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An Instinctive Friendship
by Chester Garrison

During my three and a half years of military service, I almost always had a buddy, which in part had something to do with survival, security, and dependency. Bern Malamud and I were never buddies; we had an instinctive friendship and were referred to as close friends, which was true. Consequently, I have been asked about him in conversations, letters, phone calls - one from as far as Italy - and even interviews - one by a Japanese scholar. I was one of four speakers at a memorial presentation for him at the MU on the OSU campus. But I have never written about him. Since I have been reviewing my Corvallis experience, I have decided to include him.      Bern was Jewish in facial feature and New York in diction. His parents were from southwest Russia; but he was American-born, New York brought up - not Fifth Avenue style - graduated from C.C.N.Y., and acquired an M.A. from Columbia. He taught English in the New York school system - mostly night classes, I believe. During World War II for awhile he worked in Washington, D.C.; because his mother was dependent on him, he was not called up for service.      In 1949 he and his wife Ann traveled West by train for him to teach at Oregon State College. She could be closer to her mother in Los Angeles, and he could experience American life away from the East Coast. Making the change in one big cultural jump - Brooklyn to Corvallis - could not be other than astonishing or alarming change and challenge. Having toured with the Army and taught my way West from New York to Ohio to Kentucky to Colorado to Oregon somewhat eased my adjustment, but not completely. I do not, however, remember ever having heard Bern indicate distress about his arrival or settling in Corvallis. Indeed, he and his family (boy and girl) adjusted very well. Once they moved East, they all considered Corvallis as their second home, and they often returned to visit.      By the time Louise and I arrived five years later, they were deeply involved socially, particularly with members of the English Department, as well as art, history, foreign languages, and chemistry. I first met him in the hall of the English Department. We must have realized immediately that we had much in common: The New York metropolitan area, Columbia University, the English writer Thomas Hardy (he wrote his M.A. thesis about Hardy's poetry, and I wrote my Ph.D. Dissertation on Hardy's epic-drama The Dynasts). But our metropolitan backgrounds put us most at ease with each other - Brooklyn and Jersey City are within view of each other as well as Manhattan.      Within a few days, the Malamuds invited us to their house for the evening. The following fall Ann spotted a house that was about to be vacated and that we moved into across the street from them. Our connection was established, and our son Peter became a friend with their daughter Jana. Our closeness continued even when they bought and moved to a house two blocks away to the point that when Bern was somewhere else, I was called in to extract a mouse whose head was stuck in the bathtub drain. My combat background indicated there was only one solution: to tug upward on the body, which went into the garbage pail, while the head went down the pipe. Even had Bern been at home, I probably would have had to serve this function. Ann, I think, had retreated to the hall and kept the curious children away. Bern was not equipped to deal with household needs. I believe I did see him cut the grass - once.      When Bern arrived at Corvallis, he had not published a book, nor anything of note otherwise. He immediately put himself on a schedule that was almost unalterable. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, he taught and had office hours. On Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, he reached his office at 9 a.m. and began to write. He sat on an upright wooden chair drawn up to a small table or desk. Sometimes to get his engine going, he would write a word or a sentence - if only at random - then the follow-up would be like toothpaste emerging from a tube under pressure. He has said that from a three-hours' work, he was lucky to get one page done.      Members of the staff on either side of him had to accustom themselves to hearing through the thin walls his voice notably raised as he tested out phrasing or dialogue to get them right. The neighbors knew that any interference would not be appreciated. From time to time they even listened and tried to make out whatever Bern could be up to. Also, he kept his door shut tight - probably locked - and his response to a perisistent knocker (raider in his opinion) was through a partially opened door. I think I remember that for a necessary communication, I once yelled through the door.      At noon, Ann usually delivered a light lunch, sometimes through the window. For early afternoon, he edited the script that Ann had typed. By midafternoon, he usually went home for a nap before dinner. Whenever he returned to visit us in Corvallis, I lent my study to him, as he became increasingly nervous from being away from his writing.      The evening was never for writing, but for reading, talking, or entertainment from parties, concerts, lectures, or movies. On one night a week, he taught on campus a course in creative writing. Bern felt that he could never really teach a person to write, but he could make a better reader of him.      He and I often exchanged babysitting. One evening when Louise and I returned from a movie, he said he had been plotting his projected novel and had decided upon the last line: "Gotcha pitcher!" When I recieved a copy of A New Life several years later, I quickly turned to the last page to discover that precise wording there.      Prior to our arrival in Corvallis, Bern - a noisy supporter at a sports event - had his first novel published: The Natural (1952), an intermingling of baseball, baseball mythology, and Arthurian mythology. This enterprising effort received affirmation from reviewers and readers. A later member of the English faculty claimed that knowing Malamud was on staff was the deciding factor for him coming to Oregon. Although I do not like baseball, I enjoyed the book because of its intricacy and imagination. In 1984, a so-so film was made of it with Robert Redford and Glenn Close.      Bern's second novel, The Assistant (1957), had a Brooklyn setting and reflected his upbringing and family. He had lived above a grocery store that his father ran on a financially slim survival. I mentioned to him that I thought the greatest accomplishment of the novel was the portrayal of his grocer-father and that the title might have been better as The Grocer rather than The Assistant. His momentary intense reaction alerted me to his annoyance. To revise the title would undermine the emphasis of the book. He gave me a sudden glance but said nothing. He may not have realized the intensity with which he dealt with the fictional grocer turned into an emotional recreation of his father that threatened the importance of the assistant.      The only time I can recall his irritating me arose from another innocently made comment. Having asked me about the horrors of my wartime experiences, he reacted to them by saying that he could never have been able to cope with combat. This was a usual well-intended cliche response, but to the veteran who had grimly endured, it suggested that the speaker viewed himself as more sensitive than the survivor - an unintended put-down. I started to react but controlled myself. I think he never sensed my annoyance, but Bern never missed much. Neither of our unintentional observations were worthy of emotional reply, but they do demonstrate that, if these were the outstanding ones, then our rapport was firmly established.      Soon after the publication of The Assistant, The Magic Barrel (1958), his first collection of short stories, appeared. Most of these are set in the New York area and are written with a controlled Jewish lilt that underscores and implements the plots and people of his imagination. For the rest of his writing career, he usually alternated novels and collections of short stories. He relaxed somewhat while writing the latter and trying to determine what he should attempt in his next novel. While writing his novels, he wrote notes to himself about possible characters, situations, and even phrasings for the short stories.      I like best "The Jew Bird," which some years later at my suggestion he read magnificently in Milam Auditorium. During that term I taught a course about Malamud's writing. When it became known that he would spend a period with the class, faculty members and students asked to attend, but I refused them all, as I had promised the class that it would have the writer for themselves.      Having some New York sense of Jewishness, I thought that I might attempt reading aloud "The Jew Bird" to one of my classes. I went along well enough until I reached the next-to-last page, which made me laugh so hard that I spoiled the overall effect. Fortunately, the class was not large enough to be in a large lecture hall. The next year I tried again, but I braced myself so determinedly as I approached the ending that I avoided a seizure.      One afternoon I was with Bern when he opened a package containing a French translation of The Assistant. Flipping through the pages slowly, he emitted an "Awk!" In the English text when three young men loiter on a street corner and discuss the whereabouts of a friend, one says, "He went up the river," which in American jargon means that a person was taken up the Hudson River to Poughkeepsie to the prison known as Sing-Sing. But the translation into French read, "He went sailing on the river." Such a mistranslation causes tremors in an author - what would be the other horrors?      The third and last novel Bern wrote in Corvallis was A New Life, an academic novel - that is, a story usually about faculty in a campus setting. He always wrote three typings of his script - the first taking the longest time and all three about three years. The only people who knew any details about the work were Bern, his wife, and his editor. Thus, I was surprised one afternoon when Bern handed me a copy of the third script of A New Life. He told me that I was not in the story and that I was not to tell anybody anything about it. I was to look for errors of any kind. I read carefully but found little to list. There were a few vocabulary inaccuracies - such as to call the drinking-water container in the hall a bubbler several times, then a fountain several times more, and finally something else. I questioned some of the commas' presence or absence, but he said that in most cases he used or didn't use them in order to maintain the rhythm he wanted for the sentence.      True, I was never suggested as being in the novel, but the Hudson automobile I drove from Colorado was. He rang one evening to ask what model of car I had driven and if I had a picture of it. I did and lent it to him. Later I mentioned to him that I thought he had become interested in my car because of its name: Hudson. In the novel, his central character (Levin, which means light) learns how to drive and then undertakes a trip to the coast for an assignation - an adventure, such as the explorer Hendrick Hudson's discovering the Hudson River and venturing into Hudson Bay in what is now Canada. The word had strong connotations. Bern listened to me but said nothing. He rarely commented on his intention, but he was very exacting and purposeful. For instance, when he wanted to know about furniture, he called me because I did so much refinishing. When he dealt with nature - particularly in A New Life - he called Larry Blaney, a botony friend, for precise wording and description. And there were others for expertise consultation.      One afternoon, when a sample copy of the jacket for A New Life arrived in the mail, I asked Bern if the coloring was intentional. Backgrounded by a gaudy flowering wallpaper, a round mirror had a frame painted with two circles - one within the other - in black and orange - O.S.C.'s colors. Suddenly seeing this unintended identification, Bern grabbed the phone to call New York to stop press. Repainted green and black, the rings lost their unwanted implications.      For A New Life, Bern unquestionably drew upon various faculty members for their mannerisms. For instance, the recognizable traits of two quite different English instructors - R.D. Brown and Spencer - were intermingled in the creation of a character: Bern told me so. R.D. either didn't want to be identified or didn't recognize his presence because I heard him say he was not in the book. In contrast, a woman in the department must have wanted to be in a novel because she proclaimed to have been the model for the departmental woman in the book, but she was the only one who thought so - no two women could have been so different. And the unique manner of speaking by a department professor was exquisitely delivered by a character whose activities were quite different from those of the actual professor, Herb Childs, who recognized his language and glumly took a sour pride in having been used. When the bookstore wrongly released the book for sale before its publication date, I quickly phoned a friend to alert him that he was recongizable in the book, but that by the end he emerged clean. The central character, Levin, is Jewish and arrives fresh from New York to an Oregon college town, but that does not make Bern the protagonist.      A few ladies in Corvallis developed annotated copies of the book of who was who and where was where. For instance, at one point in the story, an elderly man has some of the characteristics of the Liberal Arts Dean Colby; in the text he dies on a bench in a triangular park like one on Arnold Way, but the real dean lasted many years more. The readers who specified the identities were probably too factually minded to understand or enjoy the novel itself; they got their kicks from thinking that they were collecting meaningful facts. What they accomplished occasionally was to embarrass an innocent vicitim. In all this supposed scholarship, they overlooked the origin to the final statement, "I gotcha pitcher," which in life as well as in the book was used by a camera enthusiast, the department head.      One incident in the script had a different manner of entry. After having read the book, Walter Foreman asked Bern whether he — Walter — would be given credit for Levin's roadside adventure. While driving through Kansas, Walter had stopped for water from a nearby stream. A farmer on a tractor drove over to Walter, got off, and gave Walter a piece of string to hold. The other end was attached to one of the farmer's teeth. The farmer said, "Hold tight," backed away, and gave his head a jerk. To his intent and satisfaction, the tooth popped out, and the farmer drove away. Walter had told the story to Bern a while back, but Bern had no recollection of it whatsoever. Apparently, it had sunk into his memory and lost its identity but later emerged on need.      Some local readers who were disappointed in the novel claimed that Bern had written it only to get even with O.S.C. and the English department from having been neglected and misused. I have heard him say publicly that such an interpretation was absolutely untrue. Actually, all of us in the Lower Division had suffered from the policies of the Board of Higher Education and the receptiveness of the administrators right down to the department. Bern's promotion to assistant professor was eventually brought about by President Stand's intervention upon his recognition of Bern's increasing standing in the literary world. Bern certainly was critical of campus activities and policies, but to say he was "getting even" was willfully misinterpreting the intent, content, and style of the writing.      In a campus newspaper interview, Bern said about his novel, "If you can't get a laugh out of A New Life, I don't know what the hell you can get a laugh out of." The organization of the novel falls into two parts: The first is broadly amusing; the second turns serious. My interpretation of this is that the basic theme is about love; first it is shown in a series of laughable incidents, and then it motivates a couple into a complicated situation they had little control over. I told my opinion to Bern upon his asking me, and again he listened. But he didn't blow his top or look appalled or fierce, so I assume I wasn't too far off.      Bern showed me a letter he had recieved from an English department faculty member in a Midwestern university who asked, "When were you here; you have captured us perfectly?" Bern had never been there and had to look it up on a map. This statement is a credit for Bern's writing having captured what could be a representative college community.      The Malamuds left Corvallis late in August 1961. The book went on sale in the O.S.C bookstore in mid-September. Some faculty of the old guard were indignant. An elderly chairman of the history department (he kept his age secret) caught me in a hall of the old library and with venom blasted me for what Bern was not available to hear. My case was one of applied guilt by association. Also, for months I was subject to all manner of questions from acquaintances as well as from people I didn't know.      Bern, however, had become a recognized writer. He had left Corvallis because he had been invited to teach a seminar at Harvard and then move to Bennington, Vermont, to teach at Bennington College, both enviable assignments. There he remained for the rest of his academic career.      With regrets he left his Corvallis friends, but he was sufficently business minded to feel uneasy about being so far away from New York, if only because that's where publishing was and is. He would be closer to the action. Also he told me that he had used up for his purposes what Oregon had to offer and needed to be exposed to something different. But we kept in communication by innumberable letters and phone calls. They visited here, and I saw them several times in New York and Bern once at London's airport.      In August 1965 my twelve-year-old son Peter and I visited the Malamuds for a weekend at Bourme on the Cote d'Azur in southern France. With academic friends, they had rented a house high on a steep hill overlooking the Mediterranean. The house was unique in being built around a stone tower from medieval times that had been used to watch for Danish invaders. I had not known that those raiding seafaring Danes had sailed so far away from home.      That summer I was teaching in Paris, and Bern had recently returned from the Kiev area in southern Russia — where his parents had come from — to check on details he was using from books and pictures in the New York Public Library for his fourth novel, The Fixer. One detail he had to change in his script was the side of the street the streetlights were located on.      I believe Bern had been uneasy about his traveling in Russia — possibly because he was a Jew — and relieved to be in France and with family. In Moscow he had been met and shown around by members of the P.E.N., an international writers organization. I don't remember his telling details of the trip — as though he would just as well dismiss any reference to it, but then I was visiting for a very short time.      On the second day Bern beckoned to me to follow him into the room he used as a study. He pointed me to a chair, sat at his desk, and read aloud the chapter of The Fixer that he was currently revising. He had never before read to me privately, and he was trying out certain selections of prose and narrative which we discussed in detail.      Once the book was published and I was able to read it in its entirety, what I found particularly interesting was a problem he had created for himself. Much of the novel is about a prisoner in an isolated prison cell. Bern had boxed himself in. How does a writer keep his narrative going when the prisoner is so confined for so long and rarely out of his cell? I read closely to see how Bern overcame the limitations.      The title of the book, by the way, had originated in Corvallis. It was a street sign for a bicycle repair shop on Second Street, the inside of which overflowed with bicycles, bicycle parts, and the overweight proprietor. As far as I know, Bern had never entered the shop — only seen the sign from afar.      On a bright blue-sky day, we all went swimming at the nearby beach. Bern and I wandered into the calm Mediterranean up to our chests in warm water. I looked southeastward across the expanse of the sea not seeing — and not expecting to — the sparkling white sand beach that curved in a Moroccan cove in North Africa where I had waited for body-surfing waves. That first aquaintance for me with the Mediterranean had been 22 years previously, and about six weeks prior to my flying over the Mediterranean to parachute into Sicily and two months later into Salerno in Italy. Six months after that when I landed on Anzio Beachhead in Italy, the water's height at the bottom step of the lowered LCI's ladder was up to my shoulders, making me hold with one hand my pistol in the air and with the other keep the short paratrooper in front of me from drowning as a strafing German plane swept down on us. Ten years later my wife and I had bathed on the rocky shore of Capri, south of Naples. So now on the Cote d'Azur of France, I was renewing my association — getting the feel of it — with the body of water that had played so great a part in European history and that I had experiences in.      An odd pair of New Yorkish Oregonians, Bern and I stood on a comfortable mound under the slightly undulating waves to wiggle our toes in the sand and talk about literature, since we had seperated ourselves from the others so as not to be interrupted. We never did swim, and I question whether unathletic Bern even knew how. Whenever I recall the specific fragment of our conversation that lingers in my memory, I simultaneously feel the torso-high water and see an inner snapshot of our intellectualizing in the Mediterranean as if it were the custom.      In response to something I had just said, he half-turned to me without making a ripple and responded, "Chet, you're one for the book." My impression was that he had indicated either that I was unpredicatable or that he was having difficulty evaluating me as he regularly analyzed people — my measurements failed to coordinate a conclusive picture of me for him. I could only ponder over his statement, as he had caught me so unawares that I didn't ask him what he meant. At least I could have the satisfaction that my discord was more interesting than boring.      In one respect, the remark is not out of keeping with the reaction people have upon hearing that I had been a paratrooper. At our first Dartmouth class reunion after the war, for instance, Tom Braden pushed his way over to me to comment that he had trouble adjusting to the fact that the soft-spoken English major he had known had become a paratrooper — in combat, no less! I had thought that I had chosen quite logically. After having been exposed to the military, I had decided that only the best of the Army was good enough for me: the paratroops, who were young and vigorous rather than older and even arch-falled, experimental rather than traditional, and exciting — after all, I had been a swinger of birches.      Of my four dippings in the Mediterranean, the one in France was the least energetic or scaresome and the most bland. Although I can clearly summon up any one of the four of them, the fragmented detail from the last creeps on its own volition into my recall. Whatever did Bern have in mind that persists in periodically making me ponder? I don't think he was being critical. Whatever, the words bring with them the intonation of his voice — a Proustian experience.      Once when I drove Bern to the Eugene Airport to fly to New York, he asked me if I knew about the National Book Award. I didn't. The award then was relatively new and not nearly so identifiable as the Pulitzer Prize. He explained that he was going to New York to receive the award. Some years later he won it again along with the Pulitzer Prize for The Fixer.      He never mentioned to me the international Nobel Prize, but any writer of note could not help but dream about it. He never did win it. I had heard rumors that Bern should have been eligible, but I had never known that his name was actually submitted until I read in a recent New Yorker article by a member of the Nobel board that he had to no avail regularly recommended Malamud.      I suspect that the winning of the award by Saul Bellow — also a Jewish American writer — could have weakened Bern's chances at least for awhile. I was disappointed since the only Bellow's writing I like was the short novel Seize the Day. Politics — at least lobbying — could have had an effect upon the discussion that year. My older son Peter was doing graduate work at the University of Chicago, where Bellow taught and was assumed to be a candidate for the Nobel Prize. Peter was astonished by how agog the campus became with agitated faculty yearning for Bellow's winning for the reputation of the univeristy.      Bern was competitive. By that I do not mean that he would do anything to win — such as chew an opponent's ear. He could become very intense in holding a point of view, even argumentatively flooring his opponent. A polite exchange was not his style. Even his intense stare could make some insecure people uncomfortable, in thinking that they were being physically scrutinized or, even more so, mentally analyzed for Bern's possible use in creating one of his characters.      How or why he decided to become a writer, I do not know; but once he did, the effort dominated his life. He strove to write the best he was able to — not primarily to entertain or to make money. The novels and short stories did not pour out as they do with some writers. His integrity kept reign over compulsiveness and carelessness. In many ways he demonstrated that keeping control was essential. For instance, he was not a drinker, although he liked wine with dinner and occasionally had a scotch. His wariness of alcohol, I think, came from fear of its loosening intellectual control, which some people drink for. He would not like to say something that slipped out unintentionally — observant, amusing or critical. I did not find him uptight, but he wasn't casual either.      When confronted with something that he judged wrong, he took it head on. A young English instrtuctor who was an activist type inclined to demonstrate on political issues joined a group of sloppily clad protestors with placards. During a Saturday event at the stadium, they paraded antagonistic slogans in front of the audience dominated by conservative alumni. When word of the participation finally reached the English department, the head was so indignant that he called in the instructor and fired him. The instructor, in turn, was so troubled that he went to Bern at home to tell of the confrontation. Bern, determinedly representing the instructor, went to the head to emphasize the unfairness of the dismissal. I can imagine the head wilting under Bern's concentrated gaze and emphatic diction. The instructor continued to teach classes for the rest of the year but departed in June. Bern was just the right person to turn to under such circumstances. The head undoubtedly envisioned Bern as the leader of the department's "young Turks." Bern was not wishy-washy. He had values which he could and did verbalize most expeditiously.      In addition to being highly intelligent, he was highly moral. In a conversation one day, I — for whatever reason — told him how taken aback I had been by a lecture on sex that the freshmen at Dartmouth were required to attend. The speech in 1936 was far advanced in most of its details. A statement in point was that masturbation was not a sin, that it might even keep an individual out of trouble elsewhere. Bern's eyes opened wide and his head pulled back as he emphatically pronounced that the instuctor was wrong. But then his eyebrows contracted as he devised an adjustment. "It should not become a matter of habit." I had, I thought, viewed an unintended insight into his thinking process. I suspect that his first reaction was an outlet from the severe moral training Jewish boys are still subject to in preparing for Bar Mitzvah. This reaction had come from the depths of Bern's mind; but upon recognizing the severity to his reaction, he modified the traditional dictum to an updated allowance. The immediate response alerted me to the embedded moral basis of his thinking. Since many of my friends are Jewish, I have thought that I have occasionally noted a comparable glimpse of the bedrock training buried deep but ready to assert. I have never observed a comparable demonstration by my close Christian friends — even Catholics.      Neither Bern nor Ann — born a Catholic — practiced religion by going to synagogue or church. Nor can I remember ever having discussed religion with Bern. For a while, their children — like ours— attended the Unitarian Fellowship. Regardless, he never forgot his heritage; being Jewish. This identity was stone-strong and his writing reflects his outlook, which was more ingrained than merely trained.      Several years ago during a phone conversation with Paul Malamud, I surprised him by saying I had never read a critic's considering Bern a Freudian writer. Although he was not dedicated to the psychologist, he certainly was influenced by him. Bern was an adolescent and a college student when Freud was still being discovered, discussed, and taught in America. Bern read Freud and knew all about him, and his writing often included dream sequences and his conversations often had references to Freud — also Jewish.      Possibly related to Bern's interest in Freud, my one uneasiness with Bern's writing is his occasionally dealing with sexual episodes. Although they are not prolonged, to me they are self- consciously included as if he as a contemporary writer felt obligated and determined to include them. Consequently they make his style occasionally falter.      Bern read constantly. He was well aware of the contemporory fiction writers — observing what they were up to in content, style and intent. Also he had particularly read in depth the novels of the German Thomas Mann and the Russian greats. I believe he said, possibly to me, that Dostoievski had the greatest influence on him.      Most of his books that I own are first editions, sent to me by the publisher several weeks before the publication date. How agreeable to have such gifts arrive so early so as to read them before other people could. The problem, however, was that an intense Bern was anxious to get as soon as possible the opinions and reactions of the selected readers he had designated for early copies — the more detailed the better. These favored friends were on their own since they could consult no reviews, which didn't appear until after publication. Bern furthermore, could and would recognize an evasive generalization. I realized that I had to be resourceful and truthful. With trepidation, I managed to have my opinions in the mail early, even my unfavorable opinion of Dubin's Lives. I forget when or where, but he did comment publicly that I had criticized his books fairly. That was a relief for me.      And there were complications about correspondence. On a weekday afternoon — not his usual calling time — he phoned from New York. I could tell immediately from his voice that he was tense. We started the conversation with who was doing what until he said he had a question for me. "What do you do with my letters?" I answered, "I have them in my desk in a pile with an elastic band around them." His next question was, "Do you know anybody else in Corvallis who has kept my letters." I did not. Then came the explanation: He had heard that somebody had bought a collection of his letters from a San Francisco bookstore. Not knowing whose letters these were upset him, even though the receiver of letters legally owns them. Several weeks later he found out that a woman from Eugene had sold the letters after her husband — a friend of Bern's who had taught creative writing at the University of Oregon — had recently died. Situation back to normal.      Deciding that I would never want to be known for having capitalized from his correspondence, I went through it to separate the letters and cards into two piles: those that had any reference to his writings and pertinent observations or opinions and second, those that were bits of administration, arrangements for meeting, sick reports, domesticity, etc. The "penny" post cards he mostly used for the latter. I destroyed the second pile and gave the first to the OSU library, where with other Malamud material they are filed and available. When I told by phone what I had done, Ann's voice intimated that Bern would have preferred all to be saved.      A few years ago, a large collection of correspondence to Bern was deposited in the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Upon hearing of this event, I batted my eyelids a couple of times from the realization that the collection probably included a number of my letters. When I write to friends, I rarely try to overcome my atrocious spelling. So what of mine slumbers in that august library? If any scholar should quote me, will he out of kindness adjust my spelling peculiarities?      In June 1985 our younger son Ben drove us through New England. We stopped to visit the Malamuds in Bennington, Vermont. Bern had pills for a variety of ailments and moved cautiously. But he was intellectually alert and able to walk us to a nearby cemetery where we unexpectedly were shown the grave of Robert Frost.      When Bern and I hugged goodbye, I assumed I would never see him again. Unfortunately, I was right. He had retired from teaching but was still writing with difficulty. In the summer they lived in their Vermont home and in the winter in their New York apartment. There he had a stroke and died. Ann, who had been out for a luncheon engagement, found him on the floor. Bern had departed along with our instinctive friendship, but a collection of his twelve published books is not merely a reminder of him but the epitome of his life's endeavor.      All recognized writers go through a period often referred to as a trough; they drop out of attention, and the enthusiasm for their writings wanes. Both Fitzgerald and Hemmingway did until they were rediscovered in the 1950s. Melville of Moby Dick fame went into obscurity in the 1890s until a miraculous recovery in the 1920s. For many years Bern was usually evaluated among the ten best American fiction writers — sometimes among the best five.      I believe attention to Bern's works had flagged while his two Jewish American competitors, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, write on. Whether he is in the trough, I do not know, and — if so— whether he will emerge is, as always, impossible to predict. Should he, I suspect that the Jewishness of his writing style, thinking, and storytelling would be the responsible element for his endurance and even make his short stories the most read of his writing. For the first time his Collected Short Stories was published recently in 1997.

- from the OSU archives

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