Book summaryIn Isaac Bashevis Singer's title story, a high-minded philosopher is brought down to earth and forced to face his own foolishness by a bent, old, mustachioed spinster. The lofty, the intellectual, and the supernatural frequently collide with the base and the lewd in Singer's stories, as he effortlessly blends the grotesque and the sublime. Singer's preposterous world is not our world, "but it is only once removed from the true world,'' as one of his characters explains. His Rabbis, demons, fools, and false prophets provide us with fantastical entertainment while reminding us of hidden truths about human existence. These 11 stories are a delight. Media reviews"[Singer's] seeming artlessness--like that of a well-wrought ballad--is intentional, sophisticated and artful in the highest degree." |
The Spinoza of Market Streetby SINGER, ISAAC BASHEVIS
Book desription: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Very Good. 1980. Soft Cover. 0374502560 . 214 pages, pictorial wrappers, very good. "In these tales about Poland's Jewish ghettos before World War II Isaac Bashevis Singer creates a world so fresh, so full of the beat and cries of astonishing life that he can fairly be called one of the few originals now writing." Time Magazine. From the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition: Isaac Bashevis Singer, 1904-91, American novelist and short-story writer in the Yiddish language, younger brother of I. J. Singer, b. Leoncin, Poland (then in Russia). The son of a provincial Hasidic rabbi, he moved to Warsaw in the early 1920s and became associated with the city's Yiddish literati. He emigrated to the United States in 1935 and worked in New York City as a journalist on the Yiddish-language Jewish Daily Forward, which also published much of his early fiction. In 1943 he became an American citizen. Singer's American career was launched a decade later when his story "Gimpel the Fool" was discovered by Irving Howe, translated by Saul Bellow, and published in the Partisan Review. Singer's work, often frankly sexual, draws heavily on Jewish folklore, religion, and mysticism and frequently deals with shtetl life in pre-Holocaust Eastern Europe. Many of his later works treat the loneliness of old age and the sense of alienation produced in Jews by the dissolution of values through assimilation with the Gentile world. His novels include Satan in Goray (1933, tr. 1955), The Family Moskat (1945, tr. 1950), The Slave (tr. 1962), The Manor (tr. 1967), Enemies (tr. 1972), Shosha (tr. 1978), The Penitent (tr. 1983), Scum (tr. 1991), and the posthumously published Shadows on the Hudson (tr. 1997). Singer is also highly regarded for his hundreds of vivid, imaginative, perceptive, and witty short stories. Collections include Gimpel the Fool (tr. 1961), The Spinoza of Market Street (tr. 1961), Old Love (tr. 1979), and The Death of Methuselah (tr. 1985). In 2004 his Collected Stories, in English translation, were published in three volumes. Singer also wrote books for children and several plays, notably The Mirror (tr. 1973). Though he wrote in Yiddish, he was fluent in English and closely supervised the English translations of his works. In 1978 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Yiddish-language author to be so honored. .
Bookseller Terms of SaleAll items offered subject to prior sale. Prices are net to all. Shipping within the U.S. $4 (by priority mail if book fits in flat-rate envelope, otherwise by media mail). International orders: $9 by global priority air mail if available, otherwise will quote surface & air rates. Libraries can be invoiced upon request. Any material may be returned if found unsatisfactory for any reason. |
|||||
(US)
