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Novels and Stories of the 1960s: A New Life / The Fixer / Pictures of Fidelman: An Exhibition / Stories
“Read now,” Philip Roth has observed, “you see that Bernard Malamud has more than a little in common with Beckett—the eerie clowning, the magic barrel of unadorned prose, the haunting melancholy of stories about ‘things you can’t get past.’ For me, as a young writer of the next generation starting out in the 1950s—and trying to lay claim to my own Jewish material—his fiction, along with Saul Bellow’s, meant the world.” With this second volume, The Library of America continues a three-volume edition celebrating the distinctive genius of one of postwar America’s most important and original writers.
In 1949, Bernard Malamud accepted a teaching position at Oregon State University and moved from his native New York City to the Pacific Northwest. His experience over the following decade deeply informed the writing of A New Life (1961), a satiric campus novel that takes aim at the insularity, backbiting, and intellectual pettiness of academia. At its center is Seymour Levin, a naive idealist whose initiation into the ivory tower leads to his entanglement in a departmental power struggle and an emotionally wrenching affair with a colleague’s wife. By turns comic and lyrical, A New Life “may still be undervalued,” writes Jonathan Lethem, “as Malamud’s funniest and most embracing novel.”
The Fixer (1966) marked a turn for Malamud into the realm of historical fiction. Set during the twilight years of czarist Russia, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman who leaves his village to find work in Kiev, only to be arrested and charged with the murder of a twelve-year-old boy, purportedly for use in a Jewish ritual. A dramatization of the infamous blood-libel accusations unleashed against Jews over centuries of European history, Malamud’s novel is also an exploration of one man’s transformation under the extreme duress of imprisonment. Malamud won his second National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Fixer in 1967.
The picaresque novel Pictures of Fidelman: An Exhibition (1969) is one of Malamud’s most exuberant creations: a series of tales about a self-described failed artist adrift in Italy. More freewheeling than much of Malamud’s other fiction, the collection shows a playfulness and a willingness to experiment that accords with the restlessness and curiosity of its hero. The ten stories from the 1960s gathered in this volume show Malamud at the height of his powers as a storyteller. Among them are the hallucinatory comedy of “The Jewbird” and the pathos of “The German Refugee” and the long story “Man in the Drawer.” As the novelist Robert Stone has said of the stories: “Like Chekhov’s, [they] are edifying in their tragic sense and delightful in their comedy, which seems to be the most we can ask of fiction.”
In 1949, Bernard Malamud accepted a teaching position at Oregon State University and moved from his native New York City to the Pacific Northwest. His experience over the following decade deeply informed the writing of A New Life (1961), a satiric campus novel that takes aim at the insularity, backbiting, and intellectual pettiness of academia. At its center is Seymour Levin, a naive idealist whose initiation into the ivory tower leads to his entanglement in a departmental power struggle and an emotionally wrenching affair with a colleague’s wife. By turns comic and lyrical, A New Life “may still be undervalued,” writes Jonathan Lethem, “as Malamud’s funniest and most embracing novel.”
The Fixer (1966) marked a turn for Malamud into the realm of historical fiction. Set during the twilight years of czarist Russia, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman who leaves his village to find work in Kiev, only to be arrested and charged with the murder of a twelve-year-old boy, purportedly for use in a Jewish ritual. A dramatization of the infamous blood-libel accusations unleashed against Jews over centuries of European history, Malamud’s novel is also an exploration of one man’s transformation under the extreme duress of imprisonment. Malamud won his second National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Fixer in 1967.
The picaresque novel Pictures of Fidelman: An Exhibition (1969) is one of Malamud’s most exuberant creations: a series of tales about a self-described failed artist adrift in Italy. More freewheeling than much of Malamud’s other fiction, the collection shows a playfulness and a willingness to experiment that accords with the restlessness and curiosity of its hero. The ten stories from the 1960s gathered in this volume show Malamud at the height of his powers as a storyteller. Among them are the hallucinatory comedy of “The Jewbird” and the pathos of “The German Refugee” and the long story “Man in the Drawer.” As the novelist Robert Stone has said of the stories: “Like Chekhov’s, [they] are edifying in their tragic sense and delightful in their comedy, which seems to be the most we can ask of fiction.”
916 pages, Hardcover
First published February 27, 2014
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About the author
Bernard Malamud
159 books488 followersBernard Malamud was an American novelist and short story writer. Along with Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, Norman Mailer and Philip Roth, he was one of the best known American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel, The Natural, was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford. His 1966 novel The Fixer (also filmed), about antisemitism in the Russian Empire, won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 28, 2022
3 Novels and 10 Stories in this volume. What strikes me especially : the endings 🤭, never quite what one might have expected.
1. "A New Life" 3.5⭐(Novel)
2. "The Fixer" 4⭐ (My favorite of the novels. And I've written a separate review on that one.)
3. "Pictures of Fidelman" (Last Mohican 3⭐, Still Life - imho, not really star worthy, little to redeem , ugly, started to read the 3rd and dumped it)
The Stories 3.5⭐ were really not bad at all. I'm glad that I did not allow the 3rd novel, Fidelman to dissuade me from reading the rest of Malamud's work in the volume.
1. "A New Life" 3.5⭐(Novel)
2. "The Fixer" 4⭐ (My favorite of the novels. And I've written a separate review on that one.)
3. "Pictures of Fidelman" (Last Mohican 3⭐, Still Life - imho, not really star worthy, little to redeem , ugly, started to read the 3rd and dumped it)
The Stories 3.5⭐ were really not bad at all. I'm glad that I did not allow the 3rd novel, Fidelman to dissuade me from reading the rest of Malamud's work in the volume.
August 20, 2019
These stories here are better than the ones included in the previous Library of America volume. I really enjoyed A New Life, and The Fixer is a masterpiece of Jewish persecution and perseverance.
February 13, 2022
Have read the Ten Stories at the end of the volume—some terrific, others decent, all well crafted.
Starting A New Life, one of the novels collected here. Campus novel…
Starting A New Life, one of the novels collected here. Campus novel…
April 3, 2025
3 novels:
***** A New Life (novel)
***** The Fixer (novel)
***** Pictures of Fidelman: An Exhibition (novel/story cycle)
***** 10 Stories:
***** A New Life (novel)
***** The Fixer (novel)
***** Pictures of Fidelman: An Exhibition (novel/story cycle)
Last Mohican
Still Life
Naked Nude
A Pimp’s Revenge
Pictures of the Artist
Glass Blower of Venice
***** 10 Stories:
Idiots First
Suppose a Wedding
The Jewbird
Life Is Better than Death
Black Is My Favorite Color
The German Refugee
A Choice of Profession
Man in the Drawer
My Son the Murderer
An Exorcism
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews