline

You got this one, oh loyal Shmoopers. Bernard Malamud won't use six words when three will do perfectly well. That's actually why the story is so good: he packs all kinds of subtlety and meaning into small, brief sentences.

It's like a clown car, except instead of white-painted nightmare food, it's themes and ideas and meaning that come flying out of this tiny little story.