The Collected Stories

Started reading Singer only recently and am completely blown away. Some Nobel prize winners get legitimized by the prize while others legitimize the prize. Singer is in the latter category. Before coming to Singer, I had read a ton of Cormac McCarthy. I think there are parallels between the two. Both are obsessed with suffering and loss and move seamlessly from gritty realism to philosophy and allegory. With both, the reader is liable to feel intimidated, to feel as if he or she is not on the proper spiritual or intellectual stage to truly comprehend the stories. And that is fine with Singer and McCarthy. I think that is a fair definition of genius for genius cannot exist without integrity.

What sets Singer's stories apart from those of his numerous imitators is a streak of arsenical steel that runs through even the most apparently genial of these folk-like tales. Singer comments in the author's note to this collection: "At its best, art can be nothing more than a means of forgetting the human disaster for a while." Frankly, Singer does not quite accomplish this goal -- the reader never forgets. This is a good representative sampling of his body of work.

These stories are a revelation and a joy to read. Set firmly in the Jewish world, both in Europe and in America, over the years of World War II, Singer infuses every story with endless lessons in Jewish mythology and folk tales. Some of the stories are frightening, some spooky, and some downright melancholy. But every one was interesting. Among the many stories collected here is the tale of Yentl, the Yeshiva boy – a story that was adapted for film. I had seen the film long ago and had no idea I’d trip over the original story in the pages here.

5 bones!!!!!
Highly recommended, and thanks to Uncle Stevie for recommending this author.

These stories are like poetry of family history. Singer is well named, for he sings of the songs of people's souls.

I was lucky enough to be introduced to him when I was a young adult, and open to the flavors and sounds of other cultures. I fell madly in love with his narratives.

Isaac Bashevis Singer should be mandatory reading for high school students.

I sampled 13 of these stories from the breadth of Singer's career and will definitely come back for the rest. All of the stories are tightly focused around a singular worldview (especially the early ones set in Frampol), but that doesn't make any of them predictable. There is much to discover here about Yiddish culture, the immigrant experience, and magic.

Review of The Dead Fiddler (aka The Dead Musician) from this collection.

Having negligible knowledge of Yiddish folklore, traditions, and vocabulary impaired my appreciation of this long-winded story, and I was sure I missed a lot. There's a strong comic element, as well as more theological ideas, but neither aspect spoke to me. Fortunately, I did enjoy the illuminating discussion in Short Story Club.

It’s set in the Jewish community of a Polish village and focuses on the family of Reb Sheftel, a devout grain merchant. His two sons have married and moved away, leaving only his wife, Zise Feige, and a spoiled teenage daughter, Liebe Yentl, at home.

There’s lots of domestic detail, but the focus is on finding a suitable husband for show more Liebe Yentl. This becomes complicated when she is inexplicably possessed by one dybbuk, and then a second.

It’s a story of opposites: life and death, sacred and profane, men and women, comedy and tragedy, rationality and superstition. At the heart of those contrasts is the dybbuk of a bawdy, drunken dead fiddler, who argues with a second dybbuk of a young prostitute, and with everyone else (family, villagers, rabbi etc).

Image: “Dybbuk”, by Ephraim Moshe Lilien (1874–1925). (Source)

Another Singer story

I fared a little better a couple of years ago with Singer's Gimpel the Fool, which may well be in this large collection of his stories, but which I read in Manguel's first anthology of fantastical short stories, and reviewed HERE.

Short story club

I read this in Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic, by Alberto Manguel, from which I’m reading one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 24 March 2025.

You can join the group here. show less

As you read the stories, you enter his world. Slowly and first, then you're there: The old folk tales, and then life in the modern world: And how the folk tales cast a shadow on the modern world. Beautiful stories, beautiful endings.