Isaac Bashevis Singer: Writings on Yiddish and Yiddishkayt
David Stromberg
(Edited by)
Description
Isaac Bashevis Singer's Writings on Yiddish and Yiddishkayt: The War Years, 1939-1945, is the first major effort to fill the gap between the Nobel laureate's Yiddish and English oeuvre.
Knowing that a whole world, a whole way of life, a whole cultural treasure bound up with Yiddish and Yiddishkayt--that they were all going up in flames before his very eyes--was crushing for Singer, driving him to put pen to paper and write.
His wartime writing--appearing in an intensely urgent tone--sought to record not only the customs but also the immediacy of the loss that was taking place at that very moment.
Product Details
| Publisher | White Goat Press |
| Publish Date | November 14, 2023 |
| Pages | 181 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Paperback / softback |
| EAN/UPC | 9798987707890 |
| Dimensions | 8.0 X 5.1 X 0.3 inches | 0.6 pounds |
About the Author
Reviews
― Publishers Weekly
"Sheds light on the early, developmental years of the young, passionate writer."
― Kirkus Reviews
"A solid collection of Yiddish thought from an esteemed writer, at a pivotal time in Jewish history."
― Library Journal
"This spellbinding collection of essays, written with raw urgency in the Shoah's shadow, offers a new view not just of Bashevis Singer's worldly and other‐worldly tilts but of a Yiddishkeit pumping with great vitality through literary conduits."
― Benjamin Balint, author of Bruno Schulz: An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History
"Perhaps the first book in English of Singer's writings to get fully out from under his very compelling, very successful self-presentation and show us the man himself, responding to the Holocaust in real-time and in the vigorous, straightforward language of the newspapers. The great writer's storytelling power repeatedly bursts through, while Stromberg's insightful headnotes give us a kind of biography of Singer in the war years while revealing much about the roots of Singer's later art."
― Damion Searls, author of "A Guide to Isaac Bashevis Singer"; translator of Hans Keilson, Comedy in a Minor Key and 1944 Diary, and Jon Fosse, Septology
"...we experience Singer's shock and agony, as he helplessly watches a complex and rich cultural world--his world--die."
― Helen Schulman, Public Seminar
"...over time, Singer developed a persona for himself as the sole living inheritor and caretaker of authentic Yiddishkeit. This strategy turned out to be a successful one, especially in the eyes of his English-speaking readers. Thanks to Stromberg's translations, we can see the first signs of Singer's evolution into this role."
― Mikhail Krutikov, Forverts
"...a fascinating window onto the writer and the time period, and will be considered essential for any serious reader of Singer's work."
― Rokhl Kafrissen, Tablet
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