THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Friday, November 30, 1984
Singer pursues pleasure with a certain
innocent rascality. Sitting across a table
from him, even for an early morning inter-
view, he seemed genuinely pleased. He
has a constant smile. The give-and-take of
conversation lends a certain color to his
skin. This is a man who, even first thing
in the morning, is enjoying himself. He is
courtly and gracious and very Old World-
ly and a tad gnomic — all at the same time.
It's a great balancing act, an act that on-
ly a balance of great yarns and elaborate
fictions could pull off.
This is the morning after the second
debate between Walter Mondale and
Ronald Reagan, a debate that Singer
didn't watch. He is fairly circumspect
about his politics. He says he doesn't
remember who he voted for in 1980: " That
is a military secret." But he stops just this
side of endorsing Reagan, but, he said
mischievously, "Whenever an older man
goes against a younger man," he said,
"I'm for the older man."
This is also the morning after Singer
gave a standing-room-only talk. In about
90 minutes, he would give a reading for
high school students. Although he will
enchant the teenagers as much as he did
the adults the previous evening, he says
that he prefers an older audience. Some of
Continued on next page
When Isaac Bashevis
Singer read to
high school students
recently, he
was in his element:
storytelling.
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