Malamud's life and his fiction - in A New Life

Well we do get a little bit of back story a little more than half-way through Bernard Malamud's A New Life, as the protagonist, Sy Levin, tells faculty wife Pauline about his childhood in NYC, with echoes of Malamud's own horrendous childhood (mother's insanity and suicide) - interesting and sad how Malamud pushes this material aside and into the background, too painful even for an artist to deal with directly, as the back story is not very convincingly rendered - his poverty, suffering, alcoholism, all seem as if they would not have formed the character of this timid academic - but then again, Levin becomes less timid as he becomes accustomed to the ways of his new life in the Northwest. Malamud can't write enough about the astonishing landscape and climate, and these passages, many of which begin the (long) chapters, are very well written and effective; but, fortunately, he doesn't dwell on the scenery too long. In the pivotal chapter, Levin, overcome by the beauty of the day, goes for a long walk in the forest, with binocs and bird guide (and umbrella!) in hand - and he literally crosses paths with Pauline, the wife of his colleague (and, as he surmises, his enemy). They fall into one another's arms, and thus begins a tempestuous and highly secret  affair of some months. Of course secrets are impossible in this small academic community, and the continue to take greater risks as time moves along. They declare their love for one another - but what will become of this? Nothing good for Levin, we suspect. His arch-rival, Gerald (?), is a very sinuous guy and capable of anything. Along the way, I wonder why Malamud makes so little of the Semitic aspects of his story: clearly, Levin is the only Jew or one of the only Jews in this outpost, he's an exotic (even being from New York makes him an exotic - not even clear how many realize that he's Jewish), and the two women he's had affairs with are each versions of the idealized "shiksa" - this is a theme Roth will later develop to great comic and psychological effect, but for Malamud it's a background issue at best - Levin never has, or never expresses, any thoughts about forbidden fruit, moving outside the tribe, and so forth, which will drive much of Roth's fiction (and which, curiously, must also have been a part of the torment of Malamud's life, as discussed briefly in the chronology in the Library of America edition, Novels and Stories of the 1960s).