“What’s the matter with him?”

The intellectual disability, like so many others that have been or are used, is problematic in terms of what it implies and what it leaves out. The events of “Idiots First” all take place on one evening, as an elderly father, apparently on the verge of death, tries to collect enough money to send his 39-year-old intellectually disabled son by train cross-country to his 81-year-old brother. Mendel’s references to him as a “boy” and as having never grown out of childhood make his identification as an Overgrown Child clear. Malamud himself confirmed in an interview that his aim in his writing was more than just the portrayal of human misery; that his idea of art is “close to Frost’s definition of a poem as ‘a momentary stay against confusion.’ One significant emphasis in the American Jewish community has been the promotion of greater awareness of, and activism on behalf of, people with disabilities.