by Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud was born April 26, 1914, in Brooklyn, New York, and died March 18, 1986, in New York City. His parents were Russian Jews who immigrated to the United States as part of a wave of more than 2 million newcomers. Malamud attended City College of New York and Columbia University, then taught at various high schools as well as Oregon State University and Bennington College in Vermont. Despite a heavy teaching schedule, Malamud wrote three novels and award-winning short stories before producing The Fixer. His first novel, The Natural (1952; also in Literature and Its Times), draws on Arthurian legend to spin a modern fable about a baseball hero. His next novel, the critically acclaimed The Assistant (1957), features Frank Alpine, a young non-Jewish hoodlum who learns about suffering and salvation from an old Jewish grocer. Asked why he writes about Jews, Malamud said, “I know them. But...