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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Many good narrations make it worth buying,
By
This review is from: The Spinoza of Market Street and Other Stories (Hardcover)
First, I feel I should list the stories included in this little gem of a book:1)"The Spinoza of Market Street" 2)"The Black Wedding" 3)"A Tale of Two Liars" 4)"The Shadow of a Crib" 5)"Shiddah and Kuziba" 6)"Caricature" 7)"The Beggar Said So" 8)"The Man Who Came Back" 9)"A Piece of Advice" 10)"In the Poorhouse" 11)"The Destruction of Kreshev" With the exception of "Shiddah and Kuziba", all these stories are set in the same place: the Poland of centuries past, when large Jewish communities lived in the towns near the border with Russia (sometimes Russia itself controlled Poland). These stories involve love, treason, lies, evil, philosophy, lust, sex and much more. Though some stories are not very interesting, I wasn't disappointed by any of them. I will write a little about those I liked the most. "A Tale of Two Liars" has a plot whose simplicity reminds me of the best short narrations by J.L. Borges. Nothing is left at the end for the reader to wonder about: though its written in I.B.Singer's usual style (full of sometimes unneccesary, "by-the-way", details), the plot is so well made and (what else should I say?) complete, that it is as if it were a sphere that you grasp in its entierty with just one hand. "Shadow" is philosophical, with a lot of misanthropic and misogynous ramblings. Its ending, with the ghosts of the two main character coming back to haunt the town, has the same eerie tone as that of Joyce's "The Dead". "Caricature" stands up to its title: an old writer whose self-doubt makes him unable to clear his stinking and dusty room of useless outdated 'rubbish' (old magazines and letters that he has not bothered to open or read) or publish his long-awaited manuscript pokes fun at everything, including his wife, his own life and his obscure supporters. "The Destruction of Kreshev" reminds me of García Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude". It is simply a masterpiece that has to be read, a mix of science-fiction, horror and jewish folklore, a tale of how religious, supposedly upright intellectuals can end corrupting themselves by "too much thinking" and instronspection. "The Man Who Came Back", about a man who is revived only to be possesed by an evil spirit, and "A Piece of Advice", a kind of fable about pessimist, angry people acting as if they were the opposite of that, are also worth reading. "Kreshev" and "Spinoza" are the only stories that appear in "The Collecteded Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer".
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
In short stories too, the prose of IBS is mastery,
By
This review is from: The Spinoza of Market Street (Hardcover)
- I refer to to the Spanish version of Brugera (?)
I read this book some years ago with some caution, because I have known IBS as a novelist and somehow I had the expectation that the short stories might disappoint me. I was wrong, the prose is unique and the wisdom is there as everything the maestro writes. I feel compelled to learn yiddish right away.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sublime Singer - For the title story alone,
By Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)
This review is from: Spinoza of Market Street (Mass Market Paperback)
The title story of this work is one of the greatest of all Singer's stories. It tells of a poor aged sick student of philosophy who has dedicated his whole life to understanding Spinoza's thought, and his meeting with a poor, ugly , cleaning lady who comes to care for him in his illness. It is a story which in a way invokes great metaphysical dichotomies , between the Ideal and the Real, between Spirit and Matter(Body). But essentially it is one of the most moving love- stories ever written , a story which somehow finds the divine in the physical, but nonetheless as would be Singer's way, ironically. It's concluding line is one of the most striking I know in all of Literature.
Read and enjoy.
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