Isaac Bashevis Singer Research Articles

Isaac Bashevis Singer: The Interview as Fictional Genre

Isaac Bashevis Singer has devised and experimented with a rather large number of strategies both to undermine the fictiveness of his ostensibly fictional writings and to suggest that his nonfictional writings might best be apprehended as near-fictions. There is, moreover, a general movement in his work from the less to the more radically experimental. Accordingly, it is not surprising that Singer would at last attempt to fictionalize a type of writing the entire raison d't in addition to these, I have located another twenty-six. They appear in scholarly journals (Criticism, Diacritics, and this journal, to name just three), little magazines (The Handle, Nimrod), mass-circulation glossies

The Hidden Isaac Bashevis Singer: Lost in America and the Problem of Veracity

La verite autobiographique dans L. in A. et le double public de S. Note sur cette edition illustree.

Fiction as Reportage: Recurrent Narrative Situations in the Works of Isaac Bashevis Singer

Fiction as Reportage: Recurrent Narrative Situations in the Works of Isaac Bashevis Singer

The Physician as an Educated Person

To the Editor.— Dr Rhoads' article (1982;247:2671), which stressed the need for physicians to be first of all educated men, has prompted me to start daily slide review sessions with some recitation or presentation from the humanities. In this way, our student volunteers and residents might become alerted to Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Dante, and others whom they might have missed on their way through the medical education process.

Hens to Roosters: Isaac Bashevis Singer's Female Species

Hens to Roosters: Isaac Bashevis Singer's Female Species

Teaching the Other Self: The Writer's First Reader

We command our students to write for others, but writers report they write for themselves. write for me, says Edward Albee. audience of me. Teachers of composition make a serious mistake if they consider such statements a matter of artistic ego alone. The testimony of writers that they write for themselves opens a window on an important part of the writing process. If we look through that window we increase our understanding of the process become more effective teachers of writing. am my own first reader, says Isaac Bashevis Singer. Writers write for themselves not for their readers, declares Rebecca West, and that art has nothing to do with communication between person person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind. think the audience an artist imagines, states Vladimir Nabakov, he imagines that sort of thing, is a room filled with people wearing his own mask. Edmund Blunden adds, don't think I have ever written for anybody except the other in one's self. The act of writing might be described as a conversation between two workmen muttering to each other at the workbench. The self speaks, the other self listens responds. The self proposes, the other self considers. The self makes, the other self evaluates. The two selves collaborate: a problem is spotted, discussed, defined; solutions are proposed, rejected, suggested, attempted, tested, discarded, accepted. This process is described in that fine German novel, The German Lesson, by Siegfried Lenz (Hamburg, Germany: Hoffman Und Campe Verlag, 1968; New York: Hill Wang, 1971), when the narrator in the novel watches the painter Nansen at work. And, as always when he was at work, he was talking. He didn't talk to himself, he talked to someone by the name of Balthasar, who stood beside him, his Balthasar, who only he could see hear, with whom he chatted argued whom he sometimes jabbed with his elbow, so hard that even we, who couldn't see any Balthasar, would sud-

The Dream Turned "Daymare": Barry Beckham's Runner Mack

The 1973 National Book Award for Fiction produced what Eric Pace, writing in The New York Times Book Review, called curious case. After a protracted period of stock-taking and vote-shifting, the Award ended up being split between John Barth, for his novella sequence, Chimera, and John Williams, for his novel, Augustus.2 The Award deliberations were hard on ethnic writers; not a few experts had anticipated that Isaac Bashevis Singer's Enemies, A Love Story or Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo would come away with the prize. A second Black-authored novel, Barry Beckham's Runner Mack, received a 1973 NBA nomination, but the book was not generally acknowledged to be among the year's top contenders and virtually no scholarly attention has been paid to the novel since the first reviewers gave it richly deserved plaudits. The remarks that follow are intended to suggest the magnitude of this neglect and to bring Runner Mack into critical focus.

The Brothers Singer: More Similarities than Differences

The phenomenon of two novelists in the same family is hardly a rarity. Yet the list of distinguished literary siblings is not a long one, and seldom do critics rank them equally.' Many discriminating readers do insist, however, that the Brothers Singer merit equal or near-equal literary respect. recent years Isaac Bashevis Singer has overshadowed other modern Yiddish writers, including his older brother. But among those championing the merits of Israel Joshua Singer (1893-1944), the most vocal advocate has been Isaac Singer. In my humble opinion, he states, I. J. Singer is a storyteller with few peers in recent fiction, and his power in constructing the novel is still a source of enjoyment and learning for many lovers of literature.'2 If these claims are true, why is Joshua Singer so little read today? The reasons are both commercial and literary. Unlike Isaac Singer, Joshua is not a weaver of satanic paradoxes. Influenced by the demanding humanism of Tolstoy and Chekhov, Stendhal and Flaubert, he is a realistic observer skeptical of modern man's social and moral tendencies. He deflates most aspects of life, including Jewish life. His kind of unflinching realism, however, has lost its luster in the past four decades. Today readers generally lack patience or empathy with the traditional novel-or with writers who adhere to earlier principles of structure and style. Publishers, sensitive to cultural or at least book-buying trends, dismiss Joshua Singer as an old-fashioned storyteller. Even critics who rate his fiction highly attribute his declining

A Conversation with Isaac Bashevis Singer

IBS: Yes. Then it was not like today. There was a spirit of freedom; there was no fear. The streets were full of life. I walked a lot, I felt the spirit of freedom. I was sorry that Yiddish was neglected and I didn't like the idea that almost all the people whom I met were Communists, but the city in itself was very exciting. And of course I was young, I got over my depres sion, I got a few women. Although I was poor it never bothered me . . . And also I went to the library and I could read. I liked to go on the Fifth Avenue bus which had an upper floor, just to sit there and look at the city or even take a trip on the El from the Battery over Third Avenue to the Bronx. Then there was the El that went all over the city, Sixth Avenue. To sit there in an old train and look out and see New York was a great event. Or to take the ferry for a nickel and go to Staten Island, all these things for a poor man who has nothing, were big events. For five cents I made a trip on the Atlantic Ocean.

The impact of children's books: cases and concepts (Part 1)

This article was originally presented at the Fourth Symposium of the International Research Society for Children's Literature at Exeter University, England, in September 1978. Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel prizewinning Polish-American writer for adults and children, recently said: "Fic t ion can entertain and stir the mind; it does not direct it. If a preacher like Tolstoy could not help his people, we are not going to be helped by a lot of little preachers. ''1 A sound scepticism. Nevertheless, fiction seems to stir the mind. But how? Erich K/istner, the German writer for adults and children, was even more sceptical than Singer. "A writer," he said, " transforms ideas into words. A reader transforms words into ideas. How far the ideas o f the two are similar, cannot be checked. ''2

From Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer

From Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer

Stewed Prunes and Rice Pudding: College Students Eat and Talk with I. B. Singer

In the olden days, confides Isaac Bashevis Singer while having lunch in New York with a small group of students from a nearby Catholic college, this could not happen. Once I was invited to speak in a Catholic university in Milwaukee and all the audience consisted of priests and nuns. And then Saturday night after the lecture I took out two nuns to Howard Johnson's for ice cream. And I said to myself, 'This could only have happened in America in the twentieth century, not a minute before and not a minute later.'

Isaac Bashevis Singer on Writing for Children

Isaac Bashevis Singer on Writing for Children * Isaac Bashevis Singer Emanuel Goldsmith, author of Architects of Yiddishism at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century, has described Isaac Bashevis Singer as "one of the most remarkable authors who has ever lived . . . wiry, inescapable style, an intensely personal, inimitable vision, a Machiavellian wit, but above all else, it is the bracing, revivifying character of his insights that makes him important." Mr. Singer is a born story teller beloved both by children and adults because of the warm humor and wisdom of heart embodied in his writing. Question (Q). Most folktales and fairytales were originally intended for adults. Through the years they have been abandoned to the children. What kinds of behavior do these tales try to teach and what is the effect of these teachings on children? I. B. Singer (A). I don't believe that most of the fairytales and stories were created to teach people anything, and this is a good thing, because once a story is made to teach, one can foresee what it is going to say. Fairytales I admire most. You read a story and then when the story is ended you ask yourself what does it teach? What is it saying? You are bewildered by their pointlessness, but they are beautiful anyhow and I think that children love these kinds of stories. For example, my father used to tell me stories—religious kinds of stories—about a man who was a good man on this earth and then he died and went to Paradise. These kinds of stories used to bore me, because I knew already that the good people go to Paradise and the bad people are roasted in Hell. But sometimes my mother told me stories which were so pointless that you really could learn nothing from them. Let's say that a bear swallows three children or something like this and then they cut open his belly and the children go free. A story like this had no meaning, but it had beauty. In children's literature the writers of course can tell a story with a moral, but they should be careful not to be too much on the didactic side. The stories should have beauty in themselves. [End Page 9] The great works of literature actually teach us nothing. What does Madame Bovary teach us? That a woman that was unfaithful to her husband commits suicide? We know that not all women who betray their husbands commit suicide or are killed. Many of them live to an old age. When Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina, the story was the same. Anna also betrayed her husband and she also committed suicide. We learn actually from Anna Karenina nothing, for whatever we had to learn we could already have learned from Madame Bovary. But the story is beautiful anyhow. I think it is a great tragedy that modern writers have become so interested in messages that they forget that there are stories which are wonderful without a message; that the message isn't everything. I once said that if all the messages would disappear and only the Ten Commandments would be left, you would have enough messages for the next 10,000 years. It is not the message which is so important but the story itself. But many writers live today in a kind of amnesia. They forget that a story has an independent life. It can exist without a message, although a message is sometimes good for it, but only sometimes. Q. Were you a writer or storyteller as a child? Who told stories to you when you were a child? A. Well, first of all my father and mother were both excellent storytellers. They told us stories. I heard stories all the time. In addition I used to read what they used to call storybooks in Yiddish. These were little books which cost a penny apiece. I used to buy them. I said once that if I would have a million rubles—I would buy all these storybooks. Actually there were not enough storybooks to buy them for a million rubles; there were only maybe a few score. I read the stories...

I. B. Singer: A Note on the Yiddish Writer and His Sense of Ethnicity

Although many of the stories in Isaac Bashevis Singer's most recent collection, Passions (1975), are set in this country and century, one is never really persuaded that Singer, after about 41 years of resdence, has adopted America as his home. The most prolific and best known American-Yiddish author, Singer remains, as Irving Buchen points out, a living anachronism, here in body, but not in spirit.l

The Fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer

Critical QuarterlyVolume 18, Issue 1 p. 73-80 The Fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer DAVID SEED, DAVID SEEDSearch for more papers by this author DAVID SEED, DAVID SEEDSearch for more papers by this author First published: March 1976 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8705.1976.tb02108.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Volume18, Issue1March 1976Pages 73-80 RelatedInformation

Isaac Bashevis Singer's Books for Young People

Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories, by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Translated by the author and Elizabeth Shub. Pictures by Maurice Sendak. New York: Harper and Row, 1966. $4.50. When Shlemiel Went to Warsaw and Other Stories, by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Translated by the author and Elizabeth Shub. Pictures by Margot Zemach. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969. $4.95. A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up In Warsaw, by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Photographs by Roman Vishniac. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1969. $4.50. Why Noah Chose the Dove, by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Translated by Elizabeth Shub. Pictures by Eric Carle. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1974. $5.95. The Wicked City, by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Translated by the author and Elizabeth Shub. Pictures by Leonard Everett Fisher. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1972. $4.50.

Seeing and Blindness: A Conversation with Isaac Bashevis Singer

s. I think it is completely false. It's as if you would say that a French writer cannot be appreciated by the English. In a way it is true that a people of your nationality, of your group, understand you a little better. If you mention a town, they might have been in the town; your language is their language. But just the same the great writers are understood by all people all over the world. Isn't it a fact that Dostoyevsky is admired all over the world, yet the whole world does not consist of Russians or of people who speak only Russian. It is not true at all. This was Irving Howe's way of apologizing for why we have so many bad writers. But every group has many bad writers. If a writer really has something to say then he will be understood by all people all over the world. I myself read translations from Japanese or from Chinese or from Indian, Hindu or whatever, and if there is something good, I understand it and I appreciate it even though I don't know their way of living. In other words I deny that this is true.

The stories behind the stories: An interview with Isaac Bashevis Singer

The stories behind the stories: An interview with Isaac Bashevis Singer

A note on Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer, one of modern literature's most outstanding figures, was born in Radzymin, Poland, in 1904, into a respected Hasidic family that numbered distinguished rabbis, scholars, and mystics among its ancestors. Singer's father was a rabbi and he himself was destined for a rabbinical career at an early age. However, the social and political upheavals that rent traditional Polish-Jewish society between the wars turned him and his elder brother, Israel Joshua (author of such Yiddish classics as Yoshe Kalb and The Family Carnovsky), toward literature.

Solipsism and Sociality

N ONE EDITION of Isaac Bashevis Singer's story the Fool, the concluding paragraph carries the line: At the door of the hotel where I lie, there stands the plank on which the dead are taken away.' Lying on his bed of straw, his shrouds in his sack, ready to greet his Maker at the door of the hotel, Gimpel, turned itinerant beggar-a shnorrer-awaits death. In the opening paragraph of the story, Gimpel tells us that he was no weakling. If I slapped someone he'd see all the way to Cracow. It would seem that when he left his village of Frampol to go the and after having wandered over the land, Gimpel ended up in Cracow, for where else, apart from cities such as Lublin or Warsaw, would one find a hotel? An inn would be remarkable enough. Inevitably the question arises: By what strange set of circumstances does it happen that a shnorrer ends his life in a hotel? Yet it is Gimpel himself who says: ... the longer I lived the more I understood that there were really no lies. Whatever doesn't happen is dreamed at night. It happens to one if it doesn't happen to another, tomorrow if not today, or a century hence if not next year. What difference can it make? Often I heard tales of which I said, 'Now this is a thing that cannot happen.' But before a year had elapsed I heard that it actually had come to pass somewhere.'2 We are left with a typical transformation in the alchemistry of Singer's universe: Gimpel leaves his world in order to enter the world and ends by returning to his station in the world he repudiated. Everything is possible. There are Jews everywhere, even shnorrers in hotels. The alternative, simpler explanation is not altogether free of Singerian demons: the typographical error which turned Gimpel's hovel into a hotel may have been generated by an imp, by the resentful or embittered typesetter carrying on a last skir-