研究発表 Hamilton: An American Musicalのプロソディと登場人物の特質 発表者 湊圭史(同志社女子大学) 司 会 古木圭子(京都学園大学)
講演 (日本ソール・ベロー協会・関西英語英米文学会との共催) “Bernard Malamud: life and fiction” 講師:Ms. Janna Malamud Smith(作家、サイコセラピスト、Harvard Medical School講師) 〈ピューリッツア賞作家Bernard Malamud (1914-86) の長女〉 司会:勝井伸子(奈良県立医科大学)
About the Lecturer Ms. Janna Malamud Smith was born in 1952 as a daughter of Bernard Malamud, Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction in 1967. She is a writer and a psychotherapist teaching at Harvard Medical School. She has lectured widely, and has published nationally and internationally – including in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, and The American Scholar. She is the author of four books. The first two, Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life (1997) and A Potent Spell: Mother Love and the Power of Fear. (2003) were chosen as “ Notable Books” by The New York Times Sunday Book Review. Her third, “My Father is a book: A Memoir of Barnard Malamud.” (2006) was selected as a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Two of her essays appear in Best American Essays. Her most recent book is An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make their way to Mastery (2013). She is currently writing a book about fishermen on an island off the coast of Maine.
Synopsis of the Lecture In a 1975 interview in the Paris Review, Bernard Malamud noted, “There are people, who always want to make you a character in your stories and want you to confirm it. Of course there’s some truth to it: Every character you invent takes his essence from you; therefore you’re in them as Flaubert was in Emma—but, peace to him, you are not those you imagine. They are your fictions.” While this statement about the “fictiveness” of fiction is obviously true, it is also cagey. Like many writers and artists of all disciplines, my father did not want to be pinned down. He needed an expansive territory in which to create, and literal knowledge about him felt to him like a barbed wire fence that impeded his freedom. When he took audience questions after public readings, he resisted any that asked him to explain even small details in his stories or novels. Sometimes his responses were sharp enough to embarrass the unlucky questioner. But his point was clear. He insisted that his readers work out meanings for themselves. So too, he adamantly refused to confirm any links between his stories and his lived experience. His memories were his treasure chest, their sole purpose was to support his work. I find it easy to understand his insistence on mystery. Yet, his family knew – and after he died, the journals and letters he left made clear – that much of his best writing was deeply autobiographical – both psychologically and literally. This lecture will explore of his secrecy, and comment on some biographical experiences undergirding his texts, particularly in his novels The Assistant, A New Life and Dubin’s Lives.