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Bernard Malamud
Encyclopedia
Bernard Malamud was an author of novels and short stories. Along with Saul Bellow
and Philip Roth
, he was one of the great American
Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball
novel, The Natural
, was adapted into a 1984 film
starring Robert Redford
. His 1966 novel The Fixer
, about antisemitism in Tsarist Russia, won both the National Book Award
and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
.
Jewish immigrants. A brother, Eugene, was born in 1917 . Malamud entered adolescence at the start of the Great Depression
. From 1928 to 1932, Bernard attended Erasmus Hall High School
in Brooklyn
. During his youth, he saw many films and enjoyed relating their plots to his school friends. He was especially fond of Charlie Chaplin
's comedies.
Malamud worked for a year at $4.50 a day as a teacher-in-training, before attending college on a government loan. He received his B.A. degree from City College of New York
in 1936. In 1942, he obtained a Master's degree from Columbia University
, writing a thesis on Thomas Hardy
. He was excused from military service in World War II
because he was the sole support of his widowed mother. He first worked for the Bureau of the Census in Washington D.C., then taught English in New York, mostly high school night classes for adults.
Starting in 1949, Malamud taught four sections of freshman composition each semester at Oregon State University
(OSU), an experience fictionalized in his 1961 novel A New Life
. Because he lacked the Ph.D., he was not allowed to teach literature courses, and for a number of years his rank was that of instructor. In those days, OSU, a land grant university, placed little emphasis on the teaching of humanities or the writing of fiction. While at OSU, he devoted 3 days out of every week to his writing, and gradually emerged as a major American author. In 1961, he left OSU to teach creative writing at Bennington College
, a position he held until retirement. In 1967, he was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
.
In 1942, Malamud met Ann De Chiara (November 1, 1917 - March 20, 2007), an Italian-American Roman Catholic, and a 1939 Cornell University
graduate. They married on November 6, 1945, despite the opposition of their respective parents. Ann typed his manuscripts and reviewed his writing. Ann and Bernard had two children, Paul (b. 1947) and Janna (b. 1952). Janna Malamud Smith
is the author of a memoir about her father, titled My Father is a Book.
Malamud died in Manhattan
in 1986, at the age of 71.
served as his literary agent in 1942 and 1945.
He completed his first novel in 1948, but later burned the manuscript. His first published novel was The Natural
(1952), which has become one of his best remembered and most symbolic works. The story traces the life of Roy Hobbs, an unknown middle-aged baseball player who achieves legendary status with his stellar talent. The Natural also focuses upon a recurring writing technique that marked much of his work. This novel was made into a 1984 movie starring Robert Redford (described by the film writer David Thomson
as "poor baseball and worse Malamud").
Malamud’s second novel, The Assistant
(1957), set in New York and drawing on Malamud's own childhood, is an account of the life of Morris Bober, a Jewish immigrant who owns a grocery store in Brooklyn. Although he is struggling financially, Bober takes in a drifter of dubious character.
In 1967, his novel The Fixer
, about anti-semitism
in Tsarist Russia, won the both the National Book Award
and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
. His other novels include Dubin's Lives
, a powerful evocation of middle age which uses biography to recreate the narrative richness of its protagonists' lives, and The Tenants
, an arguably meta-narrative on Malamud's own writing and creative struggles, which, set in New York
, deals with racial issues and the emergence of black/African American literature
in the American 1970s landscape.
Malamud is also renowned for his short stories, often oblique allegories set in a dreamlike urban ghetto
of immigrant Jews. Of Malamud the short story writer, Flannery O'Connor
wrote: "I have discovered a short-story writer who is better than any of them, including myself." He published his first stories in 1943, "Benefit Performance" in Threshold and "The Place Is Different Now" in American Preface. In the early 1950s, his stories began appearing in Harper's Bazaar
, Partisan Review
, and Commentary
.
Most of the stories in his first collection, like The Magic Barrel
(1958), depict the search for hope and meaning within the bleak enclosures of poor urban settings. The title story focuses on the unlikely relationship of Leo Finkle, an unmarried rabbinical student, and Pinye Salzman, a colorful marriage broker. Finkle has spent most of life with his nose buried in books and therefore isn’t well-educated in life itself. However, Finkle has a greater interest – the art of romance. He engages the services of Salzman, who shows Finkle a number of potential brides from his "magic barrel" but with each picture Finkle grows more uninterested. After Salzman convinces him to meet Lily Hirschorn, Finkle realizes his life is truly empty and lacking the passion to love God or humanity. When Finkle discovers a picture of Salzman’s daughter and sees her suffering, he sets out on a new mission to save her. Other well-known stories included in the collection are: The Last Mohican, Angel Levine, Idiots First, and The Mourners. This last story focuses on Kessler, the defiant old man in need of "social security" and Gruber, the belligerent landlord who doesn't want Kessler in the tenement anymore.
locutions, punctuated by sudden lyricism.
Writing in the second half of the twentieth century, Malamud was well aware of the social problems of his day: rootlessness, infidelity, abuse, divorce, and more. But he also depicted love as redemptive and sacrifice as uplifting. In his writings, success often depends on cooperation between antagonists. For example, in The Mourners
landlord and tenant learn from each other's anguish. In The Magic Barrel, the matchmaker worries about his "fallen" daughter, while the daughter and the rabbinic student are drawn together by their need for love and salvation.
: "A man of stern morality," Malamud was driven by "the need to consider long and seriously every last demand of an overtaxed, overtaxing conscience
torturously exacerbated by the pathos of human need unabated."
Saul Bellow
, also quoting Anthony Burgess
: "Well, we were here, first-generation Americans, our language was English and a language is a spiritual mansion from which no one can evict us. Malamud in his novels and stories discovered a sort of communicative genius in the impoverished, harsh jargon of immigrant New York. He was a myth maker, a fabulist, a writer of exquisite parables. The English novelist Anthony Burgess said of him that he 'never forgets that he is an American Jew, and he is at his best when posing the situation of a Jew in urban American society.' 'A remarkably consistent writer,' he goes on, 'who has never produced a mediocre novel .... He is devoid of either conventional piety or sentimentality ... always profoundly convincing.' Let me add on my own behalf that the accent of hard-won and individual emotional truth is always heard in Malamud's words. He is a rich original of the first rank."
[Saul Bellow's eulogy to Malamud, 1986]
"It was all those biographies in me yelling, 'We want out. We want to tell you what we've done to you.'"
"Once you've got some words looking back at you, you can take two or three — or throw them away and look for others."
"Where there's no fight for it there's no freedom. What is it Spinoza says? If the state acts in ways that are abhorrent to human nature it's the lesser evil to destroy it."
"All men are Jews, though few men know it."
"Life responds to one's moves with comic counterinventions."
"Without heroes we would all be plain people and wouldn't know how far we can go."
"Life is a tragedy full of joy."
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
O. Henry Award
PEN/Malamud Award
Given annually since 1988 to honor Malamud's memory, the PEN/Malamud Award recognizes excellence in the art of the short story. The award is funded in part by Malamud's $10,000 bequest to the PEN American Center
. The fund continues to grow thanks to the generosity of many members of PEN and other friends, and with the proceeds from annual readings. Past winners of the award include John Updike
(1988), Saul Bellow
(1989), Eudora Welty
(1992), Joyce Carol Oates
(1996), Alice Munro
(1997), Sherman Alexie
(2001), Ursula K. Le Guin
(2002), and Tobias Wolff
(2006).
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
and Philip Roth
Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...
, he was one of the great American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
novel, The Natural
The Natural
The Natural is a 1952 novel about baseball written by Bernard Malamud. The book follows Roy Hobbs, a baseball prodigy whose career is sidetracked when he is shot by a woman who seeks to kill arrogant athletes to "better the world"...
, was adapted into a 1984 film
The Natural (film)
The Natural is a 1984 film adaptation of Bernard Malamud's 1952 baseball novel of the same name, directed by Barry Levinson and starring Robert Redford, Glenn Close and Robert Duvall...
starring Robert Redford
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime...
. His 1966 novel The Fixer
The Fixer (Malamud novel)
The Fixer is a 1966 novel by Bernard Malamud inspired by the true story of Menahem Mendel Beilis, an unjustly imprisoned Jew in Tsarist Russia. The notorious "Beilis trial" of 1913 caused an international uproar that forced Russia to back down in the face of world indignation. The Beilis case is...
, about antisemitism in Tsarist Russia, won both the National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It originated as the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, which was awarded between 1918 and 1947.-1910s:...
.
Biography
Bernard Malamud was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Max and Bertha (Fidelman) Malamud, RussianRussians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
Jewish immigrants. A brother, Eugene, was born in 1917 . Malamud entered adolescence at the start of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. From 1928 to 1932, Bernard attended Erasmus Hall High School
Erasmus Hall High School
Erasmus Hall Campus High School is a four-year public high school in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, United States operated by the New York City Department of Education....
in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
. During his youth, he saw many films and enjoyed relating their plots to his school friends. He was especially fond of Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
's comedies.
Malamud worked for a year at $4.50 a day as a teacher-in-training, before attending college on a government loan. He received his B.A. degree from City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
in 1936. In 1942, he obtained a Master's degree from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, writing a thesis on Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
. He was excused from military service in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
because he was the sole support of his widowed mother. He first worked for the Bureau of the Census in Washington D.C., then taught English in New York, mostly high school night classes for adults.
Starting in 1949, Malamud taught four sections of freshman composition each semester at Oregon State University
Oregon State University
Oregon State University is a coeducational, public research university located in Corvallis, Oregon, United States. The university offers undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees and a multitude of research opportunities. There are more than 200 academic degree programs offered through the...
(OSU), an experience fictionalized in his 1961 novel A New Life
A New Life (novel)
A New Life is a semi-autobiographical campus novel by Bernard Malamud first published in 1961.-External links:*Jonathan Yardley: , The Washington Post ....
. Because he lacked the Ph.D., he was not allowed to teach literature courses, and for a number of years his rank was that of instructor. In those days, OSU, a land grant university, placed little emphasis on the teaching of humanities or the writing of fiction. While at OSU, he devoted 3 days out of every week to his writing, and gradually emerged as a major American author. In 1961, he left OSU to teach creative writing at Bennington College
Bennington College
Bennington College is a liberal arts college located in Bennington, Vermont, USA. The college was founded in 1932 as a women's college and became co-educational in 1969.-History:-Early years:...
, a position he held until retirement. In 1967, he was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
.
In 1942, Malamud met Ann De Chiara (November 1, 1917 - March 20, 2007), an Italian-American Roman Catholic, and a 1939 Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
graduate. They married on November 6, 1945, despite the opposition of their respective parents. Ann typed his manuscripts and reviewed his writing. Ann and Bernard had two children, Paul (b. 1947) and Janna (b. 1952). Janna Malamud Smith
Janna Malamud Smith
Janna Malamud Smith is a non-fiction author of three books. She was born in Corvallis, Oregon in 1952, the second of two children born to Ann DeChiara Malamud and the writer Bernard Malamud. She grew up in Oregon, then in Bennington, Vermont, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. She received her A.B. from...
is the author of a memoir about her father, titled My Father is a Book.
Malamud died in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
in 1986, at the age of 71.
Writing career
Malamud wrote slowly, and carefully, and was not prolific. He is the author of eight novels and 65 short stories, and his 1997 Collected Stories is 629 pages long. Maxim LieberMaxim Lieber
Maxim Lieber was a prominent American literary agent in New York City during the 1930s and 1940s. Whittaker Chambers named him as an accomplice in 1949, and Lieber fled first to Mexico and then Poland not long after Alger Hiss's conviction in 1950.- Early years :Lieber was born in Warsaw, Poland,...
served as his literary agent in 1942 and 1945.
He completed his first novel in 1948, but later burned the manuscript. His first published novel was The Natural
The Natural
The Natural is a 1952 novel about baseball written by Bernard Malamud. The book follows Roy Hobbs, a baseball prodigy whose career is sidetracked when he is shot by a woman who seeks to kill arrogant athletes to "better the world"...
(1952), which has become one of his best remembered and most symbolic works. The story traces the life of Roy Hobbs, an unknown middle-aged baseball player who achieves legendary status with his stellar talent. The Natural also focuses upon a recurring writing technique that marked much of his work. This novel was made into a 1984 movie starring Robert Redford (described by the film writer David Thomson
David Thomson (film critic)
David Thomson is a film critic and historian based in the United States and the author of more than 20 books, including The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.-Career:...
as "poor baseball and worse Malamud").
Malamud’s second novel, The Assistant
The Assistant (novel)
The Assistant is Bernard Malamud's second novel. Set in a working-class neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, it explores the situation of first- and second-generation Americans in the early 1950s, as experienced by three main characters and the relationships between them: an aging Jewish refugee...
(1957), set in New York and drawing on Malamud's own childhood, is an account of the life of Morris Bober, a Jewish immigrant who owns a grocery store in Brooklyn. Although he is struggling financially, Bober takes in a drifter of dubious character.
In 1967, his novel The Fixer
The Fixer (Malamud novel)
The Fixer is a 1966 novel by Bernard Malamud inspired by the true story of Menahem Mendel Beilis, an unjustly imprisoned Jew in Tsarist Russia. The notorious "Beilis trial" of 1913 caused an international uproar that forced Russia to back down in the face of world indignation. The Beilis case is...
, about anti-semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
in Tsarist Russia, won the both the National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It originated as the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, which was awarded between 1918 and 1947.-1910s:...
. His other novels include Dubin's Lives
Dubin's Lives
Dubin's Lives is a novel by the American writer Bernard Malamud . The title character is a biographer working on a life of D. H. Lawrence.-Epigraphs:The novel begins with two quotations.What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?...
, a powerful evocation of middle age which uses biography to recreate the narrative richness of its protagonists' lives, and The Tenants
The Tenants
The Tenants is a 2005 film drama starring Dylan McDermott and Snoop Dogg. Screened at only one theatre, the film received harsh criticism due to what some critics discerned as anachronistic depictions of the racial tension between the principal characters and a lack of multidimensionality...
, an arguably meta-narrative on Malamud's own writing and creative struggles, which, set in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, deals with racial issues and the emergence of black/African American literature
African American literature
African-American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. The genre traces its origins to the works of such late 18th century writers as Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano, reaching early high points with slave narratives and the Harlem...
in the American 1970s landscape.
Malamud is also renowned for his short stories, often oblique allegories set in a dreamlike urban ghetto
Ghetto
A ghetto is a section of a city predominantly occupied by a group who live there, especially because of social, economic, or legal issues.The term was originally used in Venice to describe the area where Jews were compelled to live. The term now refers to an overcrowded urban area often associated...
of immigrant Jews. Of Malamud the short story writer, Flannery O'Connor
Flannery O'Connor
Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...
wrote: "I have discovered a short-story writer who is better than any of them, including myself." He published his first stories in 1943, "Benefit Performance" in Threshold and "The Place Is Different Now" in American Preface. In the early 1950s, his stories began appearing in Harper's Bazaar
Harper's Bazaar
Harper’s Bazaar is an American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper’s Bazaar is published by Hearst and, as a magazine, considers itself to be the style resource for “women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture.”...
, Partisan Review
Partisan Review
Partisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 and December 1937.-Overview:...
, and Commentary
Commentary (magazine)
Commentary is a monthly American magazine on politics, Judaism, social and cultural issues. It was founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945. By 1960 its editor was Norman Podhoretz, a liberal at the time who moved sharply to the right in the 1970s and 1980s becoming a strong voice for the...
.
Most of the stories in his first collection, like The Magic Barrel
The Magic Barrel
The Magic Barrel is a collection of thirteen short stories written by Bernard Malamud and published in 1958. It won the 1959 National Book Award for fiction.The stories included are :*"The First Seven Years"*"The Mourners"*"The Girl of My Dreams"...
(1958), depict the search for hope and meaning within the bleak enclosures of poor urban settings. The title story focuses on the unlikely relationship of Leo Finkle, an unmarried rabbinical student, and Pinye Salzman, a colorful marriage broker. Finkle has spent most of life with his nose buried in books and therefore isn’t well-educated in life itself. However, Finkle has a greater interest – the art of romance. He engages the services of Salzman, who shows Finkle a number of potential brides from his "magic barrel" but with each picture Finkle grows more uninterested. After Salzman convinces him to meet Lily Hirschorn, Finkle realizes his life is truly empty and lacking the passion to love God or humanity. When Finkle discovers a picture of Salzman’s daughter and sees her suffering, he sets out on a new mission to save her. Other well-known stories included in the collection are: The Last Mohican, Angel Levine, Idiots First, and The Mourners. This last story focuses on Kessler, the defiant old man in need of "social security" and Gruber, the belligerent landlord who doesn't want Kessler in the tenement anymore.
Themes
Malamud’s fiction touches lightly upon mythic elements and explores themes like isolation, class, and the conflict between bourgeois and artistic values. His prose, like his settings, is an artful pastiche of Yiddish-EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
locutions, punctuated by sudden lyricism.
Writing in the second half of the twentieth century, Malamud was well aware of the social problems of his day: rootlessness, infidelity, abuse, divorce, and more. But he also depicted love as redemptive and sacrifice as uplifting. In his writings, success often depends on cooperation between antagonists. For example, in The Mourners
The Mourners
Bernard Malamud’s short story "The Mourners” first appeared in Discovery in January, 1955. The story was later included in The Magic Barrel, the first collection of short stories written by Bernard Malamud published in 1958.-Plot summary:...
landlord and tenant learn from each other's anguish. In The Magic Barrel, the matchmaker worries about his "fallen" daughter, while the daughter and the rabbinic student are drawn together by their need for love and salvation.
Posthumous tributes
Philip RothPhilip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...
: "A man of stern morality," Malamud was driven by "the need to consider long and seriously every last demand of an overtaxed, overtaxing conscience
Conscience
Conscience is an aptitude, faculty, intuition or judgment of the intellect that distinguishes right from wrong. Moral judgement may derive from values or norms...
torturously exacerbated by the pathos of human need unabated."
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
, also quoting Anthony Burgess
Anthony Burgess
John Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
: "Well, we were here, first-generation Americans, our language was English and a language is a spiritual mansion from which no one can evict us. Malamud in his novels and stories discovered a sort of communicative genius in the impoverished, harsh jargon of immigrant New York. He was a myth maker, a fabulist, a writer of exquisite parables. The English novelist Anthony Burgess said of him that he 'never forgets that he is an American Jew, and he is at his best when posing the situation of a Jew in urban American society.' 'A remarkably consistent writer,' he goes on, 'who has never produced a mediocre novel .... He is devoid of either conventional piety or sentimentality ... always profoundly convincing.' Let me add on my own behalf that the accent of hard-won and individual emotional truth is always heard in Malamud's words. He is a rich original of the first rank."
[Saul Bellow's eulogy to Malamud, 1986]
Quotations
"I write a book or a short story three times. Once to understand her, the second time to improve her prose, and a third to compel her to say what it still must say.""It was all those biographies in me yelling, 'We want out. We want to tell you what we've done to you.'"
"Once you've got some words looking back at you, you can take two or three — or throw them away and look for others."
"Where there's no fight for it there's no freedom. What is it Spinoza says? If the state acts in ways that are abhorrent to human nature it's the lesser evil to destroy it."
"All men are Jews, though few men know it."
"Life responds to one's moves with comic counterinventions."
"Without heroes we would all be plain people and wouldn't know how far we can go."
"Life is a tragedy full of joy."
Awards
National Book Award- (1959) Fiction, The Magic BarrelThe Magic BarrelThe Magic Barrel is a collection of thirteen short stories written by Bernard Malamud and published in 1958. It won the 1959 National Book Award for fiction.The stories included are :*"The First Seven Years"*"The Mourners"*"The Girl of My Dreams"...
- (1967) Fiction, The FixerThe Fixer (Malamud novel)The Fixer is a 1966 novel by Bernard Malamud inspired by the true story of Menahem Mendel Beilis, an unjustly imprisoned Jew in Tsarist Russia. The notorious "Beilis trial" of 1913 caused an international uproar that forced Russia to back down in the face of world indignation. The Beilis case is...
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
- (1967) The FixerThe Fixer (Malamud novel)The Fixer is a 1966 novel by Bernard Malamud inspired by the true story of Menahem Mendel Beilis, an unjustly imprisoned Jew in Tsarist Russia. The notorious "Beilis trial" of 1913 caused an international uproar that forced Russia to back down in the face of world indignation. The Beilis case is...
O. Henry Award
- (1969) Man in the Drawer
PEN/Malamud Award
Given annually since 1988 to honor Malamud's memory, the PEN/Malamud Award recognizes excellence in the art of the short story. The award is funded in part by Malamud's $10,000 bequest to the PEN American Center
PEN American Center
PEN American Center , founded in 1922 and based in New York City, works to advance literature, to defend free expression, and to foster international literary fellowship. The Center has a membership of 3,300 writers, editors, and translators...
. The fund continues to grow thanks to the generosity of many members of PEN and other friends, and with the proceeds from annual readings. Past winners of the award include John Updike
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....
(1988), Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
(1989), Eudora Welty
Eudora Welty
Eudora Alice Welty was an American author of short stories and novels about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published...
(1992), Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...
(1996), Alice Munro
Alice Munro
Alice Ann Munro is a Canadian short-story writer, the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work, a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction, and a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize...
(1997), Sherman Alexie
Sherman Alexie
Sherman Joseph Alexie, Jr. is a writer, poet, filmmaker, and occasional comedian. Much of his writing draws on his experiences as a Native American. Two of Alexie's best known works are The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven , a book of short stories and Smoke Signals, a film...
(2001), Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books, essays, and short stories, notably in fantasy and science fiction...
(2002), and Tobias Wolff
Tobias Wolff
Tobias Jonathan Ansell Wolff is an American author. He is known for his memoirs, particularly This Boy's Life , and his short stories. He has also written two novels.-Biography:Wolff was born in 1945 in Birmingham, Alabama...
(2006).
Novels
- The NaturalThe NaturalThe Natural is a 1952 novel about baseball written by Bernard Malamud. The book follows Roy Hobbs, a baseball prodigy whose career is sidetracked when he is shot by a woman who seeks to kill arrogant athletes to "better the world"...
(1952) - The AssistantThe Assistant (novel)The Assistant is Bernard Malamud's second novel. Set in a working-class neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, it explores the situation of first- and second-generation Americans in the early 1950s, as experienced by three main characters and the relationships between them: an aging Jewish refugee...
(1957) - A New LifeA New Life (novel)A New Life is a semi-autobiographical campus novel by Bernard Malamud first published in 1961.-External links:*Jonathan Yardley: , The Washington Post ....
(1961) - The FixerThe Fixer (Malamud novel)The Fixer is a 1966 novel by Bernard Malamud inspired by the true story of Menahem Mendel Beilis, an unjustly imprisoned Jew in Tsarist Russia. The notorious "Beilis trial" of 1913 caused an international uproar that forced Russia to back down in the face of world indignation. The Beilis case is...
(1966) - The Tenants (1971)
- Dubin's LivesDubin's LivesDubin's Lives is a novel by the American writer Bernard Malamud . The title character is a biographer working on a life of D. H. Lawrence.-Epigraphs:The novel begins with two quotations.What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?...
(1979) - God's Grace (1982)
Story collections
- The Magic BarrelThe Magic BarrelThe Magic Barrel is a collection of thirteen short stories written by Bernard Malamud and published in 1958. It won the 1959 National Book Award for fiction.The stories included are :*"The First Seven Years"*"The Mourners"*"The Girl of My Dreams"...
(1958) - Idiots First (1963)
- Pictures of FidelmanPictures of FidelmanPictures of Fidelman is a short story collection by Bernard Malamud, which gathers six stories dealing with Arthur Fidelman, an art student from the Bronx who travels to Italy, initially to research Giotto, but also with the hopes of becoming a painter...
(1969) - Rembrandt's Hat (1974)
- The Stories of Bernard Malamud (1983)
- The People and Uncollected Stories (includes the unfinished novel The People) (1989)
- The Complete Stories (1997)
Books about Malamud
- Smith, Janna Malamud. My Father Is a Book: A Memoir of Bernard Malamud. (2006)
- Davis, Philip. Bernard Malamud: A Writer’s Life. (2007)
External links
- The Bernard Malamud Papers at Oregon State UniversityOregon State UniversityOregon State University is a coeducational, public research university located in Corvallis, Oregon, United States. The university offers undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees and a multitude of research opportunities. There are more than 200 academic degree programs offered through the...
Sources
- Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2004.
- Contemporary Literary Criticism
- Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 28: Twentieth Century American-Jewish Fiction Writers. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Daniel Walden, Pennsylvania State University. The Gale Group. 1984. pp. 166–175.
- Smith, Janna Malamud. My Father Is a Book. Houghton-Mifflin Company. New York:New York. 2006