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In the days when American Jewish fiction was at the high-water mark of literary prestige, Bernard Malamud was universally acknowledged as one of its three leading figures (the other two being Saul Bellow and Philip Roth). From the mid-1950’s through the late 60’s, he was considered a master of the American short story, and taken with the utmost seriousness as a novelist. He received every major literary award in the United States, and achieved significant commercial success with his 1966 Pulitzer-prize-winning bestseller, The Fixer. Four decades later, however, Malamud’s name is “fading, his readership and literary standing in danger of decline.” These are the words of Philip Davis, whose Bernard Malamud: A Writer’s Life* is the first full-scale biography of, in Davis’s estimation, a “major writer of the 20th century.” Davis is a sensitive and intelligent researcher, and his book is a valiant effort at reclamation; but he does not answer the central issue he raises: why would the work of a major writer be at such risk of disappearing?

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