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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Father Flaubert as the 'mensch' Malamud, March 16, 2006
This review is from: My Father Is a Book (Hardcover)
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 great appreciation for her father's struggle, a fundamentally decent man who overcame so much, to make his mark in Literature and to be a father to his family.
She is not without criticism as her father could be in her eyes insensitive to the emotional needs of her mother. But she nonetheless seems to be reconciled with him in the deepest way.
One problem of the book, at least for me, is that she does not really discuss the whole question of her father's relation to his Jewishness, to the raising of his children without real Jewish education. She does say that her father before her wedding had said to her that he wished she would have married someone Jewish. She also says that she was sent at one point to a Unitarian school, at which she did not last long But there is no indication that the whole subject of continuation of the Jewish family was central in his mind and conscience. And this paradoxically from a writer whose subjects were by and large Jewish, and for whom 'Jewishness' was so important.
But then again Malamud in his own work sees `Jewishness' and `humanity' as almost interchangeable and having their meaning in a kind of ` suffering' Frankie Alpine-like which makes the person virtuous. Perhaps it is not surprising that someone who so generalized the concept of Jewishness, did not concern himself with the transmitting of a specific set of traditions. But then too his own originally problematic Jewish family may have deterred him from wishing to enter his own children into what was so problematic for him.
Janna Malamud- Smith does not concern herself with this issue, but this has not prevented her from making a largely sympathetic portrait of a writer who did in fact `win', and have his best work become an enduring part of the American Literary canon.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
...and so much more, December 11, 2008
This review is from: My Father Is a Book (Hardcover)
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.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Unknown Side of Bernard Malamud, December 16, 2009
This review is from: My Father Is a Book (Hardcover)
Bernard Malamud is considered one of the greatest American Jewish writers as is evidenced by his having received the Pulitzer Prize for Literature as well as other awards for his masterpiece, THE FIXER. MY FATHER IS A BOOK by his daughter, Janna Malamed Smith, digresses from his literary career and instead concentrates on his personality and the private life of him as a father.
Although at times somewhat disjointed, Smith uses anecdotal format and personal letters to describe how she perceives him as a human being.
There are occasional references to his literary works that crop up and are extremely interesting. More specifically, Malamud originally wanted to be known as an America writer-hence his first novel, THE NATURAL, is a baseball story inspired by his youthful experiences in Brooklyn. Smith also mentions that when, in later life, Malamud, whose parents had direct experience with Jewish unrest in Russia, began to work on the FIXER (based on the life of Mendel Beilis), he traveled to Kiev to see how realistic his visions of Kiev and the shtetl were compared to his imagination.
There are other interesting tid bits, but most of the book deals with the trials and tribulations of the author's life. All in all, it's a pleasant, simple read that throws light on Bernard Malamud as a father, a professor and a "regular man." For anyone interested in Malamud, Smith's book serves as a supplement to the books that deal with the analyses of Malamud's short stories and novels.
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