On April 26, 1914 Bernard Malamud was born in Brooklyn New York to a Jewish family. Bernard was the older of the 2 sons of Max and Bertha Malamud. His parents emigrated from Russia early in the century. They earned a living as properties of a grocery store. (Moritz 271) .
Bernard was very adventurous as a boy, he enjoyed skating, climbing trees, and playing running games. In time he got to know many people all over the neighborhood. Being that Brooklyn had relatively no Jews, Malamud sometimes found it difficult to fit in. Bernard has jokingly quoted as saying he was "discovered at Erasmus Hall High School," where my compositions received high grades and my work appeared in the high school magazine." Bernard knew at a young age that he wanted to become a writer, although he never actually committed himself to sit down and compose writing until he was about 27 years of age. (Solotaroff 429).
After graduating high school Malamud enrolled in the College of the City of New York and, after graduating with a B.A. degree in 1936, he worked in a factory, in various stores, and as a clerk in the Census Bureau in Washington, D.C. He has written a few short stories in college, and after graduation he began to write again in his spare time. Malamud stated that "The rise of totalitarianism, the Second World War, and the satiation of the Jews in Europe helped me to come to what I wanted to say as a writer." .
As a graduate student at Columbia University, Bernard began, in 1940 to teach classes in English at Erasmus Hall Evening High School white devoting his days to writing and he continued that routine for several years after he obtained his M.A. degree in 1942. IN 1949 after a year as a teacher at Harlem Evening High School, Malamud moved with his family from Brooklyn New York to Corvallis, Oregon to join the faculty of Oregon State College as an instructor of English. He remained there until 1961, eventually becoming an associate professor.
