Product Description
Even though they were poor, the people of Chelm were content with their lives until the Council of Sages made them aware of their problems. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Enjoyable
Short and enjoyable.Perhaps I'm ungrateful, but I expected more from a Nobel Prize winner and a Yiddish master taking on a classic subject.

Luck soup
You could say I like Chelm stories, and that I buy every one I can.

You could also say that Isaac Bashevis Singer, who wrote this tale in 1973, was no ordinary purveyor of Chelm shtiklech. You can tell from his beginning, a master's parody of Genesis.

"The pious believed that God said, 'Let there be Chelm.' And there was Chelm. But many scholars insisted that the town happened as the result of an eruption.

" 'Before Chelm,' they said, 'the area was one huge chaos, all fog and mist. Then came a great explosion and Chelm appeared.

"At the beginning the surface of Chelm was so hot that even if Chelmites had already existed, they could not have walked on the earth because they would have burned their feet." The first Chemites, this version goes, were not people but microbes, amoebas and other such creatures. When people finally arrived in town, they had names like Gronam the First, aka Gronam Ox, and Dopey Lekisch, Zeinvel Ninny, Treitel Fool and Shmendrick Numskull. And they practically invented problems.

One of the biggest was that the people of nearby Gorshkov called the Chelmites fools. Gronam Ox told his compatriots, "We Chelmites know that, of the ten measures of wisdom sent down to earth from heaven, nine went to Chelm. But the conceited people of Gorshkov think they are the clever ones and we are the fools." What does he propose? Why making war, of course.

Needless to say, the Chelmnicks end up in the wrong place, a God-forsaken town called Mazelborsht (translation: luck soup). Defeated by their own foolishness, they returned to Chelm half naked, weaponless and with broken noses and black eyes. This produced the expected seven days and seven nights of contemplation which resulted in four sage proclamations.

Next the Chelmites abolished money, decided to hold elections once every 40 years, asked Zeckel Poet to compose a hymn of 12,000 lines which schoolchildren must learn by heart and appoint Shlemeil secretary. Of course, the merchants refused to part with their goods for nothing, which resulted in a system of barter in which Zeckel Poet was the most eager participant, followed by Shmoyger the matchmaker, Fultsha Jester and the Chelm band. Nothing was exchanged.

To discover what became of Singer's Chelm, you'll have to exchange some abolished currency for this masterwork, which contains much hilarity. And of course, you'll be in luck soup if you find a copy. Alyssa A. Lappen

Fools are we all!
It is always a pleasure to read something by I.B.Singer.Although this short tale is recommended for ages 9-12, it is certainly also addressed to any age beyond.The tale is a delightful satire of society's political andideological systems, in may aspects a short version of George Orwell's"Animal Farm." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Most all of these stories all end in a death
Mr. Singer is a wonderful writer.I have read several of his books and found them all entertaining and interesting.Apparently these stories were written in Yiddish or German because they all needed to be translated.This is interesting because he has lived in United States of America for a long time and I would have thought he would have written in English.I guess that he must have been writing for publication in special newspapers and magazines.
Most all of these stories all end in a death.Sometimes it is okay, the person dies and leaves a legacy that will be remembered for all time, other times it is their just desserts.All of these stories are worthy and interesting.

'A Friend of Kafka' - the friend is Jacques Kohn, a destitute actor, living in Warsaw.The writer is a writer (later on he sells a story) and both Jacques and the author frequent a writer's club.Jacques was born a Hasidic Jew in some small town in Poland named Jankel.He changed his name while in some of the capitals of Europe: Prague, Vienna, Berlin, etc.He had and was friendly with various celebrities of the day, but now he is down and out.He tries to look better than he is but the folks he knows, know him for who he is.Throughout the story he pokes fun at Jewishness ("Jews remember too much.") and his associates, former and present.He claims to be haunted by Fate, who is trying to bring him down, but to play the game (not necessarily to win, but certainly not to lose) is why Jacques keeps on keeping on.

'Guests on a Winter Night' -Isaac's (5 to 10 years old) Aunt Itta Fruma has come to with his family.She has lost the house she had been living in.His father is reluctant to put her out, mostly because he is trying to be a good Jewish person and he does not feel it is absolutely necessary.She tells stories of the family and tends to religious rites like a man as well as as a good Jewish widow.She moves in and the family is thrown into disarray and disagreement.After a time she moves out and all is well.In the end she passes on and the family feels worse for having not been more charitable.

'The Key' - Bessie Popkin is beset by demons of her own making.She has been widowed for years and trying to live on a meager income.She frightens herself with imagining various evilness in her neighbors and shopkeepers, etc.When she goes out this time, all goes well enough, but her key breaks in the lock, so she has to spend the night outside and does not know what to do to get into her apartment or what to do with her groceries.She learns in the end all her fears were fantasies and so becomes happy.

'Dr. Beeber' - Another poor fellow met at the writer's club.This one's story is better and ends with a surprise.Dr. Beeber lives the life of Riley, carefree and happy.Then he meets a woman who finds him utterly charming.She talks him into marriage, but he is not quite happy.He gets out of it and resumes his happy dissipated life.

'Stories from Behind the Stove' - In the study house, various people tell tales: A shed disappears and reappears.A saintly Rabbi dies and comes back to his study house for a visit. A eunuch tells of his dabbling in the Cabala and his fight with a goblin for a night.He was safe in a certain town for twenty years until the goblin died.

'The Cafeteria' - A surrealistic story of a woman, Esther, who is introduced as mysterious.The author does not know where she comes from or if she was or is married.She just appears one day in the cafeteria he goes to to visit with others like himself.One day the cafeteria has been blown up, the author has to find a new haunt and loses track of Esther.She appears one day and tells a tale that is unbelievable about how the cafeteria was blown up.This story also shows the trauma and fear that Jews have felt since the Holocaust.

'The Mentor' - Itche is on a visit to Israel in 1955.He meets people from his past: his hometown, Jadow (where he grew up and was called 'Itche'), and Warsaw (where he began his professional life).The two groups had no one in common.Friedl, a girl from Jadow who became a multilingual doctor, who married a hometown boy. Tobias.They had a daughter and separately, emigrated to Israel, and set up separate lives.He keeps the daughter with him in a kibbutz.She lives in Tel Aviv, and meets Itche there.Itche is given the details on a trip to visit Tobias with Friedl.There is some row between them and there is no resolution.Part of it is that the daughter is dissipating herself and Friedl can not do anything about it.Oddly enough, Friedl is herself quite the free spirit, so why is she upset at her ex-husband's anddaughter's lifestyle, other than propriety or her own wish to be a part of her daughters life?

'Pigeons' - Professor Vladislav Eibeschutz retired from teaching at Warsaw University.He spent his days with his books and was cared for by Tekla, his maid for years.He had several birds he cared for as well: Parrots, canaries and parakeets.Beyond that he would feed the pigeons twice daily.He watched and admired the pigeons and felt they taught him about life and Jewishness.He lived and died, as life always ends, but his funeral was something to behold.This is the one story my wife had me copy for her son, feeling that it was something he could relate to.

'The Chimney Sweep' - Black Yash, the local chimney sweep, gets a bump on his and becomes some one special.He is so special that visiting dignitaries come to see him.When the most importantcomes by he has lost specialty by virtue of another, ill-timed, bump on the head.So it goes.

' The Riddle' - Oyzer-Dovidl married a woman who turned out to not want to be with him.He is a pious Jew, she is not and gets tired of all his piousness.He loves her and wants her to be happy.She just wants him to leave her alone.I am not sure of the riddle that is asked.Maybe, how is one to be happy and pious?In the end, "All these evil tidings, the way to saintliness lay open before him."

'Altele' - The Jewish wife has no rest or ease in this world.Altele's husband, Grunam, was good and devout.He was chosen by her Grandmother to be Altele's husband, but he turned out to be poor and getting poorer.Altele also wa not getting pregnant, so her Grandmother and her went on various trips to holy men and other places to help Altele to get pregnant.Altele became used to being on the road and evetually, she and her husband became so distant, they could barely recognize each other.

'The Joke' - Liebkind Bendel is rich and wants to publish a yiddish magazine in New York.The narrator is the editor.They concoct this ruse to get a fellow Jew from Berlin to New York.When it works, they have to scurry around and make the ruse true as can be or with reasonable excuses, why not.

Singer is Singer, but this is not his best
I do not know of a greater short- story writer than I.B. Singer. He has it all, a tremendous storytelling ability, a capacity for creating memorable characters, a capacity to present interesting ideas in dialogue, great humor, colorful idiomatic language, the evocation of a world- or worlds gone, deep Jewishness ( for those who care) a capacity to vividly so vividly evoke situations of conflict and drama, an interesting way of writing about sexuality, a probing of and questioning of God, loneliness, love, hunger, sadness, death. He has it all.
Yet these stories are not among his best. They have a certain weakness with characters sometimes seeming more odd than compelling , and with the lust instead of firing the imaginationtailing off into sordidness.
Short Friday, Gimpel the Fool , The Spinoza of Market Street, Passions are all superior collections.
But this is still Singer and so is worth reading. Certain enjoyment you will certainly get- if not the greatest.

More from the master of the short story
Let me begin by saying that I have never read anything by I. B. Singer that I thought was a waste of time.This man is incredible with the stories he writes and the style he writes it in.What is even more amazing is that Singer always maintained that his stories lost about 40% of their literary value in translation.As great as I think he is, I apparently will never appreciate how great he really is because I can't read Yiddish.That said, I don't recommend this book for an introduction to the author.It is very good but it is not one of his better collections of short stories.I'd actually rate it a 3.5 on this scale but, with Singer, you always round up.For a good introduction to the author I would recomend "Passions".

The stories I did enjoy the most were certainly worth the price of admission.Those stories would include the title story.The last line is terrific but not if you hadn't read the story first.I enjoyed "The Key" in which a lonely widow discovers that she is surrounded by friends that she never before realized."The Cafeteria" is the type of love story that Singer writes when he is one of the lovers.True romance seems to only happen to others in his stories."The Chimney Sweep" is a nice little story about what a knock on the head can do for a fellow."Schlomele" is a story about the sort of zany characters the author seemed to find so easily in this country."The Colony" is a sort of haunting story about a visit to Argentina.It seems like all of his short story collections have a story about a visit to Argentina.They seem to always be very good stories, too."The Wager" is the story of the tragic outcome of a practical joke gone bad."The Son" is a short but touching tale of a father and son reunion in a case where they were separated near birth and rejoined as grown and near-grown men.

There were many other stories but, as I looked back over them, they didn't seem as memorable as most of Singer's stories I've read in the past.I started out by writing that you can't go wrong reading Isaac B. Singer.I'll close by saying the same thing but I suggest you introduce yourself to him with a different book.I wouldn't want you to get the wrong impression.

spectacular view of a vanished world
It is a mystery to me why these books are all going out of print.Singer is one of the great 20c masters of the short story.I would characterise them as genius:they evoke lives in the deepest sense, offering a glimpse of an utterly alien existence.

I was attracted by the title, and delightfully surpirsed at the power of the writing, including stories of neglected sholars, demons and harmless goblins, and the way of life of pre-WWII Poland.Every story is superbly crafted.

Warmly recommended.This writer deserves to be read. ... Read more

Product Description
A very good collection of the best loved stories of this Nobel Prize winner's work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

a good treatment of singer
Of course, this memoir can be read as one son's quest for his father after a twenty year seperation. But it is also a book about the vicissitudes of European Jews before and after World War II.For those souls, three fates awaited them:death by the evil force of Nazism, exile in America or some other safe haven, or settlement in Palestine and later the State of Israel.Isaac Singer wound up in American, and his son in Israel.In many ways, they became the separate embodiments of the solution to the Jewish "problem."Zamir took on a Hebrew last name (Singer in Hebrew) became an ardent Communist and Kibbutznik, participated in the War of Independence, and later, the Yom Kippur War.His father became a secular Jew (in action if not in thought), a writer and intellectual, at home in the American milieu, and a triumph on the American model: ultimate accolades in his field and monetary accomplishment.Zamir and Singer are clearly opposites; Singer's personality is cold and distant, and convoluted by a sense of estrangement from the world and others.Zamir, the man of the kibbutz collective, is adept at dealing with people and organizations.He carries a machine gun into his father's Tel Aviv hotel during the Yom Kippur War and the Golus Jew and the Sabra are clearly distinguished.It is also enlightening to read Dvorah Telushkin's memoir of Singer before his son's.Singer reveals far more of his nature to women, and is far from afraid of letting his dark side show.[Teluskin appears in the memoir briefly, a bit player, lacking the centrality she gives herself in her own memoir, understandably.] For Zamir, Singer's motives are more veiled, although he is not afraid to speculate or show his father's deep flaws and shortcomings.If the book accomplishs anything, it shows how profoundly influential the 20th century was for the Jews both individually and collectively.Eveything was transformed.

A decent son and a not-so- decent great- writer -father
I read this book in the language it was originally written, Hebrew. I found it to be a convincing and moving account of a relationship between a decent son and a not- so- decent great- writer father. Zamir's journey to his father, his efforts at befriending him have some success. But IB Singer who is without question one of Literature's greatest writer of stories was not very generous or welcoming. In time their relationship improves and the son translates the father's work into Hebrew. The sense is that the son is simply a very good human being, and the father a very great writer.

his falther/my father
to learn about our father, i had to read his sons book. my father hasbrought me on a journey into vast spaces that needed him.he has made meunderstand when i had no one to understand, he came to me in a vision..in abook..in many books, yet he is my father and your his son. thank you forthe only book that knows him, we know his thoughts..what is it that icannot comprehend, but thank you for sharing.all my love mina..daughter ofmahnaa ... Read more

Product Description
Sage, rabbi, mystic, prophet, historian, and storyteller: Isaac Bashevis Singer fulfills all these roles. With great sensitivity and insight, Guide to the Works of Isaac Bashevis Singer provides a succinct and instructive look at some of the main themes of Singer's writing: the relationship between God and mankind; the search for identity in a changing environment; the relationship of the modern Jew to the old/new homeland of Israel; and the Jewish question of faith in the modern secular world. Maxine A. Hartley's analysis provides a deeper understanding and appreciation for a literary figure who wanted only to be known as 'an honest writer.' ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Guide to the Works of Isaac Bashevis Singer
A wonderful introduction to the complex writings of Isaac Singer.Through the author's analysis, we feel Singer's pain and vulnerability as he delves into relationships through such pieces as "The Little Shoemakers," "The Blasphemer," and "Yentl." (A reminder that Barbara Streisand was not the author of this work.)Hartley uses humor as a tool to better understand the meanings behind Singer's words and to interpret many of his Yiddish writings.The true indication of Hartley's strength as a writer is that you want to read more about Singer and his work, and even preserving the Yiddish language, when you complete Hartley's Guide.A must read for anyone who has read, or is interested in reading, the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer. ... Read more

Product Description
In 1973, the Yiddish writer and Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer collaborated with New York documentary photographer Bruce Davidson to make a surreal film, Isaac Bashevis Singer's Nightmare and Mrs. Pupko's Beard. This film was at once a documentary about Singer's New York and a dramatization of one of his short stories. The film grew out of the pair's friendship as residents of the same building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and their common interest in New York City street life. During and after production, Davidson made numerous portraits of Singer and also returned to the Lower East Side for a documentary series of photographs.

A selection of these stunning images made between 1957 and 1990 is available here for the first time. The book also includes portraits of Singer, stills from the film, the black and white portfolio known as The Garden Cafeteria, and selections from Davidson's Lower East Side series. The Garden Cafeteria was a collaboration depicting denizens of the East Broadway restaurant frequented by Singer during his trips to The Jewish Daily Forward. The portfolio has never before been published nor exhibited in its entirety. Included is an introduction by Singer himself on Davidson's images; an in-depth interview with Davidson about his art, aesthetic and political views, and his Jewishness; and a reflective, contextual essay by Ilan Stavans on this collaboration between the writer and the photographer. Through Davidson's lens we see Singer's literary world of Holocaust survivors and émigrés from Eastern Europe-a displaced culture in its twilight.

This book is published in conjunction with an exhibition by the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College.

2004 is the centennial year of Singer's birth ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Seeing the people of the lower East Side face-to-face
Davidson is one of the most well- known photographers working today. He made his reputation in good part during the Civil Rights Movement as one of its principal photographers. He also is well- known for his photographs of the life and characters of New York City. In this album hepresents photos he made of the great Nobel Prize Winning author I.B. Singer. He also photographs other lower East Side characters with many pictures taken in the Garden City Cafe.
Davidson has a unique style in which he photographs face to face. He seems to want to bring out the character of the person. He catches people in moments of melancholy and also surprise. What he gives us here is a documentary record of a certain period and place in American- Jewish life, the lower East Side world most of whose Yiddish Old World characters are now gone.
His special affection for and relation with his old neighbor and friend Singer give an even more special quality to the work.

Some fine photos, and personal reminiscences
Davidson is a renowned photographer who had a solo show of his work at the MOMA in 1963. In 1972, he worked with IB Singer, and was introduced by him to the Garden Cafeteria of the Lower East Side. The reminiscences of Davidson are touching, and some of his photographs of Singer are quite piercing. The most memorable, in my estimation, is the one of Singer laughing, with his gappy Polish teeth showing through his wide mouthed smile. Although other photos of the Lower East side are included, I don't think many people would associate IB Singer with this neighborhood, since he frequently stated that he often delivered his work to the Forward late at night, and certainly he didn't hang out with other writers there.

noted Yiddish writer and NYC street life
Davidson has collected varied photographs taken in the course of his relationship with the noted author Singer based on their mutual fascination with New York City street life. Some of the photos are stills from their surrealistic film on one of Singer's short stories. Others are from the portfolio "The Garden Cafeteria," a rough-hewn eatery in Manhattan's Lower East Side popular with local Jews. Most of the characters and scenes in the photos could be from Singer's short stories noted for their comical, often somewhat grotesque or fantastical, depictions of Old World Jewry in the modern day. For Singer enthusiasts especially, there are several photos of him, and also a short story titled "The Beard." The story is somewhat about Singer himself, beginning, "That a Yiddish writer should become rich, and in his old age to boot, seemed unbelievable."
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

From the master of the short story
If I was stranded on a deserted island and somehow was given the choice of three books that I could have with me, I think I would pick the Bible, "The Complete Plays of Shakespeare" and "The Collected Short Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer".This collection is an excellent example of the quality and diversity of Singer's talent.There are stories from the present and from the past all containing marvelous characters that amuze, intrigue, and/or mystify the reader.Among the best are "The Admirer", "Sabbath in Portugal", "Three Encounters", "The Adventure", and "Passios"."The Admirer" is a tale about a meeting with a fan of his that turns into a comical nightmare."Sabbath in Portugal" is a tale of a lonely visit to an alien country where the author encounters a faith that survived the inquisition and an encounter with someone he thought was lost forever."Three Encounters" is the tale of a young man's innocent suggestion to a young bride and the sucessive corruption that results."The Adventure" tells of an unusual request and the challenge of if and how to respond.Finally, "Passions" tells of the ability of a simple man to overcome the impossible with the proper amount of focussed passion.All the stories are worth reading.The world's greatest short story writer has produced another example of why he is so revered. ... Read more

Product Description
Aiming to stand as a metaphor for the failure of civilization to tame man's instinctive brutality but also of his enduring idealism and hope, this novel by the Nobel prize winning author of "Shosha" and "Enemies, A Love Story", describes the subjugation of the Poles by an invading Germanic tribe. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

An Existential Tale
Singer in his novel "The King of the Fields," written in 1988, just three years before his death, examines religions (Christian, pagan, Jewish), myth, male-female relationships, sex, politics, and man, through a purported history of pre-medieval Poland. The novel is basically an existential examination of man and his beliefs positioned in a fairy-tale world. In many ways it shares themes with the Book of Job and possesses slipstream qualities similar to those in William Golding's The Inheritors and Jack London's Before Adam. But even this comparison is not accurate. Perhaps, a better comparison would be to Kafka's "The Castle," Hesse's "Narcissus and Goldmund," Bergman's "The Virgin Spring," or Camus' "The Plague." All of these books are philosophic texts examining belief and philosophy. Each of these books illustrates how a novelist can write a philosophic text without sacrificing the essential qualities and pleasures inherent in a novel.

The story is set during the emergence of Poland approximately three or four centuries after the death of Christ, a time when the hunter-gatherers are beginning to cultivate the fields and missionaries from Rome are arriving in the Northern woods to convert the pagans to Christianity. In his created world of the forests near the Vistula, Singer demonstrates dramatically the interaction and absurdities of religion as exercised by untutored, unlettered men, struggling for supremacy and survival in a state of nature. Like Hobbes, Singer shows man in this fantastic world as brutish and deadly; with his survival depending upon strength, intelligence, guile, and luck.

Iron men ravage the land, destroying, murdering and raping; however, our protagonist, Cybula, although a skilled hunter, is not a hero or a warrior. Instead, he seems to be a precursor to the Singer nebbish. He assumes control when fate demands it but he is never comfortable with the mantle. Women control his life, although he seems to have an inordinate success with them. He is not comfortable with the change from hunter-gatherer to sower, farmer, villager, although he quickly sees its advantages.

The action begins when a group of Poles take control of a tribe of Lesniks; hunter-gatherers living near the Zakopane mountains. The Poles led by Krol Rudy, the Red King, descend on the Lesniks like wolves on sheep. They murder the men and rape the women. Some of the Lesniks, led by Cybula, flee to the forests and the mountains but most of the survivors--women and children--fall under the control of the Poles. Eventually, Krol Rudy makes peace with the Lesniks because he needs workers to harvest his wheat. He, then, makes Cybula his head-man and marries his daughter to tie the Lesniks and the Poles together through marriage.

On one level Singer uses this story to study the transformation of the Lesniks from hunter-gatherers to town dwellers and farmers. On another level he follows the progression of man's beliefs in the gods. First Ben Dosa, a Jew, arrives in the village, and he brings the message of the one God. Later, a priest arrives and he preaches Christ and accuses Ben Dosa of killing God.

Suddenly, religious prejudice arises and hatred of the other fills the villagers with rage. The women attack a Mongol woman for her slanted eyes and they beat Ben Dosa for trying to protect her. Within the context of the novel, Singer works in the theme of the scape-goat and hatred of the Jew, as other.

We quickly realize that Singer is using the historical novel to comment on the present, on the way the world is now. Although, the Jew, Ben Dosa, is a decent and moral man, Cybula is the protagonist and the one who carries Singer's ultimate message. Cybula worships only one God and that God is death. Singer's conclusion is:life is short and brutish and the only tangible, living God that man can expect to speak or reveal himself is death. For Cybula there are moments of passion and happiness but these moments are short and rare. There is always another Krol Rudy who wishes to take control and dominate.

Ultimately, the novel is existential in theme. Cybula is a loner, who leaves the village and lives in exile in the woods with his young wife, Kora, and waits for death, which he expects to arrive shortly. Ben Dosa seems to experience a bit of happiness in Rome with his people but even his happiness is overshadowed by superstition and emanations of fate.

Although the themes of the novel are dark and man's future bleak, it is an amazing book. Singer translated it from the Yiddish and the prose is precise and lyrical. He carefully describes the society and its inhabitants. Each character is delineated and articulated. And even though it is a complete fabrication, more a fairy-tale, than a realistic rendition of a historical period, it is so well-wrought that you believe in it and its characters.

Singer's novels, like the novels of Kafka, always seem to have a quality of otherness to them. When the villagers talk about the witch god, Baba Yaga, you expect her to appear. Mystery and magic seem to lurk around the edges, although the novel is meant to be realistic. It is this magical realism that raises the book in my esteem.

Not Singer's best, but a good way to view his creative drives
This novel, a pre-history of Poland, is really a post-history of Isaac Singer.The concerns of his character and the characterization of this Poland is Singer's: a man who has a plural marriage (this time with a mother and daughter, sometimes it is two sisters, sometimes unrelated women), who grows disgusted with eating meat, and whose only faith is the belief in death.This is the end of The Family Moskat: "Death is the real Messiah, and that is the truth!"And here it is again, slightly less brilliant and stiring, but not without some drama and interest.Singer's Poland (like Singer's New York) is really about the difficulty of finding and maintaing belief in our world, a world that works to strip us of it with unbending will.

History?
Over the years, I have read this novel a number of times.Contrary to many interpretations of this work, I did not view it as a historical novel, at least not the history that is represented on the surface.Instead, it is the history of Poland, Christianity and Judaism now, then and every time in between.Furthermore, it is a story of the human condition.One should not approach this novel in a literal sense.If you do, you are bound to be disappointed.

good, but not the best from Singer
This book deals with transition between the society of hunters and gatherers into society of peasants who worked the land. Changes are difficult, old beleifs die hard, and at the dawn of civilization there weremany cruel things hapenning. I wish I could beleive that human beings havemade significant progress, but unfortunately that probably isn't true. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Only for those who must have every photo available of IB Singer
The best thing about this short book is the photographic documentation of the imp that inhabited Singer. One can't exactly say that the photos show the twinkle in his eye, since in at least one ID photo, IB Singer wore dark sunglasses. There's a beautiful full spread color photo of his work room, about which Singer used to joke "I can say I have accomplished vone thing in my life, my chaos has reached perfection." (The quote is from Dvorah Telushkin's Singer biography). I didn't find the mini-essays particularly interesting, with the exception of Cynthia Ozick's.

Like a Readers Digest Compilation
It has a little of everything in it, but there's something weirdly cheap and dated about Library of America's Singer album, a companion to their publication of Isaac Balshevis Singer's collected work in three volumes.It's almost as though they were going in this case for the coffee table crowd.They have dragooned in a motley group of authors to respond to Singer's work, and the results are predictably up and down.Sometimes I had the feeling the exact same contributors could have been set upon to write appreciations of some other bygone figure, say Fanny Brice, and come up with the same kind of verbiage that fills column inches.I did very much like Jonathanb Safron Foer's appreciation of Singer.That boy is like the Human Litmus Paper of Jewish writing, sucking up even that which he cannot understand.

Singer's first story "Old Age" was written when he was still a young man, in 1925.He moved to the USA in 1935, and his first years were difficult ones.SATAN IN GORAY was written in Warsaw, while THE ASHKENAZY BROTHERS was written in Brooklyn.The book is jammed full of bright pictures of Singer looking puckish and cheerful, rather like Isaac Stern.Ilan Stavans, the world's greatest authority on Singer, has edited this volume, not always to maximum effect, but I can imagine it was kind of a rush effort trying to maximize on the impact of Singer en masse.One photo looks like Singer lived in the apartment of Henry Darger, there is so much "clutter" it's surprising either was able to get any work done at all. ... Read more

Product Description
In 1975, twenty-one-year-old Dvorah Telushkin wrote a letter to the great Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, offering to drive him to and from a creative writing class in return for permission to attend the course. The literary master, then seventy-one, accepted the offer, which led to a twelve-year-long apprenticeship for Telushkin.

Throughout Dvorah Telushkin's tenure with Singer, she kept detailed diaries chronicling both their literary efforts and the evolution of their personal relationship. Indeed, Telushkin was the one person to whom Singer tried to teach his craft as a writer. She writes about the great moments in Singer's public life, his winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978, his fiery encounter with the Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, his surprising meeting with Barbra Streisand, who adapted and starred in the movie version of Singer's short story "Yentl." But the private Singer is revealed as well, the "merry pessimist" haunted by despair and torn between the old-world ethic of his Hasidic forebears in Europe and the moral abandon of modern secular man. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Honest, Just, Revealing
Here Dvorah Telushkin provides a complex and layered portrait of Isaac Singer and her interactions with him.There is the added attraction that Telushkin has a well crafted writing style, elevated while smooth, homey while erudite.To its credit, this memoir is not crafted in any chronological fashion.Each chapter is a slice of her life with Singer, their work together and conversations.She weaves us in and out of Singer and his world, leisurely but with a purpose, even reproducing, to great effect, the Yiddish cadences and accent of his spoken English.Possibly the strongest element in this memoir is Telushkin's fierce honesty with her own complex set of emotions about Singer.Here is a man who she is fashioning as a father figure, and (as a notorious Don Juan and egocentric) he is a poor pick.Telushkin shows the darker side of Singer's personality, and her own odd attraction to it; so in the end, this book is more about Teluskhin's journey of self-discovery and maturity than it is about Isaac Singer.But this does not detract from the quality of this work:driven, honest and beautiful, it is a haunting book of genuine emotional integrity.

Anyone who loves Singer will learn from this work
This work gives an inside view of the daily life and work habits of one of the greatest masters of the short story the world has known. It is honest and painful in its realistic description of the great writer's last years. It is filled with rich Jewish knowledge and the wisdom and wit of the paradoxical difficult and yet very great writer Singer. Anyone who loves this writer will benefit from reading this very rich and vibrant work of devotion and memory.

A haunting farewell to Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Isaac Bashevis Singer was a controversial figure during his lifetime. Though his place in the twentieth-century canon of literature now seems secure, it is still often pointed out that thanks to the Holocaust, Singer's fame was granted to him at the cost of obscurity for other Yiddish writers. His personality also was known to be difficult. There are many who will tell you that Singer was a bastard, including Elie Wiesel (not normally a gossip) in "All Rivers Run to the Sea." Singer probably was one at least fifty percent of the time. Too many stories of his caprice, vanity, and greed for sex and money have been told to be discounted. As to the nature behind both the faults and the gifts, what one saw of it depended on who one was; any competitors for the limelight, real or imagined, got the worst of it. Women got both the best and the worst of Singer, the charm and naivete combined with the mistrust and the manipulation. It is thus fitting that a possibly definitive memoir of Singer should have been written by a woman. Dvorah Telushkin was the writer's secretary and occasional translator. She comes across as a most lovable person, without any of Singer's guile. But they still had a lot in common: they were both fearful and susceptible to flattery. Ms. Telushkin was estranged from her father, Singer from his only child. Dvorah's innocence fit Singer's feminine ideal, exemplified by the child-woman in "Shosha." For years, theirs was a relationship in perfect order. But after winning the Nobel Prize, Singer's ego ran away with him while his health deteriorated rapidly. He became more and more paranoid, finally rejecting Dvorah as he had rejected most others. Ms. Telushkin manages the difficult feat of recording Singer's decline honestly and without sentimentality, while leaving us in no doubt as to her lasting love for him and little as to its essential justice. It is to be hoped that she continues as a writer, one with large ambitions. She has been influenced by Singer; her achievement is to make his eerie tone blend so well with her sense of her own life as a bad dream that the influence comes to seem more like an inheritance. She rescues Singer from the context of Yiddish nostalgia and places him within his own heritage of Jewish fear, uncertainty, and faith, as little G-rated as Celine. This is a deeply touching, near-perfect book. It is required reading for Singer fans, but it is also recommended to anyone struggling to understand a difficult and much-loved parent. ... Read more

Product Description
As they stand around near Noah's completed ark, the different animals of the world noisily jostle each other, competing for a place on the vessel. ... Read more