Portrait of Bernard Malamud

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Well, we were here, first-generation Americans, our language was English and a language is a spiritual mansion from which no one can evict us. Malamud in his novels and stories discovered a sort of communicative genius in the impoverished, harsh jargon of immigrant New York. He was a myth maker, a fabulist, a writer of exquisite parables. The English novelist Anthony Burgess said of him that he "never forgets that he is an American Jew, and he is at his best when posing the situation of a Jew in urban American society." "A remarkably consistent writer," he goes on, "who has never produced a mediocre novel .... He is devoid of either conventional piety or sentimentality ... always profoundly convincing." Let me add on my own behalf that the accent of hard-won and individual emotional truth is always heard in Malamud's words. He is a rich original of the first rank.

(Saul Bellow's eulogy, wrote for a memorial tribute to Malamud, 1986)

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Chronology of Bernard Malamud

1914 Bernard Malamud is born in Brooklyn, New York, to Bertha and Max Malamud.
1928-32 Attends Erasmus Hall High School.
1932-36 Attends City College of New York; receives bachelor's degree in 1936.
1937-38 Attends Columbia University.
1940-48 Works as clerk in Bureau of Census, Washington, D.C.
1940-48 Teaches evening classes at Erasmus Hall High School.
1941 Begins writing short stories.
1942 Receives Master's degree from Columbia University.
1943 Publishes first stories: "Benefit Performance" in Threshold and "The Place Is Different Now" in American Preface.
1945 Marries Ann de Chiara; lives in Greenwich Village.
1947 A son, Paul, is born.
1948-49 Teaches evening classes at Harlem Evening High School.
1949-61 Teaches at Oregon State College, Corvallis, Oregon.
1950 Stories appear in Harper's Bazaar, Partisan Review, Commentary.
1952 The Natural is published. A daughter, Janna, is born.
1956-57 Malamud receives a Partisan Review fellowship in fiction; lives in Rome and travels in Europe.
1957 The Assistant is published.
1958 The Magic Barrel is published. Malamud receives the Rosenthal Foundation Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters for The Assistant.
1959 Receives the National Book Award for The Magic Barrel. Receives a Ford Foundation Fellowship in humanities and the arts.

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1961 A New Life is published. Joins the faculty of Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont.
1963 Idiots First is published. Travels in England and Italy.
1964 Becomes a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
1965 Travels in the Soviet Union, France, and Spain.
1966-68 The Fixer is published. Becomes visiting lecturer at Harvard University.
1967 Wins the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Fixer. Becomes a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
1968 Visits Israel in March.
1969 Pictures of Fidelman: An Exhibition is published.
1971 The Tenants is published.
1973 Rembrandt's Hat is published.
1979 Dubin's Lives is published.
1982 God's Grace is published.
1983 The Stories of Bernard Malamud is published.
1986 Malamud dies of heart attack.
1989 The People and Uncollected Stories is published.
1997 The Complete Stories is published.
2006 My Father Is a Book, a memoir by his daughter Janna Malamud Smith, is published.

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