Master of Dreams: A Memoir of Isaac Bashevis Singer [Hardcover]

Dvorah Telushkin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1997

Through a series of poignant and striking vignettes, Master of Dreams describes how Telushkin became Singer's assistant, then his editor, and after five years, his translator. And finally, she became the one person to whom Singer taught his craft as a writer. Throughout her tenure with Singer, Telushkin kept detailed diaries chronicling both their literary efforts and the evolution of their personal relationship. With this affectionate assessment of the later years of Singer's life, Telushkin reveals the brilliant but troubled Nobel laureate in all his complexity. Included here are many of the great moments in Singer's life - his winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978, his fiery encounter with then-Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, and his surprising meeting with Barbra Streisand, who adapted and starred in the movie version of Singer's short story "Yentl." But Master of Dreams reveals the private Singer as well, the "merry pessimist" haunted by despair and torn between the old-world ethics of his Hasidic forebears in Europe and the moral abandon of modern secular man.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Personal assistant and translator to celebrated Yiddish writer Singer during his last years (from 1975 to 1991), Telushin here describes both his daily routine and his thoughts on literature and life. His marriage, his relationship with his brother, and his troubled old age are all poignantly depicted, as is his character?a mixture of foolishness, vanity, and deception along with goodness, wisdom, and artistic power that the author renders fairly. Telushkin also discusses Singer's early writings and the nature of the Yiddish language. During her time with Singer, Telushin grew significantly as both a person and a literary figure, but eventually she had to struggle for independence from his overriding personality. An honest portrait of a great artist and a harsh man; recommended for Jewish studies collections.?Gene Shaw, NYPL
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

For most of the last 14 years of his life, I.B. Singer was assisted by Telushkin, a bright young woman who, in this charming and often poignant memoir, recalls their relationship with striking candor. When Telushkin offered to drive the Nobel laureate to Bard College for the seminar he was teaching--in exchange for being allowed to audit the course--she never expected that he would agree, or that it would lead to a lengthy and turbulent professional and personal relationship with the last of the great Yiddish writers. The man she encountered was a natural charmer, an inveterate flatterer whose childlike demeanor could include the tantrums and dark moods of a spoiled child. Over the course of their time together, she went from being an unpaid chauffeur to serving as his secretary, amanuensis, and eventually a translator of some 20 of his short stories; she also became a close friend, frequent confidant, and surrogate daughter. Telushkin eventually found a second career for herself as a storyteller, and Master of Dreams is a storyteller's book; although it has a loosely chronological structure, it is really a series of thematically linked anecdotes, illuminating a complex, often disturbing character. In the course of his nearly 90 years of life, Singer abandoned or wounded nearly everyone he had been close to, from the son he ignored to his wife of 51 years. Telushkin is no exception, and much of the book's power comes from the excruciating deterioration of their friendship as the psychic demons that drove the writer combined with the no less potent hobgoblins of age and physical breakdown. But the portrait that emerges is by and large a loving one, often lovely to read, honest to a fault, and the man portrayed comes across as an admirable figure, albeit one with huge flaws. (b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 350 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co; 1st edition (October 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688118666
• ISBN-13: 978-0688118662
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,578,330 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A haunting farewell to Isaac Bashevis Singer., December 9, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Master of Dreams: A Memoir of Isaac Bashevis Singer (Hardcover)

Isaac Bashevis Singer was a controversial figure during his lifetime. Though his place in the twentieth-century canon of literature now seems secure, it is still often pointed out that thanks to the Holocaust, Singer's fame was granted to him at the cost of obscurity for other Yiddish writers. His personality also was known to be difficult. There are many who will tell you that Singer was a bastard, including Elie Wiesel (not normally a gossip) in "All Rivers Run to the Sea." Singer probably was one at least fifty percent of the time. Too many stories of his caprice, vanity, and greed for sex and money have been told to be discounted. As to the nature behind both the faults and the gifts, what one saw of it depended on who one was; any competitors for the limelight, real or imagined, got the worst of it. Women got both the best and the worst of Singer, the charm and naivete combined with the mistrust and the manipulation. It is thus fitting that a possibly definitive memoir of Singer should have been written by a woman. Dvorah Telushkin was the writer's secretary and occasional translator. She comes across as a most lovable person, without any of Singer's guile. But they still had a lot in common: they were both fearful and susceptible to flattery. Ms. Telushkin was estranged from her father, Singer from his only child. Dvorah's innocence fit Singer's feminine ideal, exemplified by the child-woman in "Shosha." For years, theirs was a relationship in perfect order. But after winning the Nobel Prize, Singer's ego ran away with him while his health deteriorated rapidly. He became more and more paranoid, finally rejecting Dvorah as he had rejected most others. Ms. Telushkin manages the difficult feat of recording Singer's decline honestly and without sentimentality, while leaving us in no doubt as to her lasting love for him and little as to its essential justice. It is to be hoped that she continues as a writer, one with large ambitions. She has been influenced by Singer; her achievement is to make his eerie tone blend so well with her sense of her own life as a bad dream that the influence comes to seem more like an inheritance. She rescues Singer from the context of Yiddish nostalgia and places him within his own heritage of Jewish fear, uncertainty, and faith, as little G-rated as Celine. This is a deeply touching, near-perfect book. It is required reading for Singer fans, but it is also recommended to anyone struggling to understand a difficult and much-loved parent.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Honest, Just, Revealing, October 15, 2007

By 

Eric Maroney (Trumansburg, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Master of Dreams: A Memoir of Isaac Bashevis Singer (Paperback)

Here Dvorah Telushkin provides a complex and layered portrait of Isaac Singer and her interactions with him. There is the added attraction that Telushkin has a well crafted writing style, elevated while smooth, homey while erudite. To its credit, this memoir is not crafted in any chronological fashion. Each chapter is a slice of her life with Singer, their work together and conversations. She weaves us in and out of Singer and his world, leisurely but with a purpose, even reproducing, to great effect, the Yiddish cadences and accent of his spoken English. Possibly the strongest element in this memoir is Telushkin's fierce honesty with her own complex set of emotions about Singer. Here is a man who she is fashioning as a father figure, and (as a notorious Don Juan and egocentric) he is a poor pick. Telushkin shows the darker side of Singer's personality, and her own odd attraction to it; so in the end, this book is more about Teluskhin's journey of self-discovery and maturity than it is about Isaac Singer. But this does not detract from the quality of this work: driven, honest and beautiful, it is a haunting book of genuine emotional integrity.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Anyone who loves Singer will learn from this work, September 19, 2004

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Master of Dreams: A Memoir of Isaac Bashevis Singer (Hardcover)

This work gives an inside view of the daily life and work habits of one of the greatest masters of the short story the world has known. It is honest and painful in its realistic description of the great writer's last years. It is filled with rich Jewish knowledge and the wisdom and wit of the paradoxical difficult and yet very great writer Singer. Anyone who loves this writer will benefit from reading this very rich and vibrant work of devotion and memory.