A STUDY GUIDE

The Collected Stories Noonday Press By Isaac Bashevis Singer A Study Guide by Stephen Steinbock Read a review from Reform Judaism magazine Order this book...

OVERVIEW

The Collected Stories contains forty-seven tales by Singer, selected by the author himself for publication in 1982. During his lifetime, in addition to more than a dozen novels translated into English, he produced several memoirs, children's books, and nearly 150 short stories.

The settings of Singer's stories span the globe, from Tel Aviv to Miami Beach, and take place throughout the ages. But the bulk of his stories take place in Eastern European villages in the late 1800s through the First World War, and in New York during the 1940s-70s. His themes include love, death, temptation, and getting old. His stories explore the spirit world (demons, angels, ghosts, transmigration of souls, etc.), love transcending death, and the decline of religion. He wrote ghost stories, children's farces, and intellectual discourse in story form.

Singer was born in 1904 in Radzymin, Poland, to a Hassidic rabbinic family. His father was a rabbi and teacher who moved his family to Warsaw when Isaac was four. Following after his older brother, Israel Joshua Singer, he became a journalist, an editor, and a translator of popular works into Yiddish. In 1935 he moved to New York, where he continued to write for the Yiddish press-particularly the Jewish Daily Forward-as well as writing original works of fiction. Among his novels are Satan in Goray (1935), The Family Moskat (1950), The Magician of Lublin (1960), The Slave (1962), and Shosha (1978). In 1978 Singer received the Nobel Prize for Literature, being the only Yiddish writer to ever win that merit. He died in 1991 at the age of 87 in Surfside, Florida.

With forty-seven stories in this 600+ page volume, a complete and comprehensive discussion of the entire book is impractical. A better approach is to discuss The Collected Works over several sessions, each time focusing on two or three stories.

Reading Singer can leave the reader charmed, as well as perplexed. Many of his stories appear to be mini-portraits of life that set up a situation and then end without resolution. Other stories describe chance meetings at clubs and cafeterias in which characters discuss philosophical ideas, and do little else. Such stories are best approached as literary sketches, like haiku that serve as thought-provoking points-of-view.

Singer's story "Short Friday" illustrates this. On the surface, it is an account of an older couple that dies of asphyxiation on a mid-winter Friday evening when their wood stove backs up. But "Short Friday" defies such simple narrative description; the story evokes many elements common in Singer's work: love, faith, and transmigration of souls, among others.

DISCUSSION TOPICS

General:

1. Discuss and compare the images of pre-war Eastern Europe in stories such as "Gimpel the Fool," "The Little Shoemakers," "Short Friday," "the Dead Fiddler," and ""Moon and Madness."
2. How does Singer's portrayal of shtetl life differ from his images of Polish city life, and intellectual gatherings such as the Writer's Club? Compare the stories in question to stories like "The Spinoza of Market Street," "A Friend of Kavka," and "Vanvild Kava?"
3. How do the stories with pre-war settings differ from the post-war stories set in New York? Look at stories like "The Séance," " The Letter Writer," A Day in Coney Island," and "The Cabalist of East Broadway."
4. What is Singer's view of sin, apostasy, and repentance as illustrated in stories like Gimpel the Fool," "Zeidlus the Pope" and "A Crown of Feathers?"
5. How does Singer use the devil and demons in his stories? Look at "Gimpel the Fool," "The Gentleman from Cracow," and "A Crown of Feathers."
6. Love, marriage, and erotic liaison is a frequent theme in Singer's stories. Are love relationships predestined or accidental? How does Singer portray relationships in "The Spinoza of Market Street," "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy," Short Friday," "A Crown of Feathers," "Old Love," "Three Encounters," and "The Reencounter."
7. Regarding his custom of writing in Yiddish, Singer was once quoted as saying "A dead language is good, if you're writing about ghosts." What do you think he meant? How is this statement reflected in his stories? What are Singer's attitudes about death as portrayed in "Gimpel the Fool," The Unseen," "Short Friday," Power of Darkness," and "The Reencounter?"

Story-specific topics:

"Gimpel the Fool"

1. Why do the villagers call Gimpel a "fool"?
2. In what way is Gimpel's foolishness paradigmatic of the human condition? The Jewish condition?
3. Is Gimpel redeemed of his foolishness?

"The Spinoza of Market Street"

1. What is Dr. Fichelson's position toward the world? Why does he seem so submissive?
2. Why do his neighbors consider him a convert?
3. In what way is his marriage to Dobbe miraculous?
4. At the end of the story, Fichelson calls himself a fool. What does he mean by this? How does his "foolishness" differ from that of Gimpel (in "Gimpel the Fool")?

"Yentl the Yeshiva Boy"

1. What compelled Yentl to masquerade as a boy?
2. What are Yentl/Anshel's personal and religious motivations?
3. How are those motivations consistent/inconsistent with the roles of 19th century Jewish males and females?
4. Explore the love-triangle of Yentl, Avigdor, and Hadass. How are these various interrelationships reveal themselves? What are the needs and motives of each of them, and to what extent are those needs met?
5. How does Singer resolve Yentl's dilemma?

"A Friend of Kafka"

1. In what way does Jacques Kohn see his life as a chess-game with God? Who is winning the game? How is Kohn similar/different from Sholem Aleichem's character Tevye the Dairyman?
2. The character Bamberg says (on the bottom of page 283), "Jews remember too much." What does he mean by this? What triggered the statement? Is the statement justified?

"A Crown of Feathers"

1. What was Akhsa searching for? What did she want out of life? Why was she defiant regarding her father's choices of husbands for her?
2. What does the crown of feathers represent? How do the two crowns that Akhsa finds differ?
3. How does this story portray Jewish folk-religion? How do Jewish folk views of sin, fate, repentance, and death differ from the ideas and beliefs of mainstream Jewish doctrine?

FURTHER READING

Isaac Bashevis Singer, Satan in Goray (1935), The Slave (1962), Shosha (1978);

Seth Wolitz, The Hidden Isaac Bashevis Singer (2002);

D.N. Miller, Recovering the Canon: Essays on Isaac Bashevis Singer (1986);

Edward Alexander, Isaac Bashevis Singer (1980);

Edward Alexander, Isaac Bashevis Singer: A Study of the Short Fiction (1990);

Grace Farrell Lee, From Exile to Redemption: The Fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer (1987);

Grace Farrell, Critical Essays on Isaac Bashevis Singer (1996);

Israel Zamir, Journey to My Father, Isaac Bashevis Singer (1995 - Hebrew edition, 1994);

Janet Hadda, Isaac Bashevis Singer: A Life (1997);

David Neal Miller, Bibliography of Isaac Bashevis Singer (1983);

David Neal Miller, Fear of Fiction: Narrative Strategies in the Works of Isaac Bashevis Singer (1985);

Lester Goran, The Bright Streets of Surfside: The Memoir of a Friendship with Isaac Bashevis Singer (1994). 

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