ROBERT GIROUX
On Bernard Malamud
"Working alone to create stories is not a bad way to live our loneliness,"
Bernard Malamud wrote not long before his death, in a characteristically
modest statement which identifies a major theme of his writing. And as a
result of his lonely work, readers have gained a body of short fiction unlike
that of any other writer. Robert Alter called these stories "products of a
unique imagination ... Only Bernard Malamud could have written them."
In his memoir "Long Work, Short Life," Malamud acknowledged: "My
writing has drawn, out of a reluctant soul, a measure of astonishment at the
nature of life." Between 1940 (when he began) and his death in 1986, he
produced some of the most original and memorable stories of his era.
He started out in the early 1940s by publishing stories in non–
commercial magazines-"meaning I didn't get paid for them but was
happy to have them published"-until in 1949
Harper's Baz aar
bought
"The Cost of Living" and his professional career was launched. In 1952, I
accepted his first novel,
Tile Nafllral,
and signed him to a two-book con–
tract, intending that his second book would be a collection of stories.
When Harcourt, Brace turned down his new book, I blurted: "I can't
believe they'd reject your stories!" and he said, "No, it's a novel,
The
Assisfallf.
Would you like to read it?" It was excellent, and Farrar, Straus
published the novel in 1957. The next year, FSG brought out
The Magic
Barrel
(as his collection was called); it won the National Book Award. Thus
began the splendid cavalcade of eight novels and four volumes of stories
that constitute his
oeuvre.
A fellow writer once called Malamud a "stern moralist." Moralist, of
course, but stern was not his style. I came to admire the character of this
gentle man more and more. As Bern's talent burgeoned, our personal rela–
tionship deepened into a close and abiding friendship. We shared many
interests, especially a love of music and (with his wife, Ann) of opera. Bern
and
I
were born not only in the same year but in the same month; in the
Depression we had both worked our way through college in New York;
and nothing was more important to each of us than the book. Once, as a
Editor's Note: Adapted from the introduction to
The Complete Stories
by Bernard
Malamud. Copyright
© 1997
by Robert Giroux. To be published
in
September
by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. AJI rights reserved.
