Bernard Malamud: A Writer's Life
by Philip Davis
Oxford University Press, HK$270
The life of Bernard Malamud does not lend itself to biography. Governed by obsessive routine, his career lacked the substance abuse, literary feuds or media controversies that often colour a writer's life. Malamud's publisher, Roger Straus, described the idea of a biography as 'ridiculous', joking that if 'Saul Bellow was filet mignon, Malamud was hamburger'.
Along with Bellow and Philip Roth, Malamud once formed a ruling troika of Jewish-American writers, but interest in his work has faded. With the explosion of the counter-culture movements in the 1960s, and the corresponding rise in avant-garde and postmodern art forms, novels such as The Natural (1952), The Assistant (1957), A New Life (1961) and The Fixer (1966) seemed old-fashioned in their humanist and moral commitment. Philip Davis' A Writer's Life - the first biography of Malamud - serves partly as a rescue mission. Davis writes that his aim is to draw more readers to Malamud's work, but his tone is rarely hagiographic.
Malamud was born in Brooklyn to poor Russian Jewish immigrants, his childhood soured by the chronic depression and suicide of his mother, which planted the seeds of his ambition and fear of chaos.
A non-believing Jew, Malamud married an Italian Catholic, Ann de Chiara, against his father's wishes, but was dismayed when his daughter Janna married a gentile. De Chiara was devoted to Malamud's career, typing his manuscripts and securing him teaching jobs. She ensured that his work remained at the centre of the family orbit. She also stood by Malamud through his affair with his 19-year-old student Arlene Heyman, who was more sexually experienced than the writer despite being 28 years younger.