To mark the centennial of the birth of Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Library of America presents a major celebration of Singer's achievement, beginning with "Gimpel the Fool" and concluding with "The Death of Methuselah."
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To mark the centennial of the birth of Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Library of America presents a major celebration of Singer's achievement, beginning with "Gimpel the Fool" and concluding with "The Death of Methuselah."
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Seller's Description:
Good. Gently used with minimal wear on the corners and cover. A few pages may contain light highlighting or writing but the text remains fully legible. Dust jacket may be missing and supplemental materials like CDs or codes may not be included. Could have library markings. Ships promptly!
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Very good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
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Seller's Description:
Very good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
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Seller's Description:
Good in Very Good jacket. 2004 edition. Dust jacket is very good with minimal wear. Green cloth boards and binding are very good. Top page edge has light foxing. A name in pen on front endpaper. Pages are clean and unmarked. LO.
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Very Good. First edition, first printing. Very good hardcover in very good slipcase. Binding is tight, sturdy, and square; boards and text also very good. Slipcase has one spot of rubbing. Insert included. Ships from Dinkytown in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good. Size: 5x1x8; Stated First Printing. Slipcase edition, with notes pamphlet laid-in. Binding is tight, sturdy, and square; boards and text also very good throughout. Very minor wear to edges of slipcase. Ships same or next business day from Dinkytown in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
My college-bound grandson expressed an interest in Judaica and in Yiddish writing as he prepared to go off to school. I had, in fact, been reading an old copy of this Library of America volume of Singer: "Collected Stories, A Friend of Kafka to Passions" and had it with me during a recent visit. I was surprised to learn of my grandson's interest in a culture of which he knew little. I gave him my old battered copy and acquired a new one for myself as slowly continued through this lengthy volume of 65 stories and 850 pages.
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903 -- 1991) grew up in Poland, the son of a rabbi and deeply steeped in Orthodox, Hasidic Judaism. He early became a writer in Yiddish and emigrated to the United States in 1935 where he lived for the rest of his life. Continuing to write in Yiddish for various periodicals, Singer's work began to be translated into English in the 1950s and his popularity and exposure to a large audience increased. Singer began to assist in the translation of his works and came to regard English as his "second original language". In 1974, Singer received the National Book Award for his short story collection "A Crown of Feathers" included in this volume, and in 1978 he became the seventh American citizen to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Singer's popularity has waned somewhat subsequent to his death.
The Library of America published three volumes of Singer's Collected Stories in 2004, to coincide with the centenary of his birth, and reissued the volumes in 2015 in a box set. Ilan Stavans, who also edited the LOA volume "Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing", edited the volumes. Singer became the first fiction writer in an original language other than English to be included in the LOA. (An earlier LOA book was devoted to Alexis de Tocqueville who wrote in French.) Singer was a prolific writer who also wrote lengthy novels and children's books, but the stories are probably the most accessible single part of his work.
"What makes a writer an American writer?", the LOA asks on its page introducing Singer. This writer of tales centered on the pre-WW II world of Polish Jews touched on a welter of themes shared by the broad American experience. In the words of the LOA, "his parables seemed, to his newfound American audience, startlingly apposite to the morally ambiguous world ushered in by World War II, even as they evoked, as in a dream, a time and a place the war had brutally obliterated".
Singer's stories are set in his native Poland, both in rural areas and in Warsaw, and, increasingly, in the United States. For me, the stories have broad philosophical themes which center upon religious faith and its difficulty in contemporary life. The stories illustrate the search for meaning and morality in life amid uncertainty and change. They explore the nature of reason and rationality, frequently illustrated by the figure of Spinoza, as juxtaposed with feeling, passion, and mystery. Singer's works are replete with spirits, amulets and supernatural figures from of old.
Another broad theme of Singer's work, criticized by some, is sexuality. The stories explore the pervasive character of sexuality both in modern secular life and in the seemingly closed world of the Orthodox Jewish community in Poland. The stories offer more than a suggestion that sexuality and the religious search are intertwined.
Singer's stories have an immediacy in their telling, and many are strongly autobiographical. They often include a Singer-like narrator who converses a single other individual who shares his, or sometimes her, story. Whether set in Poland, in America, or elsewhere, the stories often take place in a cafeteria, writer's club, or apartment, or other place for conversation and reflection. Stories and issues come to life through the interaction of a small group of individuals and in their telling. The parochialism of the stories is apparent, but the universality of their concerns is as well.
The three books included in this LOA volume each include stories mostly published separately in magazines. As Singer became more widely known, the English translations followed closely upon the original Yiddish. The themes seem to me largely constant among the three volumes with Singer's concerns and preoccupations restated engagingly in many different ways. Singer had a complex relationship to Judaism. He seems to me enmeshed in it always and to come closest to it in his latter works. The two initial books in this volume "A Friend of Kafka" and "A Crown of Feathers" have a more searching, skeptical tone for me than most of the stories in "Passions".
The titles of each book are well-chosen. and I enjoyed the stories on which they are based. In "A Friend of Kafka" (1970), I also particularly liked the stories "The Cafeteria" and "Something is There". In the National Book Award winning, "A Crown of Feathers" (1974), the stories I liked included "A Day in Coney Island" and "The Cabalist of East Broadway". In the aptly named volume "Passions" (1975) which explores both religious and sexual longings, the stories "Old Love", "Sabbath in Portugal", and "The New Year Party" were among those I most enjoyed. The latter two books also include short introductions by Singer which offer insight into what he was about.
The LOA volume includes a chronology of Singer's life, notes on the texts and on the stories, and a brief glossary of Yiddish expressions found in the stories.
I was grateful for the opportunity to explore I.B. Singer again through this LOA volume. Perhaps I will have the opportunity to explore the remaining two volumes in the LOA series. My favorite story by Singer, "The Spinoza of Market Street" is included in the first volume. I was glad to see as well that Singer may be of interest to new young readers, as evidenced by my grandson.
