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The latest news and events about Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Sometimes a publisher gets lucky. The publisher works to bring out a book of historical interest that seems to have a modest potential readership, and then events make that book suddenly widely relevant.
Compared to his fiction, Singer’s work as a journalist often gets short shrift. But translator David Stromberg argues that the writer’s output as a newspaper contributor is inseparable from his later books.
The expression “Don’t get me wrong” is a good place to start – an ethical mandate as well as a critic’s dictum.
In 1966, the critic Irving Howe published an essay whose title, “The Other Singer,” testified to a literary usurpation. For American readers in the nineteen-sixties, the name Singer meant Isaac Bashevis Singer. In Howe’s opinion, however, the ascent of I. B. Singer—known to Yiddish readers by his nom de plume, Bashevis—was not a cause for celebration, because it meant the eclipse of a better writer: his older brother, Israel Joshua Singer.
Isaac Bashevis Singer, edited and trans. from the Yiddish by David Stromberg. White Goat, $24.95. Isaac Bashevis Singer originally published each of these pieces under pseudonyms in Forverts, the world's oldest Yiddish newspaper, when he was still relatively unknown. The essays are arranged chronologically, offering readers the unique opportunity to bear witness to the shifts in Singer's perspective as history unfolded
The story, originally “Gimpl tam” in Yiddish, is familiar to English readers as “Gimpel the Fool,” the title Saul Bellow used for his famous 1953 translation. The new, definitive edition contains Singer’s original Yiddish text together with Bellow’s version, alongside a new translation by David Stromberg
Beautifully printed and presented, this new edition is a gift to readers and scholars alike.
Looking back on my life, I can remember always being exceedingly curious about the unusual, the mysterious, the miraculous.
This faith in individual human stories was the reason Singer chose to write in Yiddish rather than Hebrew. In Jewish Eastern Europe, Yiddish was the language of everyday life, but it was traditionally held in low esteem by the learned elite, who wrote their books in the sacred tongue of Hebrew.
Artists, like plants, must have roots, and the deeper the soil, the deeper the roots. Singer recognized that much of contemporary literature was neither new in spirit nor style. In an attempt to be politically correct in accordance with the times, it was banal and had simply dressed up old clichés in “red clothing.”
Who needs Yiddish? It turns out that everybody does. While the essays in this volume on the whole do not match Singer’s fiction at its best, together they provide an invaluable supplement to our understanding of this extraordinary writer’s vision.
The collection of papers of Isaac Bashevis Singer includes handwritten drafts of his writings in Yiddish as well as English translations filled with his own revisions, and it’s full of treasures still to be shared with the world.
One little moment like that — you say, “Hmm, I wonder what that refers to” — can lead to 10 years of research. And you have to grab onto those moments. Those are extremely important moments.
Old Truths and New Clichés brims with stunning archival finds that will make a significant impact on how readers understand Singer and his work. Singer's critical essays have long been overlooked because he has been thought of almost exclusively as a storyteller.
“It could be said that Hebrew succeeded and Yiddish failed, but for me Yiddish is far from being a failure”
From “Journalism and Literature,” an essay that appears for the first time in English in the collection Old Truths and New Clichés, which will be published next month by Princeton University Press.
Translator Stromberg (Baddies) brings together 19 essays by Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) in this touching collection.
When Isaac Bashevis Singer passed away in 1991, he knew that his work would be left undone. He had left behind heaps and piles of material in his so-called “chaos room” – the walk-in closet where he kept manuscripts, clippings, notebooks, certificates, diplomas, awards, letters, and many other documents and objects from his literary and personal life.
On the bed lay a small man, stark naked, with a little black beard and gray in the middle. His high sunburned forehead was pink and peeling.
For some time now, people have spoken of Yiddish and Hebrew coming closer together. It’s hard to understand what exactly this “closer together” is supposed to be about—or what it should allow us to do.
This warm-hearted comic romance tells the story of hapless teenager David Bendiger, who washes up penniless in 1922 Warsaw.
The New York Times called Isaac Bashevis Singer a Polish writer. Here’s how Wikipedia warriors made him Jewish again.
Isaac Bashevis Singer’s first literary venture was lost for almost a century—until a partial copy resurfaced in an attic in Poland.
A searingly personal, deeply moving prayer is discovered in the Nobel Laureate’s papers.
Almost all of Singer’s stories were first published in Yiddish, most often in The Jewish Daily Forward, the Yiddish newspaper for which Singer worked. “On a Ship” is a rare exception. Believed to be written sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s, the story was sent to us by David Stromberg, the editor of Singer’s estate. He found the story — translated to English and in handwritten fragments in Yiddish — while going through Singer’s vast archives. This is its first publication in any language. It was translated from the Yiddish by the author and Nancy Gerstein.
Isaac Bashevis Singer’s earliest Chelm stories appeared in English as part of his first collection for children, Zlateh the Goat (1966), illustrated by Maurice Sendak, who was then already known as an author and illustrator of children's literature.