Philip Davis (3) (1953–)

I greatly enjoyed BERNARD MALAMUD: A WRITER'S LIFE, Philip Davis's meticulously researched biography of a writer I discovered in college. I took only one creative writing course in grad school, and one of the texts assigned was THE MAGIC BARREL, which had only recently won the National Book Award. I was so impressed by those stories that I searched out and read everything else that Malamud had written. I loved all of his books, but A NEW LIFE quickly became (and remains) a personal favorite, probably because it concerns the academic life, which I tried on myself for several years before abandoning it for a government service career.

Davis minutely examines Malamud's early poverty-stricken origins, the son of immigrant Jews from Russia his father ran a small grocery store on the Lower East Side. His mother was institutionalized for mental illness, as was his younger brother. Yet Malamud managed, in the depths of the Depression, to get through college (CCNY) and then grad school (Columbia), finally finding a teaching position at Oregon State, a 'cow college' on the other side of the country, where he stayed for twelve years, writing the whole time, but earning almost nothing from his work. That changed after he won the NBA (his second) and the Pulitzer for THE FIXER. He later taught at Harvard and Bennington, where he stayed until retirement. In the meantime, I kept reading all of his work, several novels and four story collections. I can still remember my excitement at finding DUBIN'S LIVES in the PX bookstore in Augsburg, Germany, where I was stationed with the Army in 1978. It's a beautifully written, multi-layered novel about an aging writer's affair with a much younger woman, probably my first hint that Malamud was not all work and no play. Indeed, Davis does not shy away from discussing the author's extramarital affairs, rumored or otherwise.

The Malamud marriage had its ups and downs, but it survived. There were two children, Paul and Janna. In fact, his daughter's memoir, MY FATHER IS A BOOK, served as an important resource for Davis. (I actually enjoyed her book more than this one.)

I found it interesting that Malamud was a friend and mentor to a few lesser known writers I've read and admired - Alan Cheuse, Clark Blaise, Daniel Stern - during his Bennington years.

Philip Davis has done yeoman's work in bringing Malamud to life on these pages. Because the man was not a big personality. He was an extremely disciplined writer, dedicated to his work. His publisher, Roger Straus, when asked about a possible biography of Mamamud, laughed and said -

"I think it's ridiculous. There was nothing there; as a life it was unexciting. Saul Bellow was filet mignon, Malamud was hamburger."

Well, I'm a hamburger sort of guy. And I found Davis's biography to be a juicy treat. Malamud's peak years of popularity were probably the late sixties, my own college and grad school years. Indeed the four writers I heard the most about those years were Bellow, Roth, Malamud and Updike (the only gentile). I read all of them. Their work fed my soul and enriched my life. My thanks to Philip Davis for putting Bernard Malamud and his work all in the proper perspective, and back in the spotlight, however briefly. Very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (mehr)

This is an extremely detailed biography, which I found very interesting. The author's research is impressive. One gets to know the real Malamud. I couldn't help but feel somewhat sad after I finished the book. Malamud was so intent on being a writer that, in a sense, he missed a lot of the joy of living a full life. My one criticism of the book is that the author does devote considerable detail to analyzing Malamud's writing, such as comparing manuscript versions and analyzing why certain revisions might have been made. Some of it was so detailed that it was, to me, too tedious to read. And I have read all of Malamud's work. On the hand, there were some real nuggets in the author's probing of The Fixer, The Natural and A New Life. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in knowing the real Malamud.… (mehr)

What this book would like to be is a defence of the value of reading serious literature. To that end Philip Davis attempts to mark a distinctive “holding-ground” that is created when a reader engages attentively with a text. Within this “space”, he thinks, different types of thinking are possible and in most cases take place. Of course that might all just be a fanciful idyll if there were no connection between literature and the world at large. It happens that there is such a connection, Davis argues, and this in effect is what underwrites the value of literature and its study even in the face of recent attacks on the utility of the humanities. It is a conclusion that many readers, especially, would like to take up. Whether they should do so on the basis of this argument, however, is somewhat doubtful.

Initially it seems as though Davis wants to present us with a phenomenology of reading. But he eschews such technical and theory-laden efforts in favour of close readings of literary texts. No doubt Wordsworth’s “She dwelt amongst the untrodden ways” powerfully evokes a sense of loss in almost any reader. But how does this example, or any number of further examples, explicate Davis’ notion of a “holding-ground”. In truth it does not. Instead we have a series of plausible examples of occasions on which, as readers, we fully engage with a text, but in the end all that does is to confirm that Davis’ “holding-ground” is a metaphor. A powerful and appealing metaphor, surely, but nonetheless a metaphor. And metaphors alone will not accomplish the heavy lifting — the real philosophical work — that is required to firmly ground Davis’ further explorations of the value of reading serious literature.

In the book’s third section, Davis draws upon an insight of George Steiner’s to note that readers are “always secretly hopeful that this time this work might be the work, offering revelation.” Davis acknowledges how naive, but also irresistible, this is. Alas, I too am subject to such hopes. But this is not the book that will fulfil them. Maybe I’ll have better luck with the next one.… (mehr)