Malamud, Bernard
Malamud, Bernard( 1914–86),born in Brooklyn of immigrant Russian parents, after graduation from the City College of New York and holding various odd jobs worked for an M.A. at Columbia while teaching night classes in a high school. His first novel, The Natural (1952), is a comic treatment of baseball in terms of a mythic view of the American hero. His second novel, The Assistant (1957), is more realistic in its depiction of a pathetically unfortunate family of New York Jews and the assistant in their failing grocery store, but its treatment of the main character's search for the good life and his attempt to change himself is as much concerned with moral issues. His next novel, A New Life (1961), is both witty and satirical in its treatment of the life of a Jewish professor of English literature at an Oregon “cow college,” but it too presents the theme of a man changing his life. Later novels include The Fixer (1967,...
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