Malamud at Oregon State: A Digital Humanities Project

Political Influence on A New Life

We've brought you this far in our journey together. By now, you should have a good sense of approximately what Bernard Malamud walked into when he started his career with Oregon State. Of course, writing a work of fiction, Malamud was bound to use real life influences. We don't mean to infer that any characters or events in the novel hold a direct correlation to actual people or historical happenings. Rather, we offer these passages with the desire to show influences of real life, as portrayed in Malamud's fictional world. 

Within the novel, you'll find references to Henry Wallace and the Lysenko Theory, and you'll find a political atmosphere not unlike that which has been laid out for you throughout this chapter of our "Malamud at Oregon State" book. From there, it's up to you to determine just how much real life is capable of being reproduced as fiction.

Click through the different paths to read excerpts from A New Life, as well as annotations of the text in selected areas. Just look for the blue font with the note icon next to it. It'll look just like this:
​Hi, I'm an annotation! Click on me!

Well... Read away!

All passages taken from:
Malamud, Bernard. A New Life. ​New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1961. Print.

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