Customer Reviews

A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing up in Warsaw

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This is one of the most beautiful autobiographical works I have ever read. Singer tells of his Polish childhood in such a simple and yet moving yet. This book is an example of what a great writer can do even using a simple straightforward narrative - technique and quite uncomplicated language. The opening story tells of a child filled with wonder and question, whose curiosity knows no rest. It sets the tone for the whole book. The tone is a kind of wonder at and hunger for life. There is innocence, curiosity and a deep feeling for people and for the world.

One of the most moving chapters is the one on Asher the Milkman, a simple pious man who saved the Singer family when their house was on fire, and they were asleep. This Asher is described in a such a loving way, a strong person, a modest person, a learned person and one not without sorrows and family tragedies.

This is Singer's concluding paragraph of this story.

"After we left Warsaw(during the First World War), we continued to her news of him from time to time. One son died, a daughter fell in love with ayoung man of low origins and Asher was deeply grieved. I do not know whether he lived to see the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. he probably died before that. But such Jews as he were dragged off to the death camps. May these memoirs serve as a monument to him and his like , who lived in sanctity and died as martyrs."

Singer tells of his love of storytelling, and in doing so he also tells of the friends of his childhood who shared this passion with him. One Shosha is the subject of the last story in the collection which tells of his making a visit to his old neighborhood in Krochmalna Street and meeting there a seeming duplicate of the Shosha he knew. It is her daughter.

Singer also tells a great deal about his childhood , the conflict between his demon- dreaming father and his rational mother the daughter of the Rebbe of Bilgoray. He tells of his older brother Israel Joshua Singer who essentially inspired and encouraged his own writing. He tells of his being filled with questions and his meeting with the work of Spinoza which seemed to answer so many questions at the time.

This review cannot begin to do justice to this work. It does not give its real feeling.

This is a book which makes the reader love life more and want to live more. The spirit of Singer and of the child whose story he tells is of a person so hungry for life, so appreciative of what he sees and knows of the world. It is a work created in a tone of wonder.

What a masterpiece.