My Father Is a Book: A Memoir of Bernard Malamud

by Janna Malamud Smith

Book Overview

Bernard Malamud was one of the most accomplished American novelists of the postwar years. From the Pulitzer Prize winner The Fixer as well as The Assistant, named one of the best "100 All-Time Novels"... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618691669
• ISBN13: 9780618691661
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Former student

I've not read this book. And based on the reviews, I'm not sure I'd like to. Why is there a need for confessionals of infidelities and bad behavior in public? I am former student of Mr. Malamud's at Bennington College. He was my thesis advisor and my mentor. He read my fiction (I am a published novelist), he took me out to dinner, he came to my house for dinner, he came to my wedding, he wrote me letters. Mrs. Malamud was warm and charming. I even knew Mrs. Fidelman. But, what more could you ask of a teacher? He was a wonderful man, a wonderful teacher, a wonderful companion. An honor to have known him.

...and so much more

In this intelligent, sensitive memoir, Janna Malamud Smith makes a valiant attempt to reveal to us, and I believe to herself, the man who transformed an impovershed and tragic childhood, as well as deep insecurities and persistent demons into some of the greatest American fiction of the twentieth century. Bernard Malamud (The Fixer, The Magic Barrel, The Assistant) seems to have been a difficult man for the world to know, but no more so than he was for his adoring daughter, Janna. At times, Smith seems a bit tentative in her efforts, but for me this only gives more substance and poignancy to the story she shares with us, and serves to better emphasize the complexity of her relationship with her father, and his with the world. In an interview, Janna explains the 20 years she took before writing this memoir, saying, "I needed that privacy to figure out who I was. I needed to learn how to write before I wrote about him. I needed some distance." It was time well-spent, for while the movement of this book is generally forward, Janna skillfully, touchingly takes us back-and-forth in time to shed fresh light on old shadows. There are no epiphanies or shocking revelations to report (well, perhaps one or two, depending on your definition), just the analyses and personal ruminations on a very interesting, sad, successful, troubled and ultimately unforgettable man and artist. Janna is a practicing psychotherapist, and earlier wrote a book titled, "Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life," which may seem to contradict her decision to write this exceedingly personal memoir. She explains by saying, "Writing a memoir, you're still in control." And yet, courageously, she seems not to have left much private, for which we should all be grateful. Janna also stated the importance of writing this book while her mother was still living, explaining, "I needed her to tell me where I was wrong." As is true of any family's story, there is so much in this book that could only have happened to them, but as in the great fiction her father wrote, the themes are universal, and therefore of great value to us all.

Father Flaubert as the 'mensch' Malamud

Famous parents pass on to their children a difficult legacy. No matter what the children do they will rarely come up to the parent. Wherever they go they are identified as ` the child of', rather than for themselves. One natural and frequent outcome of all of this is tremendous resentment. This may result in a critical tell the dirty- secrets biography. American literature has an abundance of these including those by children of for instance, Hemingway, and Salinger. Janna Malamud Smith , Bernard Malamud's daughter and now biographer is wiser than this. She has said in interviews that it took her a long time before she could write this book, and one reason for this no doubt is that she had to establish enough confidence and faith in herself in order to present a balanced, humane and fair picture. Old enough and wise enough to deal with her own demons and resentments she could write a fundamentally understanding, sympathetic biography of a not easy, but deeply caring father. As she tells it her father was beset by demons all his life. Two close members of his family suffered from mental illness. He last saw his mother at the age of fifteen at the asylum where she may have taken her own life. His brother Eugene who he tried to help also suffered from mental illness. Malamud had to make his struggle to make his second family alright, and perhaps even more to establish his way in the world of literature. The most conscienscious of craftman, the American- Jewish Flaubert, the decent family man of the Hart- Schaffner- Marx, Bellow- Malamud - Roth trio of American- Jewish writers who came to the fore in the fifties and sixties, Malamud worked at his art with a concentrated dedication that raised no small resentment in the family. His daughter poignantly describes him standing before the mirror and shouting to himself in the early days when he was teaching at the University of Oregon,, " I am going to win. I am going to win." For the children this meant that Malamud was in some ways a `book'. i.e. The title of this biography is taken in parallel from the great opening sentence of Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying." ("Mother is a fish") The book `Malamud' was so absorbed in his own literary matters that at times it became difficult to see how much he truly cared for the family. Malamud- Smith in a previous book had argued for the importance of protecting the `privacy' of certain lives. Paradoxically in this biography she tells the family- secret, that darkens the image of Malamud faithful husband and family man. She tells of how in the loose and permissive atmosphere of Bennington College where Malamud taught, he began and conducted a long affair with a student of his. She wrote of this affair only after receiving her mother's permission to do so. And her mother who had a compensatory affair of her own told the NY Times Dinitia Smith that despite this in thinking of the years of their marriage together they had ` a very strong bond'. Smith- Malamud shows a