Bernard Malamud
Bernard Malamud (April 26, 1914 – March 18, 1986) was one of the best-known Jewish-American writers of the 20th century. He was, along with Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, part of a triumvirate of Jewish writers that, in the words of The New York Times, “dominated the national literature of the 1950s and 1960s.”
Among his most famous works is The Natural, a baseball novel that was made into a movie starring Robert Redford. In addition, he wrote The Fixer, a dark novel about anti-Semitism in Russia that was inspired by the real-life case of Mendel Beilis, who was wrongfully accused of ritual murder in Kiev in 1911.
A native of Brooklyn, Malamud born in 1914, the son of Russian immigrants.
He was educated at the City College of New York, receiving a BA in 1936. He later received a master’s degree from Columbia University after completing his thesis paper on Thomas Hardy.
In 1949, he went to work teaching freshman composition at Oregon State University. It was there that Malamud dedicated three days out of every week to writing. He wrote a fictionalized account of his time at OSU for his 1961 novel, A New Life.
He left OSU in 1961 to teach writing at Bennington College in Vermont. He stayed there until his retirement.
His first published novel was The Natural, which came out in 1952. He reportedly finished a novel earlier, in 1948, but burned the manuscript.
The second novel, The Assistant, appeared in 1956 and describes the life of a poor Jewish immigrant who takes in a drifter of dubious character.
His first collection of short stories, The Magic Barrel, won The National Book Award.
His third novel, A New Life, came out in 1961 and then The Fixer was published in 1966. The latter received The National Book Award and The Pulitzer Prize.
Malamud was married and had two children. He died in Manhattan in 1986 at the age of 71.
Bibliography
- The Natural (1952)
- “The Mourners” (1955) – short story
- The Assistant (1957)
- A New Life (1961)
- “The Jewbird” (1963) – short story
- The Fixer (1966)
- The Tenants (1971)
- Dubin’s Lives (1979)
- God’s Grace (1982)
- The Magic Barrel (1958)
- Idiots First (1963)
- Pictures of Fidelman (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)
(Photo: OSU Archives/Flickr)
Articles about Bernard Malamud:
October 28, 2010
Interviews with Roth, Bellow, Singer, more
If you’ve got a few hours to spare in order to get lost online, you could do worse than to wander around in The Paris Review’s newly public Interviews section. The first issue under the new editor, Lorin Stein, just … Continue reading
August 8, 2009
Bernard Malamud quotes
Bernard Malamud quotes often come from his writing. Feel free to use them in your projects or whenever you need to quote Bernard Malamud. “I write a book or a short story three times. Once to understand her, the second … Continue reading
July 15, 2008
Malamud on your fantasy of yourself
There's a delightful podcast on The New Yorker's Web site this week in which author Aleksandar Hemon reads Bernard Malamud's short story “A Summer's Reading.” For your convenience, I've included a copy of the audio interview here: [mp3:http://downloads.newyorker.com/mp3/fiction/080721_fiction_hemon.mp3] It's an … Continue reading
June 17, 2008
To read the Pacific Northwest, turn to Malamud
The Guardian published an interesting piece this weekend about what to read while “going on holiday this summer.” The article was a survey of opinions from prominent writers about what books they recommend as “perfect literary travelling companions.” I was … Continue reading
December 10, 2007
Restoring Bernard Malamud to the pantheon
Writer and critic Lee Siegel had a review of Philip Davis’ “Bernard Malamud: A Writer’s Life” in yesterday’s New York Times Sunday Book Review section. Siegel applauded Davis’ desire to restore Malamud to the “pantheon of great American writers.” But, … Continue reading