Novelists Cheuse (The Light Possessed) and Delbanco (In the Name of Mercy) have assembled an impressive gathering of the late Malamud's essays, interviews, lectures and notes, a good number of which have never before been published. The collection reveals the author of The Natural and many other books as a dedicated craftsman and teacher, firmly connected to a larger Jewish literary tradition and animated by a deep-seated humanism and a sly wit. In addition to admirers of Malamud's fiction, this book should also be of considerable interest to aspiring writers, as Malamud is open and revealing about his own creative process, and consistently engaging in his often politicized and outspoken views on the artist's role in society. The book's biggest weakness lies in the fact that it is clearly a gathering of disparate occasional pieces, with considerable repetition. Malamud often uses the same examples to make the same point, sometimes almost quoting himself word for word. And while his comments on his own work and on the creative process are enduring, some of his comments on the cultural moment already feel dated. While readers may find themselves wishing the author himself had been given the opportunity to form these pieces into a larger whole, the collection is nevertheless filled with Malamud's distinctive and compassionate wisdom. (May)
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
This collection of interviews, speeches, lectures, notes, and essays, many of them never before published, will inspire and challenge all readers, especially those interested in the craft of writing. Winner of a Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Awards, novelist Malamud (1914-86) is best known for The Natural (1952), The Assistant (1957), and The Fixer (1966), as well as for a number of short stories. During his lifetime he revealed little of his writing process, making this collection particularly valuable. Editors Cheuse, a commentator for National Public Radio, and Delbanco, a novelist whose works include In the Name of Mercy (LJ 8/95), were colleagues and friends of Malamud at Bennington College. Their introduction and notes at the beginning of each section add biographical facts and personal anecdotes. Of particular note is Malamud's revelation of his source material and ruminations when beginning a work, permitting us to glimpse a novel or short story's birth. In the discussion of "The Writer and His Craft," he offers valuable, detailed advice for the beginning writer, stressing that hard work must accompany natural talent. Recommended especially for students of writing.-Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo
The author of such acclaimed novels as The Fixer and The Natural was intensely private about the way he worked. This collection includes speeches, interviews, lesson plans, essays, and a series of previously unpublished notes on the nature of fiction, all of which offer an intimate look at the writing life. Each section includes headnotes by the editors. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Sensible reflections on the writer's life from a modest master of postwar fiction.
While widely respected and, thanks to the popular success of The Natural (1952), more widely read than many of his contemporaries, the novelist and short-story writer Bernard Malamud (191486) has remained a somewhat enigmatic figure. As editors Cheuse (The Light Possessed, 1990. etc.) and Delbanco (In the Name of Mercy, 1995, etc.) explain in their loving commentaries, Malamud was a private man, not known for blowing his own horn. He did, however, produce a significant body of reflections on literature, the craft of writing, and his own experiences, now gathered in this agreeable volume. Malamud's best pieces explore the singularities of his formation. In a lecture at Bennington College in 1984, Malamud recollects his long apprenticeship as a high school teacher and as a professor at Oregon State University. In a Paris Review interview he covers this territory in more discursive fashion, interspersing some subtle yet striking remarks about his works. Having called his novel Pictures of Fidelman "a book about finding a vocation," Malamud wryly asks the reader to "forgive the soft impeachment." But essay-length enjoinders to young writers to "take chances" become extended clichés. Still, clichés can have their virtues, and Malamud's have the not inconsiderable virtue of integrity. This quality shines through when Malamud considers his own life experience, for instance, from the perspective of his relation to his Jewish identity. It shines as well in a pair of addresses, given when Malamud served as president of the PEN American Center, which forcefully make the case for the importance of writing as a humanistic, civilizing endeavor.
In such pieces, the quiet moral courage at the heart of Malamud's work, his stubborn devotion to the integrity of an artist's unique, individual vision, are thrown into bold relief, reminding us of how much we miss that humane, modest, intelligent voice.
