Dubin's Lives
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 First edition cover | |
| Author | Bernard Malamud |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Honi Werner[1] |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
Publication date | 1979 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 362 pp |
| ISBN | 0-374-14414-1 |
| Preceded by | Rembrandt's Hat (1973) |
| Followed by | God's Grace (1982) |
Dubin's Lives is the seventh published novel by the American writer Bernard Malamud. The title character is a biographer working on a life of D. H. Lawrence. It first appeared in hardcover from the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1979. Portions of the novel originally appeared, in somewhat different form, in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Playboy. It is still in print, Farrar, Straus and Giroux having reissued a paperback edition in 2003 with an Introduction by Thomas Mallon.[2]
Malamud began writing the novel in February 1973, and he completed it in August 1978. Parts of the novel were first published in The New Yorker and Playboy.[3]
Epigraphs
The novel begins with two quotations.
What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? – Thoreau
Give me continence and chastity, but not yet. — Augustine of Hippo
The first epigraph points to the notion that Dubin has written a biography of Thoreau and also alerts the reader to the moral complexities that the novel explores. The second connects the novel with themes of promiscuity and spiritual struggle for which Augustine is famous.
