Magic Barrel, The

Description: In this collection of stories Malamud displays his great gifts as a writer - his humour, his profound concern for all human life and his ability to transmute common things and people into a strange poetry. Many of his characters are Jewish (the title story, for example, is about a rabbinical student trying to find a wife through a very peculiar marriage broker) but through his gentle and haunting exploration of their predicaments he illuminates a region that is common to every man's world.

Review: "No crude summary can convey the subtleties of these stories, in which the paradox of guilt and happiness, the irony of good intentions and all human struggles against suffering are suggested sometimes by a single poetic image, a juxtaposition of gross trivialities with romantic and mystical thoughts... He is not only an original but a passionately honest writer" * Times Literary Supplement * "His is a master of an alchemy whereby the grossest reality is converted to the most imaginative uses. He transcribes everyday life and yet the result glows with lights never seen on land or sea." * New York Herald Tribune * "There are thirteen stoires in The Magic Barrel and every one of them is a small, highly individualized work of art. This is the kind of book that calls for not admiration but gratitude" * Chicago Tribune * "Funny and tragic and true to humanity" * New York Times * "Is he an American Master? Of course, he not only wrote in the American language, he augmented it with fresh plasticity, he shaped our English into startling new configurations." -- Cynthia Ozick





Author Biography: Bernard Malamud, one of America's most important novelists and short-story writers, was born in Brooklyn in 1914. He took his B.A. degree at the City College of New York and his M.A. at Colombia University. From 1940 to 1949 he taught in various New York schools, and then joined the staff of Oregon State University, where he stayed until 1961. Thereafter, he taught at Bennington State College, Vermont. His remarkable, and uncharacteristic first novel, The Natural, appeared in 1952. Malamud received international acclaim with the publication of The Assistant (1957, winner of the Rosenthal Award and the Daroff Memorial Award). His other works include The Magic Barrel (1958, winner of the National Book Award), Idiots First (1963, short stories), The Fixer (1966, winner of a second National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize), Pictures of Fidelman (1969), The Tenants (1971), Rembrandt's Hat (1973, short stories), Dubin's Lives (1979) and God's Grace (1982). Bernard Malamud was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, USA, in 1964, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1967, and won a major Italian award, the Premio Mondello, in 1985. Benard Malamud died in 1986.

'The experience of reading The Magic Barrel was akin to a rite of initiation... The stories settled swiftly and deeply into my consciousness; now that I have read them, I cannot believe there was ever a time I had not' Jhumpa Lahiri