Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud (1914-1986), American novelist and short-story writer, most of whose books focus on the Jewish experience in America. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Malamud was educated at the City College of New York and Columbia University. Beginning in 1961 he taught at Bennington College. Malamud's first novel, The Natural (1952), reworks the legend of the Holy Grail as an allegorical fantasy about a star baseball player (see Allegory). His second novel, The Assistant (1957), is concerned with Jewish themes and reflects the sad, impoverished Brooklyn scenes of his childhood. The Fixer (1966), for which Malamud received the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is a poignant novel (based on a true story) of the suffering of a Russian Jewish workman sentenced unjustly to prison; it demonstrates how human beings can come through suffering to an affirmative view of life. The Tenants (1971), about the relationship between a Jewish man and a black man, deals with inner-city tensions. Malamud's later novels include Dubin's Lives (1979), about a writer of biographies, and God's Grace (1982). Malamud's short stories mix an abiding compassion for Jewish life with subtle touches of wry humor. They have been collected in The Magic Barrel (1958), Idiots First (1963), Pictures of Fidelman (1969), and Rembrandt's Hat (1973); a complete collection, The Stories of Bernard Malamud, was published in 1983.