More Malamud 8-16

I did more research on Bernard Malamud. I am curious about those writers who were known. I am not sure if I think of them as a cautionary tale or not. There is this thought that nags me about fashion obscuring profitable examples. 

There is an Unofficial Bernard Malamud Home Page. You will find an outline of all the characters in his fiction and a bibliography of criticism and links to external works and eulogies from Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. Probably not the most up to date information but a place to start.

The Modern Novel site has a thumbnail biography and a bibliography.

The Guardian's Book Blog published Bring back Bernard Malamud back in 2008:

Philip Davis's excellent biography of Malamud came out late last year, received admirable notices and, most importantly, made you ravenous to read the writer's books. When I asked him why he thought Malamud had been shunted into the literary shadowlands, I got the impression that Davis could write a book-length thesis on the subject. But with restraint he boiled it down to three areas: a perceived whiff of old-fashioned morality, a surfeit of emotion and lack of drama.

Davis is of course right on these matters, but having read The Fixer I believe that any current writer would kill to have constructed such a timeless, unforgettable novel. Malamud's themes, his passions and his style do not come across as old fashioned: on the contrary, they seem fresh and alive. A story like Jewbird, featuring a talking crow that inveigles his way into a family home, could sit comfortably, even grandly, alongside anyone from Jonathan Safran Foer to Nathan Englander. The problem, I think, cuts deeper than that: the fact is Malamud isn't cool enough.

Richard Yates's literary resurrection came through writers' recommendations and a pretty good biography. The image of him drinking himself half to death, still smoking while carrying an oxygen tank around with him, is perhaps the one that we like to see of our hard-living writers. Malamud was never so ostentatious - and neither were his characters. It's this lack of show, this subtlety which marks him apart from Bellow and Roth, the writers he should be considered alongside. Their bombast, their fiery prose and brimming sentences, shout importance, whereas Malamud's whisper, patiently and intently.

 sch