World No Longer Graced With Bernard Malamud

The morning after Bernard Malamud’s passing, I took the news standing up.

I was in the shower listening to National Public Radio, source of all my early morning shock and surprises, when the announcer told me of his death in New York City at the age of 71, the previous day. It was not something I was prepared for. The old punch line, “I didn’t even know he was sick” crossed my mind again and again. Malamud had been a part of my life for so long; through such varied and marvelous times. It is hard to imagine life without the anticipation of another of his brashly inventive stories or novels.

I was already 20 when I first discovered Bernard Malamud in a seminar conducted by Abe Ravitz at Cal State Dominguez Hills. The stories, “Jewbird,” “Black is My Favorite Color,” etc., came first. After being mesmerized by their mirthful sorrow and wry, Judaic angst I moved to the early novels, “A New Life,” “The Natural,” “The Assistant,” and beyond until, amoeba-like, I had absorbed his oeuvre.

There was a special shelf for these books in my library. I scrounged second-hand bookstores, and purchased, when I could, special editions, signed or unsigned. When I traveled I brought home copies of “The Magic Barrel” and “Idiots First” in foreign languages; cheap Penguin paperbacks unavailable in the United States. Once, a friend presented me with a first edition with a signed page tipped in. I coveted the inscribed volume of another.

As is not uncommon with lovers of particular authors and books, I have lost track of the moment when these works became a part of me, or I of them. I came to believe that somewhere in each of them something was said about who I was. I gave these books away to friends, and potential friends, as if to say, “Here. If you read closely, you may see a better part of who I am.” Strange, how those people who liked the stories best liked me as well.

I must have given a dozen or more copies of “The Assistant” away to girls I wished to know; a token of affection, a wooing, a courtship display in lieu of feathers.

It was Malamud who, along with Phillip Roth, awed me with his ability to write convincing, straightforward prose that had the power to create from nothing, and the lightness to soar. He seemed to take lightly his ability to work such magic with words. On paper it all looked so easy. Could I (a younger man mused) ever hope to match such mentors?

It is sad and ironic that the day Mr. Malamud’s death was announced to the world was Phillip Roth’s birthday.

I will not eagerly wake tomorrow into a world that is no longer graced with the sensitivity and wit of Bernard Malamud.

SEAN McDANIEL

Los Angeles