Inspirational Quotes by Bernard Malamud (American Novelist)

Bernard Malamud (1914–86) was an American novelist and short-story writer. He is considered one of the most prominent figures in Jewish-American literature, which originated in the 1930s and is known for its tragic and comic elements.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Russian Jews immigrants who had fled tsarist Russia, Malamud was educated at Columbia University. He then taught at Oregon State University (1949–61) and Bennington College (1961–86.)

One of the leading American writers of the later 20th century, Malamud wrote fiction that mingled mysticism, pessimism, and gentle humor and drew on Jewish America’s idiom. The Natural (1952,) his first novel, used baseball as an extended metaphor for life, following the fading career of a once-promising big hitter. The Natural was followed by six other novels, including The Assistant (1957,) The Fixer (1966; Pulitzer, 1967,) and Dubin’s Lives (1979.) In A New Life (1961,) he abandoned the close urban setting of his previous novels for the mountainous western USA, where Seymour Levin arrives at a small college to teach and analyze happiness.

Malamud’s stories and novels, in which reality and fantasy are frequently interlaced, have been compared to parables, myths, and allegories and often illustrate the importance of moral obligation. The Fixer (1966,) set in Tsarist Russia, was Malamud’s bleakest and most potent book and is streaked with self-deprecating humor. Later novels include God’s Grace (1982,) a prophetic, apocalyptic allegory. He was also an accomplished short-story writer; The Stories of Bernard Malamud was published in 1983. He won the National Book award twice, in 1959 and 1967.

Literary scholar Jeffrey Helterman wrote Understanding Malamud (1985.) Hofstra University’s Iska S. Alter wrote The Good Man’s Dilemma: Social Criticism in the Fiction of Bernard Malamud (1981.)

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