The Magic Barrel Bernard Malamud (1914—1986) was born in Brooklyn，New York． In 1936，he graduated from City College （纽约市立学院）and obtained his Master's Degree from Columbia （哥伦比亚大学）in 1942．He survived and profited from the wearing experience of teaching evening high school classes in New York for nine years，from 1940 to 1949. He then taught at Oregon State University and at Bennington College in Vermont，with leaves of absence to lecture at Harvard． Unlik many of his contemportaries，Malamud's work suggests the modern human being‘s ability to affirm life （维护生灵）．A Jewish -American writer, he used his Jewish background （犹台人的历史，文化背景）, speech patterns （话语方式），and sensibility （对生活的敏感）to create the atmosphere of a world in which life matters （日常生活是重要的，有意义的） and in which the magical and even the sacred hover just above the everyday （日常生活受控于魔力抑或一种神圣的力量）. His fiction, which mixes together comedy and pathos （把喜剧与痛苦的元素相糅合），fantasy and realism （想象与现实），explores the full range of possibilities open to modern human beings （发掘现代人生活中的各种情景）: their capacity for success and failure，happiness and pain，love and hatred, and suffering and redemption （受难与赎罪）．Malamud's The Magic Barrel (1958)，a collection of short stories，won him the National Book Award （全国图书奖）in 1959．Among the subseque novels （其后发表的小说有）are The Assistant (店员，1959)，A New Life (新生活，1961)，The Fixer (基辅怨，1966)，The Tenants (房客，1971)，and God's Grace (上帝的恩惠，1982)．His other volumes of short stories are Idiots First (白痴第一，1963) and Rembrandt's Hat (拉姆布兰特的帽子，1973)． Not long ago there lived in uptown New York， in a small a...
