Bernard Malamud, 1914-1986 Bernard Malamud was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants. He grew up in humble circumstances, learning to love literature and the ‘National Pastime,’ baseball, especially as played by his home team, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Malamud attended the City College of New York and Columbia University. After earning his M.A., he worked as a night school teacher and later as an adjunct professor of composition, writing in his free time. In 1952, he published his first novel – The Natural.

Literary Career & Reputation Malamud, at center, pictured with four other leading Jewish novelists of the 20th Century: Franz Kafka, Grace Paley, Philip Roth, and Saul Bellow Though Malamud is most famous for The Natural, a book that avoids Jewish content or themes, his most highly regarded work describes the Jewish-American immigrant experience in the early to mid-20th century. His novels The Assistant (1957), about a Jewish Brooklyn grocer who takes in a dubious Italian-American assistant, and The Fixer (1967), about anti-Semitism in Tsarist Russia, are seminal works in the development of a Jewish-American literary tradition, whose most important writers are Malamud, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth.

The Assistant Malamud's second novel, The Assistant was published in 1957. The novel manages to evoke the tradition of Yiddish folklore while maintaining Malamud's training in classic literature and philosophy.  Malamud always objected to being called a "Jewish writer," because he has found the term too limiting. Malamud's main premise as a writer, as he explains, was "to keep civilization from destroying itself". As such, he worked for humanism—and against nihilism".

Cont. The Assistant(1957) is Bernard Malamud’ssecond novel. Set in a working-class neighborhood of Brooklyn, Newyork it explores the situation of first- and second-generation Americans in the early 1950s, as experienced by three main characters and the relationships betweenthem: an aging Jewish Refugee from  Tsarist Russia who owns and operates a failing small grocery store,

Cont… A young Italian American drifter trying to overcome a bad start in life by becoming the grocer's assistant, and the grocer's daughter, who becomes romantically involved with her father's assistant despite parental objections and misgivings of her own. It was adapted into a movie in 1997.

Major Characters Morris Bober: The protagonist of the novel. Morris Bober runs the grocery that is central to the novel and is the character who represents the heart of the novel. Morris is an honest, thoughtful compassionate man who serves other people even though the world constantly delivers bad luck to him. His character is held up as the model of morality and it is what Frank Alpine attempts to emulate. In a community characterized by social and economic troubles, Morris stands as a bedrock of moral support. His store provides the milk and bread that nourishes the community, just as his ethics help to treat all people in a humane manner.

Ida Bober  -   The wife of Morris Bober and the mother of Helen Bober. Ida is a slightly worrisome older Jewish woman, but she is a good person who appears to have a good soul. Ida worries most about Frank Alpine, a gentile, becoming involved with her daughter. Her bias toward her ethnicity is such that she weeps upon finding out that Helen actually kissed Frank. Still, although Ida views Frank suspiciously throughout the novel, she is not unkind to him. Like Morris, she does not consider Frank a bad man for taking milk and bread because he was starving. Additionally, although she would like him to leave, she also pays him more money because she feels that it is only fair given their increased profits.

Helen Bober  -   The daughter of Ida and Morris Bober. Helen bears a classical name and in many ways appears to be a classical character. She lacks the Yiddish dialect of her parents and speaks in educated English. She longs to read and become a great scholar and learn the classics, but her limited access to college makes her very frustrated. For this reason, Helen becomes a dreamer who does not always perceive people and situations correctly. For example, she initially fails to perceive that Nat Pearl is not seriously interested in her, which later crushes her after she has sex with him. Next, she places her own perceptions of Frank upon him, thereby not entirely reading his character correctly. Helen undergoes a character development of her own that mirrors Frank's in some ways, making her a more realized creature at the end of the novel.

Frank Alpine The stranger who appears in the Bobers' neighborhood and eventually takes over their grocery. Frank Alpine's struggle to control his self and his character is the driving conflict of the novel. Frank is torn between his tendency to do bad and his desire to do good. He idolizes Saint Francis of Assisi as a model of good, yet even while he fantasizes of being like the Saint he continues to steal from the grocery. Frank initially appears to be the assistant to Morris's techniques of running the grocery, but in truth becomes an assistant to his way of life. By the end of the novel, Frank will have fully come to embrace Morris's ethical system.

Thank You