Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud (1914 - 1986) American author of novels and short stories. Along with Saul Bellow 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 Tsarist Russia, won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Bernard Malamud was born April 26, 1914 in Brooklyn, New York to Russian Jewish immigrants, Max and Bertha (Fidelman) Malamud. His brother, Eugene, was born in 1917. Bernard attended high school in Brooklyn and during those years he often visited the movie houses and after would describe the plots to his schoolhood friends. He was especially fond of Charlie Chaplin's comedies. From 1928 to 1932 he attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn.[1] He received his Bachelor's degree from City College of New York in 1936. He worked for a year at $4.50 a day as a teacher-in-training, before attending college on a government loan. Malamud later earned his Master's degree from Columbia University in 1942. Malamud aspired to teach English, however, the scarcity of work in pre-World War II New York led him to find work in Washington, D.C., with the Bureau of the Census. In 1949 he began teaching at Oregon State University, an experience that he would later fictionalize in his novel A New Life (1961). He left this post in 1961 to teach creative writing at Bennington College in Vermont.

[edit]Writing career

Malamud began actively writing short stories in 1941 and in 1943 he published his first stories, "Benefit Performance" in Threshold and "The Place Is Different Now" in American Preface.

In 1948, at the age of 34, he had completed his first novel but he eventually burned it. In the early 1950s, many stories began appearing in Harper's Bazaar, Partisan Review, and Commentary.

The Natural, Malamud's first novel, was published during 1952. The novel is one of his best remembered and most symbolic works. The story traces the life of Roy Hobbs, an unknown middle-aged baseball player who reaches legendary status with his stellar talent. Malamud’s fiction touches lightly upon mythic elements and explores themes as initiation and isolation. The Natural also focuses upon a recurring writing technique that marked much of Malumud’s works.

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.

Most of the short stories in Malamud’s first collection, The Magic Barrel (1958), depict the search for hope and meaning within the bleak enclosures of poor urban settings. The title story focuses on the unlikely relationship of Leo Finkle, an unmarried rabbinical student, and Pinye Salzman, a colorful marriage broker. Finkle has spent most of life with his nose buried in books and therefore isn’t well-educated in life itself. However, Finkle has a greater interest – the art of romance. He engages the services of Salzman, who shows Finkle a number of potential brides from his “magic barrel” but with each picture Finkle grows more uninterested. After Salzman convinces him to meet Lily Hirschorn, Finkle realizes his life is truly empty and lacking the passion to love God or humanity. When Finkle discovers a picture of Salzman’s daughter and sees her suffering, he sets out on a new mission to save her. Other well-known stories included in the collection are: The Last Mohican, Angel Levine, Idiots First, and The Mourners, a story which focuses on Kessler, the defiant old man in need of 'social security' and Gruber, the belligerent landlord who doesn't want Kessler in the tenement anymore.

He is most renowned for his short stories, oblique allegories often set in a dreamlike urban ghetto of immigrant Jews. His prose, like his settings, is an artful pastiche of Yiddish-English locutions, punctuated by sudden lyricism. On Malamud's death, Philip Roth wrote: "A man of stern morality, [Malamud was driven by] a need to consider long and seriously every last demand of an overtaxed, overtaxing conscience torturously exacerbated by the pathos of human need unabated".[citation needed]

The Fixer won the National Book Award in 1966 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Malamud's novel The Natural was made into a movie starring Robert Redford (described by the film writer David Thomson as "poor baseball and worse Malamud"). Among his other novels were Dubin's Lives, a powerful evocation of middle age which uses biography to recreate the narrative richness of its protagonists' lives, and The Tenants, an arguably meta-narrative on Malamud's own writing and creative struggles, which, set in New York, deals with racial issues and the emergence of black/African American literature in the American 1970s landscape. Malamud taught at Oregon State University from 1949-1961.

[edit]Marriage

In 1942 Malamud met Ann De Chiara (November 1, 1917 - March 20, 2007), an Italian-American Roman Catholic, who was then working at an advertising firm. They married on November 6, 1945, over the opposition of both Malamud and De Chiara's parents. They had two children, Paul (b. 1947) and Janna (b. 1952).

Ann Malamud, a 1939 Cornell University graduate, typed 100 application letters for a college teaching job for her husband. She also typed and reviewed his manuscripts.

Janna Malamud Smith relates her memories of her father in her memoir, My Father is a Book.

[edit]

ברנרד מלמוד

''''''(באנגלית: Bernard Malamud;‏ 26 באפריל 1914 - 18 במרץ 1986), סופר יהודי אמריקאי.

תוכן עניינים 1 ביוגרפיה 2 מספריו 3 לקריאה נוספת 4 קישורים חיצוניים 5 הערות שוליים ביוגרפיה ברנרד מלמוד נולד ב-1914 בברוקלין, ניו יורק להורים יהודים שהיגרו מרוסיה.

למד באוניברסיטת קולומביה - לשון אנגלית. בתקופת השפל הגדול בארצות הברית עבד בבתי חרושת ואחר-כך במשרד ממשלתי. ב-1939 פנה להוראה, ולימד בבית ספר תיכון בניו-יורק והיה מרצה באוניברסיטת אורגון.

מלמוד החל בכתיבה עוד בהיותו תלמיד בבית-ספר תיכון, ספרו הראשון "הטבעי" ראה אור ב-1952. פרסומו בא לו מהרומן "העוזר" משנת 1957, המביא תמונות מתקופת ילדותו בברוקלין. ספרו "יום הדין", המבוסס על משפט בייליס, זיכה אותו בפרסים חשובים פרס פוליצר וב- National Book Award. מלמוד ידוע בעיקר בזכות הסיפורים הקצרים שלו המתארים את חיי המהגרים היהודים.

ספרו "העוזר" נכלל ברשימת 100 הספרים הטובים שיצאו החל משנת 1923, שהוציא הטיים מגזין[1].

אחד מסיפוריו, "A Summer's Reading" נלמד כחלק מיחידת הספרות האנגלית בבחינת הבגרות בישראל.

מספריו רומנים "העוזר" (1957, The Assistant), תורגם לעברית בידי אברהם יבין, עם עובד, 1975 "חיים חדשים" (1961, A New Life), תורגם לעברית בידי אמציה פורת, עם עובד, 1962 - רומן חצי אוטוביוגרפי המתאר את עלילותיו של אקדמאי צעיר המלמד אנגלית (שפה וספרות) ועוקר ממנהטן, ניו יורק, אל מכללה קטנה בצפון אזור החוף המערבי של ארצות הברית. "יום הדין" (1966, The Fixer), תורגם לעברית בידי אהרן אמיר, הוצאת א. לוין אפשטיין, 1968 "הדיירים" (1971, The Tenants), תורגם לעברית בידי ברוך מורן, עם עובד, 1973 "פרקי חיים של דובין" (1979, Dubin's Lives), תורגם לעברית בידי אהרן אמיר, עם עובד, 1982 "חסד אלוהים" (1982, God's Grace), תורגם לעברית בידי אמציה פורת, עם עובד, 1984 קובצי הסיפורים "חבית הקסמים" (1958, The Magic Barrel), תורגם לעברית בידי טל נתיב, זמורה ביתן, 1980 ובידי עדה פלדור, הוצאת כתר, 2011 "חלושי השכל תחילה" (1963, Idiots First), תורגם לעברית בידי ישראל חזק, זמורה ביתן, 1984 "תמונות פידלמן" (1969, Pictures of Fidelman) "כובעו של רמברנדט" (1973, Rembrandt's Hat), תורגם לעברית בידי יהושע צפריר, זמורה ביתן מודן, 1982 "סיפורי ברנרד מלמוד" (1983, The Stories of Bernard Malamud) "העם", תורגם לעברית בידי רות לבנית, זמורה ביתן, 1994 לקריאה נוספת ברנרד מלמוד, "תימה כבירה" - נאום לרגל קבלת פרס הספר הלאומי 1967 (מאנגלית: עודד וולקשטיין). דחק - כתב עת לספרות טובה, כרך ה, 2015 יוסף ירושלמי, ברנארד מלמוד בעברית : ביבליוגרפיה, נדפס בעלי שיח, 11-10, תשמ"א, 1981. הנרי אונגר, היהודי כמיטאפורה, נדפס בהארץ, אוגוסט 1980. נורית זרחי, המחלל מברוקלין : על קובץ סיפוריו המתורגמים של ברנארד מלמוד, "חבית הקסמים", נדפס במעריב, אוגוסט, 1980. איזה פרליס, צחוק ודמע בסיפורי מלמוד, "חבית הקסמים", בתרגום עברי, נדפס בידיעות אחרונות, ספטמבר, 1980. יצחק ברמור, האבהות כאמת-מידה מוסרית , עיון ב"המתקן" לברנרד מלמוד, נדפס בהדאר, 67, תשמ"ח 1988. קישורים חיצוניים ויקישיתוף מדיה וקבצים בנושא ברנרד מלמוד בוויקישיתוף על הרומן "העוזר" מאת ברנרד מלמוד הספרים של ברנרד מלמוד , באתר "סימניה" ynet, "חבית הקסמים" של ברנרד מלמוד , באתר ynet, 25 באוגוסט 2011 אירי ריקין, חנות הממתקים המרים , באתר הארץ, 27 בספטמבר 2011 https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%A0%D7%A8%D7%93_%D7%9E...

------------------------------

Bernard Malamud (1914 - 1986) American author of novels and short stories. Along with Saul Bellow 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 Tsarist Russia, won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Bernard Malamud was born April 26, 1914 in Brooklyn, New York to Russian Jewish immigrants, Max and Bertha (Fidelman) Malamud. His brother, Eugene, was born in 1917. Bernard attended high school in Brooklyn and during those years he often visited the movie houses and after would describe the plots to his schoolhood friends. He was especially fond of Charlie Chaplin's comedies. From 1928 to 1932 he attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn.[1] He received his Bachelor's degree from City College of New York in 1936. He worked for a year at $4.50 a day as a teacher-in-training, before attending college on a government loan. Malamud later earned his Master's degree from Columbia University in 1942. Malamud aspired to teach English, however, the scarcity of work in pre-World War II New York led him to find work in Washington, D.C., with the Bureau of the Census. In 1949 he began teaching at Oregon State University, an experience that he would later fictionalize in his novel A New Life (1961). He left this post in 1961 to teach creative writing at Bennington College in Vermont.

[edit]Writing career

Malamud began actively writing short stories in 1941 and in 1943 he published his first stories, "Benefit Performance" in Threshold and "The Place Is Different Now" in American Preface.

In 1948, at the age of 34, he had completed his first novel but he eventually burned it. In the early 1950s, many stories began appearing in Harper's Bazaar, Partisan Review, and Commentary.

The Natural, Malamud's first novel, was published during 1952. The novel is one of his best remembered and most symbolic works. The story traces the life of Roy Hobbs, an unknown middle-aged baseball player who reaches legendary status with his stellar talent. Malamud’s fiction touches lightly upon mythic elements and explores themes as initiation and isolation. The Natural also focuses upon a recurring writing technique that marked much of Malumud’s works.

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.

Most of the short stories in Malamud’s first collection, The Magic Barrel (1958), depict the search for hope and meaning within the bleak enclosures of poor urban settings. The title story focuses on the unlikely relationship of Leo Finkle, an unmarried rabbinical student, and Pinye Salzman, a colorful marriage broker. Finkle has spent most of life with his nose buried in books and therefore isn’t well-educated in life itself. However, Finkle has a greater interest – the art of romance. He engages the services of Salzman, who shows Finkle a number of potential brides from his “magic barrel” but with each picture Finkle grows more uninterested. After Salzman convinces him to meet Lily Hirschorn, Finkle realizes his life is truly empty and lacking the passion to love God or humanity. When Finkle discovers a picture of Salzman’s daughter and sees her suffering, he sets out on a new mission to save her. Other well-known stories included in the collection are: The Last Mohican, Angel Levine, Idiots First, and The Mourners, a story which focuses on Kessler, the defiant old man in need of 'social security' and Gruber, the belligerent landlord who doesn't want Kessler in the tenement anymore.

He is most renowned for his short stories, oblique allegories often set in a dreamlike urban ghetto of immigrant Jews. His prose, like his settings, is an artful pastiche of Yiddish-English locutions, punctuated by sudden lyricism. On Malamud's death, Philip Roth wrote: "A man of stern morality, [Malamud was driven by] a need to consider long and seriously every last demand of an overtaxed, overtaxing conscience torturously exacerbated by the pathos of human need unabated".[citation needed]

The Fixer won the National Book Award in 1966 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Malamud's novel The Natural was made into a movie starring Robert Redford (described by the film writer David Thomson as "poor baseball and worse Malamud"). Among his other novels were Dubin's Lives, a powerful evocation of middle age which uses biography to recreate the narrative richness of its protagonists' lives, and The Tenants, an arguably meta-narrative on Malamud's own writing and creative struggles, which, set in New York, deals with racial issues and the emergence of black/African American literature in the American 1970s landscape. Malamud taught at Oregon State University from 1949-1961.

[edit]Marriage

In 1942 Malamud met Ann De Chiara (November 1, 1917 - March 20, 2007), an Italian-American Roman Catholic, who was then working at an advertising firm. They married on November 6, 1945, over the opposition of both Malamud and De Chiara's parents. They had two children, Paul (b. 1947) and Janna (b. 1952).

Ann Malamud, a 1939 Cornell University graduate, typed 100 application letters for a college teaching job for her husband. She also typed and reviewed his manuscripts.

Janna Malamud Smith relates her memories of her father in her memoir, My Father is a Book.

[edit]