Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud (April 26, 1914  – March 18, 1986) was an

Bernard Malamud
American novelist and short story writer. Along with Saul Bellow,
Joseph Heller, and Philip Roth, he was one of the best known
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 (also filmed), about
antisemitism in the Russian Empire, won both the National Book
Award[1] and the Pulitzer Prize.[2]

Biography
Bernard Malamud was born in 1914 in Brooklyn, New York, the
son of Bertha (née Fidelman) and Max Malamud, Russian Jewish
immigrants. A brother, Eugene, born in 1917, suffered from mental
illness,[3] lived a hard and lonely life and died in his fifties.
Malamud entered adolescence at the start of the Great Depression.
Born April 26, 1914
From 1928 to 1932, Bernard attended Erasmus Hall High School
Brooklyn, New York,
in Brooklyn.[4] During his youth, he saw many films and enjoyed
United States
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 Died March 18, 1986
day (equivalent to $89 in 2021) as a teacher-in-training, before (aged 71)
attending college on a government loan. He received his BA Manhattan, New
degree from City College of New York in 1936. In 1942, he York, United States
obtained a master's degree from Columbia University, writing a Occupation Author, teacher
thesis on Thomas Hardy. He was excused from military service in
Nationality American
World War II because he was the sole support of his widower
father. He first worked for the Bureau of the Census in Washington Education City College of New
D.C., then taught English in New York, mostly high school night York (BA)
classes for adults. Columbia University
(MA)
Starting in 1949, Malamud taught four sections of freshman Period 1940–1985
composition each semester at Oregon State University, an
Genre Novel, short story
experience fictionalized in his 1961 novel A New Life. Because he
lacked a PhD, he was not allowed to teach literature courses, and Notable The Natural, The
for a number of years, his rank was that of instructor. In those days, works Fixer
classes in English and other liberal arts were managed by small
departments. An early state policy required the university to emphasize engineering, business, and the
sciences instead. While at OSU, Malamud devoted three 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 is the author of a memoir about her
father, titled My Father Is A Book.[5]

Malamud was Jewish, an agnostic, and a humanist.[6]

Malamud died in Manhattan on March 18, 1986, at the age of 71.[7] He is buried in Mount Auburn
Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In his writing, Malamud depicts an honest picture of the despair and difficulties of the immigrants to
America, and their hope of reaching their dreams despite their poverty.

Writing career
Malamud wrote slowly and carefully; he was not especially prolific. He is the author of eight novels[8] and
four collections of short stories. The posthumously published Complete Stories contains 55 short stories and
is 629 pages long. Maxim Lieber served as his literary agent in 1942 and 1945.

He completed his first novel, The Light Sleeper, 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. 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. This novel
was quickly followed by The Magic Barrel, his first published collection of short stories (1958). It won
Malamud the first of two National Book Awards that he received in his lifetime.[9]

In 1967, his novel The Fixer, about anti-semitism in the Russian Empire, won both the National Book
Award for Fiction and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[1][2] 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, perhaps a meta-narrative on Malamud's own writing and creative struggles, which, set in
New York City, deals with racial issues and the emergence of black/African American literature in the
American 1970s landscape.

Malamud was renowned for his short stories, often oblique allegories set in a dreamlike urban ghetto of
immigrant Jews. Of Malamud, 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,The New Yorker, Partisan Review, and Commentary.

Themes
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.[10]

Posthumous tributes
Philip Roth: "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."[11]

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 Grave of Bernard Malamud at Mount
immigrant New York. He was a myth maker, a fabulist, a writer of Auburn Cemetery
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]

Centenary

There were numerous tributes and celebrations marking the

centenary of Malamud's birth (April 26, 1914).[13][14] To
commemorate the centenary, Malamud's current publisher (who still
keeps most of Malamud's work in print) published on-line (through
their blog) some of the "Introductions" to these works.[15] Oregon
State University announced that they would be celebrating the
100th birthday "of one of its most-recognized faculty members"
(Malamud taught there from 1949 to 1961).[16]
A signed copy of Malamud's book
Media outlets also joined in the celebration. Throughout March, The Natural held by Oregon State
April, and May 2014 there were many Malamud stories and articles University.[12]
on blogs, in newspapers (both print and on-line), and on the radio.
Many of these outlets featured reviews of Malamud's novels and
stories, editions of which have recently been issued by the Library of America.[17] There were also many
tributes and appreciations from fellow writers and surviving family members. Some of the more prominent
of these kinds of tributes included those from Malamud's daughter, from Malamud's biographer Philip
Davis,[18] and from fellow novelist and short story writer Cynthia Ozick.[19] Other prominent writers who
gathered for readings and tributes included Tobias Wolff, Edward P. Jones, and Lorrie Moore.[20]

Awards
1958 National Jewish Book Award, winner for The Assistant[21][22]
 1959 National Book Award for Fiction, winner for The Magic Barrel[9]
1967 National Book Award for Fiction, winner for The Fixer[1]
1967 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, winner for The Fixer[2]
1969 O. Henry Award, winner for "Man in the Drawer" in The Atlantic Monthly, April 1968[23]
1984 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, runner-up for The Stories

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).

Bibliography

Novels
The Natural (1952)
The Assistant (1957)
A New Life (1961)
The Fixer (1966)
Pictures of Fidelman: An Exhibition (1969)
The Tenants (1971)
Dubin's Lives (1979)
God's Grace (1982)

Story collections
The Magic Barrel (1958)
Idiots First (1963)
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)

Short stories
"The First Seven Years" (1958)
"The Mourners" (1955)
"The Jewbird" (1963)
"The Prison" (1950)
"A Summer's Reading"
 "Armistice"

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)
Swirski, Peter. "You'll Never Make a Monkey Out of Me or Altruism, Proverbial Wisdom, and
Bernard Malamud's God's Grace". American Utopia and Social Engineering in Literature,
Social Thought, and Political History. New York, Routledge 2011.

References
1. "National Book Awards – 1967" (https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-
awards-1967). National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
(With essay by Harold Augenbraum from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
2. "Fiction" (http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Fiction). Past winners & finalists by category. The
Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
3. Smith, Dinitia (9 March 2006). "Bernard Malamud's Daughter Finally Tells His Secrets" (http
s://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/09/books/bernard-malamuds-daughter-finally-tells-his-secrets.
html). The New York Times.
4. Boyer, David. "NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: FLATBUSH; Grads Hail Erasmus as It Enters a
Fourth Century (https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04EED8143AF932A257
50C0A9679C8B63)", The New York Times, March 11, 2001. Retrieved 2007-12-01.
5. "Ann DeChiara Malamud, Helpmate to Writer, 89, Dies" (https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/2
2/obituaries/22malamud.html). The New York Times. 22 March 2007.
6. Markose Abraham (2011). American Immigration Aesthetics: Bernard Malamud and Bharati
Mukherjee As Immigrants. AuthorHouse. p. 146. ISBN 978-1-4567-8243-6. "An agnostic
humanist, Malamud has unflinching faith in man's ability to choose and make 'his own world'
from the 'usable past'."
7. Rothstein, Mervyn (March 19, 1986). "Bernard Malamud Dies at 71" (https://www.nytimes.co
m/1986/03/19/books/malamud-obit.html) (obituary). The New York Times. Retrieved
2010-07-30.
8. Malamud, Bernard. The People: And Other Uncollected Fiction. Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
1989
9. "National Book Awards – 1959" (https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-
awards-1959). National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
(With essays by Liz Rosenberg and Harold Augenbraum from the Awards 60-year
anniversary blog.)
10. "Bernard Malamud (1914–1986)" (http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/heath/syllabuil
d/iguide/malamud.html). Contributing Editor: Evelyn Avery(?). Georgetown University course
materials(?).
11. Roth, Philip, "Pictures of Malamud (https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/20/books/malamud-rot
h.html?pagewanted=1)", The New York Times, April 20, 1986. Retrieved 2008-07-15.
12. "Inscribed, first-edition copy of acclaimed novel, "The Natural," donated to OSU" (http://orego
nstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2009/sep/inscribed-first-edition-copy-acclaimed-novel-%E2%8
0%9C-natural%E2%80%9D-donated-osu). Oregon State University. Retrieved 5 May 2016.
13. "Bernard Malamud at 100" (https://archive.today/20140422224304/http://www.92y.org/Event/
Bernard-Malamud-at-100.aspx). 92Y. Archived from the original (http://www.92y.org/Event/Be
rnard-Malamud-at-100.aspx) on 2014-04-22.
14. "Bernard Malamud Tribute, Thursday May 1, 2014 (video)" (https://web.archive.org/web/2014
0426125257/http://www.centerforfiction.org/calendar/bernard-malamud-tribute). Center for
Fiction. Archived from the original (http://centerforfiction.org/calendar/bernard-malamud-tribut
e) on April 26, 2014.
15. "Bernard Malamud Centenary - Work in Progress" (http://www.fsgworkinprogress.com/categ
ory/bernard-malamud-centenary/). Work in Progress.
16. "OSU to celebrate 100th birthday of former faculty member Bernard Malamud - News &
Research Communications - Oregon State University" (http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archive
s/2014/apr/osu-celebrate-100th-birthday-former-faculty-member-bernard-malamud).
17. James Campbell (21 March 2014). "Book Review: Library of America's Bernard Malamud
volumes" (https://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230373080457943500112
9600812). WSJ.
18. "Fuse Interview: Jewish-American Writer Bernard Malamud at 100 — Appreciating the
Beauty of the Ethical" (http://artsfuse.org/102166/fuse-interview-jewish-american-writer-bern
ard-malamud-at-100-appreciating-the-beauty-of-the-ethical/). 23 March 2014.
19. Ozick, Cynthia (March 13, 2014). "Judging the World: Library of America's Bernard Malamud
Collections" (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/books/review/library-of-americas-bernard-
malamud-collections.html?_r=1). The New York Times.
20. "Episode 40 – The Legacy of Bernard Malamud | PEN / Faulkner" (http://www.penfaulkner.or
g/2015/02/09/episode-40-the-legacy-of-bernard-malamud/). www.penfaulkner.org. Retrieved
2018-03-21.
21. "National Jewish Book Award past winners" (https://web.archive.org/web/20181116143149/
https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/awards/njba-list). jewishbookcouncil.org. Archived from
the original (https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/awards/njba-list) on November 16, 2018.
Retrieved April 23, 2019.
22. "Past Winners" (https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/awards/national-jewish-book-awards/pa
st-winners). Jewish Book Council. Retrieved 2020-01-19.
23. "The O. Henry Prize Past Winners" (https://www.randomhouse.com/anchor/ohenry/winners/p
ast.html). Randomhouse.com. Retrieved 30 September 2017.

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
Mark Athitakis, "The Otherworldly Malamud (http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2014/marchapril/
feature/the-otherworldly-malamud)", Humanities, March/April 2014 | Volume 35, Number 2

External links
Daniel Stern (Spring 1975). "Bernard Malamud, The Art of Fiction No. 52" (http://www.thepari
sreview.org/interviews/3869/the-art-of-fiction-no-52-bernard-malamud). The Paris Review.
Spring 1975 (61).
The Bernard Malamud Papers (https://web.archive.org/web/20070504061858/http://osulibrar
y.orst.edu/specialcollections/coll/malamud/index.html) at Oregon State University
 Bernard Malamud (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0538897/) at IMDb
Clark, Suzanne. "Bernard Malamud" (https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/malamud_bern
ard_1914_1986_/). The Oregon Encyclopedia.
Works by Bernard Malamud (https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL232501A) at Open Library

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