Ransom Center Magazine

Bernard Malamud

New collections of Bernard Malamud’s work released

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Novelist Bernard Malamud was one of the most significant Jewish American writers of the twentieth century, and this year, to honor and celebrate his life and work, The Library of America has released two collections of Malamud’s fiction: Novels and Stories of the 1940s & 50s and Novels and Stories of the 1960s. A third collection is forthcoming.

The Ransom Center is home to an important archive of Malamud’s work

Born in Brooklyn on April 26, 1914, to Russian Jewish immigrants, Malamud earned his Master’s degree from Columbia University and taught writing at Oregon State University and Bennington College. His first novel, The Natural (1952), was adapted into a film starring Robert Redford in 1984. His fourth novel, The Fixer, won both the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize in 1966. Malamud also published a total of six other novels and 65 short stories throughout his career.

Malamud’s archive includes correspondence, articles, essays, notebooks, manuscripts, interviews, and more.

"America’s Best Magazine?: Commentary in the 1960s"

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A case of materials from the Commentary magazine archive is on display in the lobby for the Morris Dickstein lecture. Photo by Alicia Dietrich.
A case of materials from the Commentary magazine archive is on display in the lobby for the Morris Dickstein lecture. Photo by Alicia Dietrich.

In conjunction with tonight’s lecture by author Morris Dickstein, an accompanying display case in the Ransom Center’s lobby features items from the Center’s Commentary magazine archive. Dickstein’s lecture, titled “America’s Best Magazine?: Commentary in the 1960s,” takes place tonight at 7 p.m. in the Prothro Theater. The Commentary magazine archive was donated to the Center in 2011.

Materials on display include a 1961 subscriber survey, a 1986 exchange of letters between Allen Ginsberg and Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, and the May 1952 issue of the magazine, which contains the first American publication of “Diary of Anne Frank.”

This program is co-sponsored by the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. The Albert and Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation made a generous donation to support this program and the cataloging of the Commentary magazine archive.

Morris Dickstein to discuss Commentary magazine

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Cover of the February 1960 issue of Commentary magazine.
Cover of the February 1960 issue of Commentary magazine.

Author Morris Dickstein presents the lecture “America’s Best Magazine?: Commentary in the 1960s” this Thursday, April 18, at 7 p.m. at the Harry Ransom Center. In 2011, Commentary magazine donated its archive to the Center, and the collection is now open for research.

Founded in November 1945, shortly after World War II, Commentary was established to reconnect assimilated American Jews and Jewish intellectuals with the broader Jewish community and to bring the ideas of young Jewish intellectuals to a wider audience.

Throughout its history, Commentary has published significant articles on historical, political, cultural, and theological issues in addition to fiction and memoirs. The magazine became a major outlet for leading figures to establish their intellectual careers. The archive spans from 1945 to 1995 and consists mainly of editorial correspondence, galleys, other records, and correspondence with a number of writers whose archives reside at the Ransom Center, including Norman Mailer, Bernard Malamud, and Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Commentary underwent a dramatic shift in 1960 under the editorship of Norman Podhoretz, who applied more rigorous critical standards and made greater use of strong-minded New York intellectuals such as Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, and Mailer. The magazine responded to all of the major controversies of the decade, from the Eichmann trial and the civil rights movement to the Vietnam War and the Columbia student uprising.

According to historian Richard Pells, Professor Emeritus at The University of Texas at Austin, “no other journal of the past half century has been so consistently influential, or so central to the major debates that have transformed the political and intellectual life of the United States.”

Dickstein is Distinguished Professor of English and Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center. His most recent book, Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression, received the Ambassador Book Award in American Studies in 2010.

The event is free, but donations are welcome. Seating is limited. Line forms upon arrival of the first patron, and doors open 30 minutes in advance.

This program is co-sponsored by the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. The Albert and Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation made a generous grant to support this program and the cataloging of the Commentary archive.

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