Irving Malin is an American literary critic. Malin attended Thomas Jefferson High School

Thomas Jefferson High School (Brooklyn, New York)

Thomas Jefferson High School is a former high school in the East New York section of Brooklyn, New York. The New York City Department of Education closed the school and broke it into several different schools in 2007, owing to low graduation rates....

 and Jamaica High School

Jamaica High School (New York City)

Jamaica High School is a four-year public high school in Queens, New York. The school is administered by the New York City Department of Education.-History:...

 and graduated magna cum laude from Queens College

Queens College, City University of New York

Queens College, located in Flushing, Queens, New York City, is one of the senior colleges of the City University of New York. It is also the fifth oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning. The college's seventy seven acre campus is located in the heart of the...

 in 1955 and received his PhD. from Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 in 1958. He taught at the 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...

 from 1960 until his retirement in 1996. Malin did his dissertation on the fiction of William Faulkner

William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

 and made his initial academic mark as a critic of American Jewish Literature, editing an early collection on the fiction of 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...

 as well as a critical book and a general anthology on Jewish literature in the US. He subsequently became interested in writers who practiced innovative techniques such as James Purdy

James Purdy

James Otis Purdy was a controversial American novelist, short story-writer, poet, and playwright who, since his debut in 1956, published over a dozen novels, and many collections of poetry, short stories, and plays. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages. He has been praised by...

 and John Hawkes  as well as writers who broke down the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction such as William Styron

William Styron

William Clark Styron, Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work.For much of his career, Styron was best known for his novels, which included...

 and Truman Capote

Truman Capote

Truman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...

. One of the pioneering academics to take an interest in metafiction and experimental writing, Malin was an early contributor to the Review of Contemporary Fiction, writing over five hundred book reviews for this and other publications (like the Hollins Critic). In the latter portion of his career, Malin edited several anthologies of essays on Henry James

Henry James

Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....

, Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...

, William Goyen

William Goyen

Charles William Goyen was an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet, editor, and teacher. Born in a small town in East Texas, these roots would influence his work for his entire life....

, George Garrett

George Garrett (poet)

George Palmer Garrett. was an American poet and novelist. He was the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2002 to 2006. His novels include The Finished Man, Double Vision, and the Elizabethan Trilogy, composed of Death of the Fox, The Succession, and Entered from the Sun...

, Don DeLillo

Don DeLillo

Don DeLillo is an American author, playwright, and occasional essayist whose work paints a detailed portrait of American life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries...

, Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...

, Leslie Fiedler

Leslie Fiedler

Leslie Aaron Fiedler was a Jewish-American literary critic, known for his interest in mythography and his championing of genre fiction. His work also involves application of psychological theories to American literature. He was in practical terms one of the early postmodernist critics working...

, and William Gass. He was a fellow at Yaddo

Yaddo

Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 400 acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment."...

 and the Huntington Library

The Huntington Library

The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens is an educational and research institution established by Henry E. Huntington in San Marino, in the San Rafael Hills near Pasadena, California in the United States...

 and served on many boards and award panels.

Books

• William Faulkner: An Interpretation. Stanford University Press
  Stanford University Press
  The Stanford University Press is the publishing house of Stanford University. In 1892, an independent publishing company was established at the university. The first use of the name "Stanford University Press" in a book's imprinting occurred in 1895...
  
  , 1957
• New American Gothic. Southern Illinois University Press
  Southern Illinois University Press
  Southern Illinois University Press, founded in 1956, is a university press located in Carbondale, Illinois.The press publishes approximately 50 titles annually, among its more than 1,200 titles currently in print....
  
  , 1962
• Jews and Americans. Southern Illinois University Press, 1965
• Psychoanalysis and American Fiction. Dutton, 1965
• Saul Bellow and the Critics. New York University Press, 1967
• Saul Bellow's Fiction. Southern Illinois University Press, 1969
• Nathanael West's Novels. Southern Illinois University Press, 1972