Bernard Malamud: A Centennial Tribute

by Victoria Aarons (Editor), Gustavo Sánchez Canales (Editor), Paul Malamud (Contribution by), Leah Garrett (Contribution by), Andrew M. Gordon (Contribution by)

Overview

A fresh and engaging international tribute to Bernard Malamud, a major American Jewish novelist in the postwar era of the twentieth century.

Master storyteller and literary stylist Bernard Malamud is considered one of the top three most influential postwar American Jewish writers, having established a voice and a presence for other authors in the literary canon. Along with Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, Malamud brought to life a decidedly American Jewish protagonist and a newly emergent voice that came to define American letters and that has continued to influence writers for over half a century. This collection is a tribute to Malamud in honor of the hundredth anniversary of his birth. Literary critic Harold Bloom suggests that "Malamud is perhaps the purest storyteller since Leskov," the nineteenth-century Russian novelist and satirist. Novelist Cynthia Ozick, in a tribute to Malamud, described him as "the very writer who had brought into being a new American idiom of his own idiosyncratic invention."

Unlike other collections devoted to Malamud, this collection is international in scope, compiling diverse essays from the United States, France, Germany, Greece, and Spain, and demonstrating the wide range of scholarship and approaches to Bernard Malamud's fiction. The essays show the breadth and depth of this masterful craftsman and explore through his short fiction and his novels such topics as the Malamudian protagonist's relation to the urban/natural space; Malamud's approach to death; race and ethnicity; the Malamudian hero as modern schlemiel; and the role of fantasy in Malamud's fiction.

Bernard Malamud is a comprehensive collection that celebrates a voice that helped to shape the last fifty years of literary works. Readers of American literary criticism and Jewish studies alike will appreciate this collection.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814341148
Publisher:	Wayne State University Press
Publication date:	09/12/2016
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Victoria Aarons holds the position of O. R. & Eva Mitchell Distinguished Professor of Literature in the English Department at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas. She is the author of A Measure of Memory: Storytelling and Identity in American Jewish Fiction and What Happened to Abraham? Reinventing the Covenant in American Jewish Fiction, co-editor of The New Diaspora: The Changing Landscape of American Jewish Fiction (Wayne State University Press, 2015), and co-author with Alan L. Berger of the forthcoming book Third-Generation Holocaust Representation: Trauma, History, and Memory. Aarons has published over seventy scholarly essays in journals and book collections, is on the editorial board of a number of journals, and is a judge for the Edward Lewis Wallant Award.

Gustavo Sánchez Canales teaches English at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid where he is also vice dean for Research. He has published book chapters and articles on Saul Bellow, Michael Chabon, Nathan Englander, Rebecca Goldstein, Allegra Goodman, Bernard Malamud, Cynthia Ozick, Chaim Potok, and Philip Roth, among others.

Table of Contents

Preface xiii

"Bernard Malamud, Person and Writer" Paul Malamud xvii

"Mediterranean" Paul Malamud xxi

Part I U.S. Voices

Introduction: "Moved by a Memory": Bernard Malamud's Literary Landscape Victoria Aarons 3

Novels

1 The Beard Makes the Man: Bernard Malamud's A New Life Leah Garrett 17

2 "I Shit My Death": From the Providential to the Excremental in The Fixer Holli Levitsky 31

3 The Jew as Vampire in Bernard Malamud's The Fixer Andrew M. Gordon 45

4 Malamud's The Tenants and the Problem of Ralph Ellison's Second Novel Timothy Parrish 52

5 Unbound and Un-bodied: Reading Race in Malamud's The Tenants Jessica Lang 70

Short Stories

6 Midrash, Memory, and "Miracles or Near-Miracles": Bernard Malamud's All-Too-Human Project Victoria Aarons 89

Part II European Voices

Introduction: Encountering Bernard Malamud through an I-Thou Relationship Gustavo Sánchez Canales 109

Novels

7 Rethinking the Discourse of Suffering in Bernard Malamud's Fiction Pilar Alonso 119

8 "What's in a Name?": Aptronyms and Archetypes in Bernard Malamud's The Assistant and The Fixer Gustavo Sanchez Canales 135

9 Fixing Bernard Malamud's The Fixer through Translation: From El hombre de Kiev (1967) to El reparador (2011) Martín Urdiales Shaw 151

10 Dostoevsky Lawrence, Malamud: Malamud's Heroes, Facing the Twin Rejection of Identity and Sensuality Rémi Astruc Alan Astro 171

11 Writing on the Edge of Doom: Theological Reflections on Bernard Malamud's God's Grace Till Kinzel 183

Short Stories

12 Seeking the Man behind the Text or a Biographical Approach to Bernard Malamud's Short Stories Emilio Cañadas Rodriguez 197

13 Malamud's Short Fiction: Angels and Specters Félix Martín Gutiérrez 210

14 Bernard Malamud's and John Updike's Art Stories: The Act of Creation in "Still Life" and "Leaves" Aristi Trendel 231

15 Arthur Fidelman's Aesthetic Adventures and Malamud's Poetics Creativity Theodora Tsimpouki 244

Annotated Works Cited 265

Contributors 297

Index 303

What People are Saying About This

Raddock Family Eminent Scholar Chair in Holocaust Studies - Alan L. Berger

Bernard Malamud was one of the great Jewish literary icons of the twentieth century. The essays in this volume reveal an international and cross-cultural dialogue bound to illuminate both scholarly and lay readers. Victoria Aarons and Gustavo Sánchez Canales deserve our appreciation.

Editorial Reviews

A volume of this scope and significance, marking the centennial of Bernard Malamud’s birth, is long overdue. Bernard Malamud is arguably one of the major postwar writers whose work, connecting immigrant literature with postwar literature, changed American writing and American Jewish writing in a profound way. No other volume like this one exists, combining the work of Malamud scholars in the United States and Europe, and pointing to the continuing evolving relevance of Malamud’s work for a global audience in the twenty-first century. The editors and contributors have made a major contribution to the field in this impressive volume that is a fitting tribute to the lasting legacy of Bernard Malamud.

Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies, University of Hartford - Avinoam Patt

This Centennial Tribute delivers significant new insights into the writing and the life of the exemplary American author Bernard Malamud. With internationally known contributors from the U.S. and abroad, the collection enacts a global dialogue on such pertinent issues as Malamud’s unique literary voice, his representation of the ethical life, and his legacy. As such, the contributors honor the linguistic fluidity and adaptability we associate with Malamud himself, whose own representation of the American Jewish landscape has changed the way we think about canonical literature in the twentieth century.

professor of English at Central Connecticut State University - Aimee Pozorski

Bernard Malamud was one of the great Jewish literary icons of the twentieth century. The essays in this volume reveal an international and cross-cultural dialogue bound to illuminate both scholarly and lay readers. Victoria Aarons and Gustavo Sánchez Canales deserve our appreciation.

Raddock Family Eminent Scholar Chair in Holocaust Studies - Alan L. Berger

Bernard Malamud: A Centennial Tribute is an essential addition to Malamud scholarship. Gathering accomplished transatlantic scholars to revisit Malamud’s central role in twentieth-century Jewish-American fiction, this timely, exemplary collection freshly illuminates Malamud’s preoccupations and places his work in vivid conversation with the work of other American and European writers.

Mildred Foss Thompson Professor of English Language and Literature, the College of Wooster - Debra Shostak