a crown of feathers isaac bashevis singer

The primary problem of Yiddish literature has generally been considered to be its inaccessibility: that is, so much of it has gone untranslated and hence unread. She has also provided the reader with a thorough, thoughtful historical and critical overview in her introduction and notes. Wisse, the author of The Schlemiel as Modern Hero, a critical study of modern Jewish fiction, has in the present volume anthologized five previously untranslated Yiddish novellas. Wisse, in her new book, A Shtetl and Other Yiddish Novellas. That this distinction, seemingly an academic one, is rarely raised as an issue, offers an important clue toward understanding the problem faced by Yiddish writers and, to some degree, their audience that it has been raised at all is to the credit of Ruth R.

It is not a mistake, though, nor does it in any way diminish the extraordinary range and vitality of his work, to connect him with that tradition to which he clearly belongs-Yiddish literature, or more accurately, Jewish writers writing in Yiddish. Reading the stories in this book that deal with familiar places in New York City, you think: he writes like a foreigner-and of course, he is one. Although he has lived in this country since 1935, and many of the stories in his latest collection, A Crown of Feathers, take place in the U.S., it would be a genuine mistake either to compare him with American Jewish writers or to try to place him, however marginally, within their tradition. In the mind of the English-speaking reader, Isaac Bashevis Singer stands almost alone, the single representative of Yiddish writing as a result of this uniqueness he has both benefited and suffered from the peculiarly awed and mystified response that might well be accorded a literary Martian.

A crown of feathers isaac bashevis singer