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    A Study Guide for Bernard Malamud's "Idiots First"
    A Study Guide for Bernard Malamud's "Idiots First"
    A Study Guide for Bernard Malamud's "Idiots First"
    Ebook40 pages28 minutes

    A Study Guide for Bernard Malamud's "Idiots First"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Bernard Malamud's "Idiots First," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJul 27, 2016
    ISBN9781535825566
    A Study Guide for Bernard Malamud's "Idiots First"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Bernard Malamud's "Idiots First" - Gale

      13

      Idiots First

      Bernard Malamud

      1961

      Introduction

      Bernard Malamud, a Pulitzer Prize–winning short-story writer and novelist, is the author of Idiots First, a story first published in Commentary magazine in December 1961. It was then the lead story in Malamud's 1963 collection also titled Idiots First. Idiots First depicts the plight of Mendel, a poor widower who has struggled with life for years and is now facing death, personified by a bearded man named Ginzburg who pursues him. Before he dies, Mendel wants to scrape together enough money to ensure that his mentally disabled son, Isaac, can take a train from New York to California to find a home with a relative.

      Idiots First is in many ways representative of the author's work. Malamud, a Jewish American, is best known for capturing the pathos of the Jewish experience, often in fable-like stories and novels that have pronounced allegorical and mythological elements. That he would personify death in his depiction of his character's struggle with life is characteristic of his creative vision. Idiots First is available in A Malamud Reader, published in 1967, and online at the Southeast Missouri State University website at http://cstl-cla.semo.edu/hhecht/Readings/Idiots%20First.htm.

      Author Biography

      Malamud was born on April 26, 1914, in Brooklyn, New York, the elder of the two sons of Russian Jewish immigrants. His father, Max, was a grocer; Malamud's schizophrenic mother, Bertha, also worked in the family grocery store before dying—probably by her own hand—when Malamud was in his teens. Malamud remembered his parents as gentle, kindly people who managed to make a living but remained relatively poor. He also remembered the cultural deprivation of his early life. The family owned no books or records; they did not even have any pictures on the walls. Only after Malamud became ill when he was nine years old did his father procure any books for him: a twenty-volume set titled The Book of Knowledge.

      As a child, Malamud entertained himself by going to the movies; he especially enjoyed Charlie Chaplin films. He also read dime novels (that is, sensationalized mass-market fiction) and watched the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team at Ebbets Field. Occasionally, the family saw a play in the Yiddish theater, where relatives were actors. It was not until Malamud was in high school that his father bought a radio. He told an interviewer for the Paris Review:

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