'Nobody was looking for this kind of writing from him'
Long-dead author Isaac Bashevis Singer wanted you to see these unearthed essays
‘Old Truths and New Cliches’ is made up almost entirely of works previously unpublished in English, handpicked by the Nobel laureate and edited by scholar David Stromberg
By Yaakov Schwartz
Before he died, Nobel prizewinning author Isaac Bashevis Singer brought his son, Israel Zamir, into his “chaos room” — a walk-in closet packed with so much material that in the author’s words, he’d have to “live another 100 years” to see it all to print.
After Singer’s death, the contents of the chaos room — thousands of pages of unpublished manuscripts, notebooks, correspondence, along with photos and other documents — were transferred to the Harry Ransom Center archives at the University of Texas in Austin. Once there, after a lengthy cataloging process, few academics explored the unpublished material.
In 2014, author and literary scholar David Stromberg traveled to Austin in search of an unpublished essay by Singer referenced at the end of his novel “The Penitent.” As it turned out, when Stromberg stepped into the archives that day, he was entering the intimate world of the late Jewish author.