Bernard Malamud
Bernard Malamud, (b. April 26, 1914,
Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.—d. March 18, 1986,
New York, N.Y.), American novelist and
short-story writer who made parables out
of Jewish immigrant life.
Malamud’s parents were Russian Jews who
had fled tsarist Russia. He was born in
Brooklyn, where his father owned a small
grocery store. The family was poor.
Malamud’s mother died when he was 15
years old, and he was unhappy when his
father remarried. He early on assumed
responsibility for his handicapped
brother. Malamud was educated at the
City College of New York (B.A., 1936)
and Columbia University (M.A., 1942). He
taught at high schools in New York City
(1940–49), at Oregon State University
(1949–61), and at Bennington College in
Vermont (1961–66, 1968–86).
His first novel, The Natural (1952;
filmed 1984), is a fable about a
baseball hero who is gifted with
miraculous powers. The Assistant (1957)
is about a young Gentile hoodlum and an
old Jewish grocer. The Fixer (1966)
takes place in tsarist Russia. The story
of a Jewish handyman unjustly imprisoned
for the murder of a Christian boy, it
won Malamud a Pulitzer Prize. His other
novels are A New Life (1961), The
Tenants (1971), Dubin’s Lives (1979),
and God’s Grace (1982).
Malamud’s genius is most apparent in his
short stories. Though told in a spare,
compressed prose that reflects the terse
speech of their immigrant characters,
the stories often burst into emotional,
metaphorical language. Grim city
neighbourhoods are visited by magical
events, and their hardworking residents
are given glimpses of love and
self-sacrifice. Malamud’s short-story
collections are The Magic Barrel (1958),
Idiots First (1963), Pictures of
Fidelman (1969), and Rembrandt’s Hat
(1973). The Stories of Bernard Malamud
appeared in 1983, and The People and
Uncollected Stories was published
posthumously in 1989. The People, an
unfinished novel, tells the story of a
Jewish immigrant adopted by a
19th-century American Indian tribe. One
critic spoke of “its moral sinew and its
delicacy of tone.”
