Customer Reviews

THE Collected stories

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I hesitate to even comment on this book for fear of not doing it justice. It's a collection of the best short stories of the Nobel Prize-winning writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. He definitely is *not* a minimalist in today's fashionable style. You will find fabulous riches here: satire, history, horror, fantasy, faith, despair, wonders. It starts with "Gimpel the Fool" of course; it's all of Singer in a nutshell. Is this poor wanderer of eastern Europe mad, or does he really see the world beyond this one? His kindness and faith mark him as an eternal victim--by this world's standards he is an idiot and easy mark But is he the real human being and his tormentors really just animals? And what sort of God would let it come to that? I love this book with all my heart and fervently advise you to get ahold of it. It might change your life.

For anyone not familiar with Singer's work, this provides something of an intense, but deeply engaging, introduction. Although the setting is often the closed world of Poland's rural Jewish communities before the Nazi invasion, these stories are replete with the most profound insights about human nature that are universally applicable. Told with dazzling skill, and using a wonderful sense of realistic detail (including beautiful descriptions of the natural world), these stories are rich, full and deeply moving. Within the small communities Singer uses as his settings, he explores faith, despair, love, longing, and above all else, loneliness, in ways that are as moving as they are brilliant. Like Tolstoy, Singer is able to explore these profound themes without the slightest pretension and without writing "philosophical" prose. Indeed, reading them is like listening to a brilliant oral story teller who effortlessly draws you into his tale--but then you realize you are, in fact, reading an extraordinarily sophisticated text. This is some of the finest writing I've read in many years and is one of those books I would take with me to that desert island everyone talks about.

This book is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The publisher's website states that this book is a SELECTION, not a complete collection: "The forty-seven stories in this collection, selected by Singer himself out of nearly one hundred and fifty, range from the publication of his now-classic first collection, Gimpel the Fool, in 1957, until 1981. They include supernatural tales, slices of life from Warsaw and the shtetls of Eastern Europe, and stories of the Jews displaced from that world to the New World, from the East Side of New York to California and Miami."

CONTENTS:

Gimpel the Fool

The Gentleman from Cracow

Joy

The Little Shoemakers

The Unseen

The Spinoza of Market Street

The Destruction of Kreshev

Taibele and her Demon

Alone

Yentl the Yeshiva Boy

Zeidlus the Pope

The Last Demon

Short Friday

The Séance

The Slaughterer

The Dead Fiddler

Henne Fire

The Letter Writer

A Friend of Kafka

The Cafeteria

The Joke

Powers

Something Is There

A Crown of Feathers

A Day in Coney Island

The Cabalist of East Broadway

A Quotation from Klopstock

A Dance and a Hop

Grandfather and Grandson

Old Love

The Admirer

The Yearning Heifer

A Tale of Two Sisters

Three Encounters

Passions

Brother Beetle

The Betrayer of Israel

The Psychic Journey

The Manuscript

The Power of Darkness

The Bus

A Night in the Poorhouse

Escape from Civilization

Vanvild Kava

The Reencounter

Neighbors

Moon and Madness

This book satisfied my craving to learn the type of world mygrandparents came from, their language and attitutes. I laughed sohard from Singers descriptions of his characters that I thought I would bust. This is a book for all to learn to appreciate a rich culture that existed in Eastern Europe and was transported to America with those remaining lost in the Holocaust. Singer has some imagination and the talent to relay his thoughts clearly that you feel that you are among the characters. The translation from Yiddish to English was well done and conveyed the message completely. A must for those who want to expand their knowledge of the roots of the Jewish people and their lives and experiences in a world lost.

Welcome to Isaac's world. His short stories take you through his life in New York City, back to Poland, and far back to the villages of his ancestors. It's a world of the occult, imps around every corner, and religeon as a part of daily life.

Reading his stories is like getting grandfather's tales about the old country. A little bit spooky, a little bit comforting, and quite a bit nostalgic.

Although Jews will probably understand more of the historical references, the stories are well written enough for a broad audience. Perhaps this reader's only regret is not being able to read them in their original Yiddish. The translations are done by an all star cast including Saul Bellow, but perhaps nothing beats the original.

Invidious or not, comparisons between writers--particularly if they inhabit similar genres--are inevitable. Hemingway used the analogy of boxing: Faulkner could go, say, ten rounds with any of his contemporaries but would be knocked out by Joyce. (I'm paraphrasing but you get the idea.) Well, in every book about the craft of fiction I've read, and nearly every interview with contemporary writers, Chekhov is acclaimed as the master of the short story. Singer is rarely mentioned. When he is, it's often with a patronizing wink, as if he were a quaint old boor to be respected more for nostalgia's sake than merit. In fact, Singer is the undisputed heavyweight champ of the short story. His stories seem less crafted than channeled, as if Singer had a pipeline to Heaven and was God's amanuensis. Henry Miller said that reading Singer was like "eating pie." In other words, pure pleasure. He's right, but along with the pleasure, these stories go straight to the soul and stick. It's not hyperbole to say that Singer's stories capture and convey life--and sometimes the afterlife--in all its humor, sadness, beauty and wonder. Buy this book.

Singer is one of the supreme masters of the short story. His stories are filled with incredible energy and life. Demonic lust drives many characters, and one of the reasons he is much loved is his seeming modern depiction of characters who come from the old world, the world of Jewish Poland . But the stories I most love are ones in which a power of beneficence overwhelms in some surprising way. The great Gimpel the Fool is one example of this, the story of the cuckold the eternal innocent and believer who knows once he stops believing in his wife he will stop believing in God and the goodness of the world. Another of these great stories is the Little Shoemakers with its tale of successive generations in old world and new continuing the family trade despite the loss and transformation in tradition time brings. Another of this kind of great story is the 'Spinoza of Market Street' with its revelation of an unexpected love. The list is long of very great and moving stories.Singer is a master- teller who can be stark and frightening at times but gives that sense the great writers' do , of life in literature as something deeply deeply meaningful. Who reads this book will taste life deeply and more deeply love it.

Isaac Bashevis Singer was a master storyteller and any reader will be well-rewarded for spending time with his "Collected Stories." Many of these stories are set in Poland before World War II or post-war New York City, but there is a spiritual energy that drives all of these tales, regardless of location. Old World demons and devils can be found in "The Unseen," "The Destruction of Kreshev," "Henne Fire," "Zeidlus the Pope," about the Devil tempting a Rabbi into becoming the Pope, and one of the collection's best, "The Dead Fiddler," about a would-be bride inhabited by dueling dybbuks. New World mystical forces are recounted in "Powers," about a man's seductive past, and "The Psychic Journey," about war breaking out during a writer's trip to Israel. Several stories involve survivors of World War II, among them "The Cafeteria," about a woman who imagines seeing Hitler in a New York City deli, and the unexpectedly heartbreaking "The Joke," about a practical joke taken seriously. Every story is deeply felt and richly detailed, including the more comic ones such as "Gimpel the Fool," "The Yearning Heifer," and "The Admirer," about a writer's fan disrupting his day. Choosing favorite stories in this collection is almost impossible, because they are all unforgettable, but ones that resonated most richly for me include "Taibele and her Demon," about a woman's mysterious night visitor, "The Little Shoemakers," about a family of cobblers who courageously survive two world wars, "The Manuscript," about a mistress who saves her lover's novel from destruction, and the transformative "A Crown of Feathers," about a young woman losing and then trying to regain her faith.

It almost feels like a guilty pleasure, reading these stories and enjoying them so much. No self-willed stylistic twitchings, no self-conscious twisting and burnishing of sentences or opacity. Pure brilliance, sentence by sentence and, more important, story by story, is what the collection comprises. Somehow, Singer writes page turners that gratify the heart as much as the head. Even if you're a fan of post-modern ironists, take a look at these stories. You'll probably love them. And you don't have to have a working knowledge or, or interest in, Judaism. Beware, however. Disaffection for this collection is a strong indication of a mind in search of a soul.

This is the first ive read of Bashevi Singers work but its sure aint the last.

Ive read quite a lot of the classics and more than a couple of the Nobel prize winners, but I can honestly say that I have a hard time remembering such joyous storytelling. Singer was amazing; it all seems so easy when he tells his stories; its almost like the stories flows from his pen.

The fact that the stories often stem from the culturally rich jewish community in Europe makes it even more interesting. We tend to forget today, that much of what we call art was carried at great length by that community, together with the russian.

Anyway...if we forget all this and center on the prose, i end up with the following recommendation:

If you want to read something marvellous, enchanting and extraordinary,

dont miss Singer.