A New Life by Bernard Malamud

First published: 1961

Type of plot: Contemporary realism

Time of work: The early 1950’s

Locale: Northwestern United States

Principal Characters:

• Seymour Levin, a new English instructor at Cascadia College
• Gerald Gilley, the director of composition
• Pauline Gilley, his wife
• Orville Fairchild, the department chairman
• C. D. Fabrikant, a senior faculty member

The Novel

Seymour Levin of New York City (“formerly a drunkard”) comes to Easchester, in the northwestern state of Cascadia, to join the faculty of Cascadia College as an instructor in English. He arrives at the small town looking forward to a new life in a halcyon rural setting, but the first of many disillusionments that this bearded, onetime high school teacher experiences is his discovery that Cascadia is a science and technology school, having lost the liberal arts “shortly after the First World War” to its rival sister institution at the state capital. What is more, most of his colleagues, he is dismayed to learn, enjoy teaching composition, do not at all miss literature, and spend most of their time in such nonacademic activities as golfing, fishing, riding, and even painting houses. The action of the novel, which spans an academic year from Levin’s arrival in the fall to his forced departure the next spring, develops on two levels, the personal and the professional, which become increasingly intertwined and ultimately are indistinguishable.

The plot on the personal level focuses on an affair that Levin has with Pauline Gilley, wife of the director of composition; she previously has been involved with Levin’s predecessor and pursues Levin until he finally yields. Overcome by guilt (which manifests itself in strange postintercourse pain), Levin finally attempts to end the affair, but she persists, and when Gilley eventually learns about it, he cries to Levin that he loves Pauline and the next day writes that if Levin promises “not to see [her] again, or otherwise interfere in our lives. . . . I am willing to let you stay on for one last year.” Before Levin can reply, however, he receives a letter of termination “in the public interest, for good and sufficient cause of a moral nature” from the college president. Pauline and Levin decide to leave together, and Gilley tries to dissuade Levin, threatening to sue for divorce and demand custody of their two adopted children. She refuses to give him the youngsters, and Gilley then offers to relent if Levin vows to give up college teaching. The novel ends with Levin, Pauline (who is pregnant), and the children heading for California and what may be another start on a new life. Yet Levin is not certain, deciding that he may “call it quits” after Pauline gets her Nevada divorce. Since that “would finish the promise to Gilley,” he would return to graduate school and then try his hand again at college teaching.

The other line of action revolves around the English department, with the professional rivalries and personality differences moving toward a conflict because of the imminent retirement of the longtime chairman, Professor O. Fairchild, author of a grammar text that is in its thirteenth edition and is the centerpiece of the composition program. Gilley, the de facto second-in-command because of his role as director of composition, is an aspirant favored by the traditionalists; his primary rival is C. D. Fabrikant, a senior faculty member whose interest in horses does not prevent him from being the only active scholar in the department. Levin becomes the outspoken leader of the reluctant and sotto voce opposition to Gilley, which further alienates him from the establishment (he already is in trouble because of his antipathy to the hallowed grammar text and his slowness in grading finals, which jeopardizes the department’s record for being the first to turn in grades). The sudden death of Professor Fairchild and the appointment of Gilley as acting chairman complicates matters for Levin, who mounts his own quixotic campaign for the post. In any event, Gilley prevails, with seventeen votes to Fabrikant’s two; Levin gets none. The election defeat comes on the same day that the president, calling Levin a “frustrated Union Square radical,” dismisses him.

Seemingly a professional failure at Cascadia, Levin actually succeeds in turning the Department of English in a new direction: After thirty years, Fairchild’s grammar book is kicked out; Gilley decides to offer literature classes to those faculty members who are interested; and Fabrikant, who is asked to start a Great Books program, begins to grow whiskers.

The Characters

When thirty-year-old Seymour Levin comes to Cascadia from the East, he is fleeing the memories of a failed love affair and the suicide of his mother, crises which led to his being a drunkard for two years. Hiding behind a beard that he grew because he did not like the sight of his face, he seems to be denying his very identity, and he refers to himself at the start of the novel only as “S.” Levin. As time passes, however, emblematic of the emergence of his multifaceted personality, he becomes known as Sy, Seymour, Lev, and finally Sam. Just as his name changes, so do his roles: A romantic idealist who believes in the importance of integrity, Levin is an alien in a society of corrupt realists and, though he fails personally as a reformer, becomes the motivating force behind changes that are initiated after he is dismissed from the faculty.

Seeking friendships among his colleagues, their families, and others, Levin either is disillusioned with nearly everyone or is unable to find a basis for substantive and enduring relationships, even with the women with whom he becomes involved. The first of these is a waitress whom he steals from a Syrian graduate student and takes to a barn, but at the crucial moment the aggrieved Arab bursts in and takes their clothes. He also fails in his second venture, with colleague Avis Fliss in his office, but on his third attempt, with a student in a motel, he succeeds, though guilt quickly overcomes him, and a conflict over a final grade forecloses any future relationship. Levin’s fourth woman is Pauline Gilley; their affair begins in what he thinks is a pastoral forest, but ironically it actually is the college training site for foresters, and he gets little pleasure from the relationship. Levin, in fact, is a man whom pleasure continually eludes, for his new life—which lasts only ten months—is not much better than the one he left behind in New York, and the life upon which he embarks with Pauline and her children promises little more than responsibility. Having come almost empty-handed to Cascadia in the fall, Levin leaves town in the spring with an old Hudson full of family.

Pauline Gilley, thirty-two to his thirty, is an unhappily married woman. She and Gerald maintain a facade of a relationship for convenience and professional reasons. It even has survived Pauline’s affair with Levin’s predecessor, who also was dismissed. According to Gilley, Pauline “was born dissatisfied”—nearly “anything can throw her off balance”—and “has been keeping touch of her wrinkles and lamenting the passing of her youth” for years; though she has a variety of health problems, she resists going to a doctor. He concedes that life with Pauline can be pleasant (“she plays a good game of golf”), but Gilley concludes that it is “generally no bed of roses.” (Levin responds: “I have never slept on flowers.”) Though Gilley’s characterization of her is accurate, Pauline also is in need of love, and Gilley is an indifferent husband.

“My name’s Dr. Gilley” is how the director of composition introduces himself to Levin, but though Gilley is impressed with his own credentials, he is neither an academician nor a scholar. According to Pauline, “Nature here can be such an esthetic satisfaction that one slights others.” Indeed, Gilley fishes, hunts, attends athletic events, and takes prizewinning photographs with a consuming intensity matched only by his pursuit of the chairmanship. He is an ambitious, opportunistic politician, and having laid the groundwork, overcomes domestic problems and easily outdistances the opposition. He reaches the goal, but under a new dean—an outsider “dug up . . . from the cornfields of Iowa,” with innovative ideas—Gilley’s triumph may turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory.

Among the other characters, three members of the English department stand out. Orville Fairchild, the chairman, is determined to preserve the status quo and is proud of his economical operation of the department over the years. An elderly grammarian who is a fervent believer in the “wholesome snappy drill” in workbooks, Fairchild considers Gilley his heir apparent. C. D. Fabrikant, Harvard man, gentleman farmer, bachelor, and antifeminist, is the department liberal and scholar, but in a more enlightened venue he would not be considered much of either. Avis Fliss, who knows about everyone and everything in the department, a “unique fund of information,” is the sole unmarried woman instructor (and has an unsuccessful dalliance with Levin); Gilley’s unofficial assistant, she serves not only as his lackey but also as his spy.

Critical Context

Published in 1961, A New Life was the third of Bernard Malamud’s novels and was written while he was a member of the English department of Oregon State College in Corvallis. During his tenure there, from 1949 to 1961, he also wrote his first two novels, The Natural (1952) and The Assistant (1957), and published The Magic Barrel (1958), a collection of short stories for which he received the National Book Award in 1959.

In a 1961 article, Philip Roth concluded that Malamud had not yet “found the contemporary scene a proper backdrop for his tales of heartlessness and heartache, of suffering and regeneration.” The publication of A New Life answered this criticism, for the novel continues Malamud’s progress toward a realistic and modern fiction that begins with his second novel. In A New Life he consciously strives to create a real place and believable people; the mythic superstructure common to his earlier works still is present, but it is more muted; and while the themes are basically the same, they are developed in a new context, a larger social setting.

While welcomed as an indication of Malamud’s growth, the book also has been criticized for attempting to accomplish too much: It is a satire of American academic life, a love story, and a picaresque novel about a seriocomic antihero. In addition, Malamud gives too much information about the functioning of a college English department, dwelling on minutiae that impede the movement of the narrative and are largely unnecessary for his satiric purposes.

In sum, A New Life is important as Malamud’s first attempt at a wholly realistic novel, and it also is a notable example of a minor literary type, the academic novel. Further, in Seymour Levin he has created a memorable seeker of the American Dream who discovers that at least part of it is false illusion.

Bibliography

Astro, Richard, and Jackson J. Benson, eds. The Fiction of Bernard Malamud. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1977. Malamud was an instructor in English at Oregon State University from 1949 to 1961. This volume has been faithful to the papers as they were presented in a tribute to Malamud at a conference held at the university. Contains the opinions of several foremost American critics about Malamud’s work, interspersed with stories and anecdotes which make for lively reading. An extensive secondary bibliography is also provided.

Field, Leslie A., and Joyce W. Field, eds. Bernard Malamud: A Collection of Critical Essays. 1970. Rev. ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975. This nine-essay volume is the modest version of the original 1970 publication, which compiled twenty-one of the most important essays on Malamud’s work in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Contains an interview with Malamud based on discussions he had with the authors in 1973. Places emphasis on Malamud’s Jewish background in the context of Israel, with an essay by Sheldon Norman Grebstein entitled “Bernard Malamud and the Jewish Movement.”

Ochshorn, Kathleen. The Heart’s Essential Landscape: Bernard Malamud’s Hero. New York: Peter Lang, 1990. Chapters on each of Malamud’s novels and his short-story collections. Seeks to continue a trend in Malamud criticism that views his heroes as tending toward the mensch and away from the schlemiel. Includes a bibliography but no notes.

Richman, Sidney. Bernard Malamud. Boston: Twayne, 1966. Although limited in scope, this criticism is a valuable overview of Malamud’s work to the mid-1960’s. Gives a sensitive reading of the author’s first three novels and his first two collections of stories.

Salzberg, Joel, ed. Critical Essays on Bernard Malamud. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987. An excellent source for diverse material on Malamud’s writing; a must for Malamud scholars. Provides a strong introduction by Salzberg with much insight into Malamud’s work and his place in literature. The essays are well chosen; some are reprints, but there is a first printing of an essay by Sidney Richman entitled “Malamud’s Quarrel with God.”

Solotaroff, Robert. Bernard Malamud: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1989. Divided into a section of essays on the short stories, a section on Malamud’s view of life and art, and a final section of selections from his major critics. Provides chronology and bibliography.