Philip Davis’s book is the first full-length biography of Bernard Malamud, the Jewish American author who is so often lumped together with his other ethnic contemporaries, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth.  In this work, Davis seeks to state Malamud’s case as an author worthy of individual attention.  He suggests that he need not be considered an essentially Jewish writer but a human writer, who wrote of the universal themes of guilt, redemption and the sadness of life.  With Malamud’s reputation in decline and the omission of his work from edited collections and reading lists, Davis seeks to conduct something of a rescue mission, arguing that Malamud’s novels in particular are overlooked and merit further study.  With such an aim in mind, the book is part biography, part literary study.

Davis organises his book into four parts – or lives – that run chronologically.  In the first life, he gives the reader details of Malamud’s tragic formative years: the family’s poverty, his mother’s mental illness and subsequent suicide.  In contrast to this dark subject matter, there is some lively writing on Malamud’s school days and his voracious reading.  The next two lives balance aspects of teaching, literary publications and achievements, and further information concerning his private life, such as his brother’s death and various events in his marriage to Ann Malamud.  The final part - ‘In His Last Life’ - catalogues the author’s decline; Davis evokes sympathy for a man who was defined by his writing career, and at the end of his life was unable to write.

Reading Davis’s account of Malamud’s life and work, the reader is in no doubt of the affectionate place the writer has in the biographer’s heart despite the pair never having met.  Although Davis titles this book A Writer’s Life, some of the most affecting stories of Malamud come not from his literary life but from his generosity as a teacher.  This said, Davis does not romanticise his subject; Malamud is portrayed as a selfish and obsessive man, who put his writing above all else. 

Davis’s book represents a huge amount of research.  Given seemingly unlimited access to family, colleagues, friends, and private papers, including diaries, notebooks, and letters, Davis integrates all these sources into his analysis of the life of this writer.  However, his aim to focus on both the life and the work of the man, makes this account somewhat fragmented.  Certainly the book is part biography and part literary study but Davis does not reconcile the two components coherently.  At times, the literary analysis interrupts the flow of the book, and Malamud’s literary output is not sufficiently linked to the narrative of his life’s events to warrant the focal pairing. 

The book is perhaps two books.  I think readers of a non-literary background would be tempted to skip over the passages of close reading.  For students of literature, the depth of analysis is perhaps lacking, especially when Davis’s assertion that Malamud  deserves his place in the canon on the strength of his novels is taken into consideration.  Nevertheless, for those interested in the detail of a writer’s life or in immigrant studies, it is an engaging and informed account.