Page Four
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Sunday, Oct6ber 26, 1.975
BOO
KS
\ Singer: Last of the great storytellers
By MARTIN PORTER .I
THERE WAS A TIME when
there were no writers.
There were storytellers, people
who wound intricate tales of
adventure, mystery, romance
and suspense. They were indi-
viduals with imaginations so viv-
id, so endless that everything
they saw was somehow incor-
porated into another story, an-
other dream. Butwereuthey
writers? To give them such a
distinction is to do them a dis-
service. Words were but a tool,
one that some mastered more
than others, but still just a tool
that was never allowed to get
in the way.
Today there are writers. The'
word conjures images of Bic
pens, IBM typewriters, legal
pads and corrasable bond. And
for better or for worse these
are our storytellers, people who
rearrange and interpret thel
world, using the latest break-
throughs in pop psychology.
The storyteller is but a mem-
ory, a man with grey hair and
a wisp of a beard sitting on
a park bench, his hands wav-
ing, his eyes alive, spilling stor-
ies of men he had known, places
he had been, and women he
had loved. It would be a for-
gotten art all together, buried
beneath the sophistication of
modern prose, if it weren't for
Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Now 71 years old, and still as
prolific as ever (he would prob-
ably claim even more so) Sin-
ger talks to us like that prov-
erbial street storyteller, in a
prose that comes naturally and
fluidly to the ear; stories about
mystery, the occult, and the
erotic. The world is seen
through the eyes of a storytell-
er, a man untouched by the
sciences and technology of the
space age, a man who still be-
lieves in dybbucks, demons and
the unknown. And yet, his stor
ies are about real people, real
places and real events, reveal-
ing the complexities of charac-
ters and relationships as no
others' can.
TN HIS MOST recent collec-
tion of short stories (hisl
seventh), Passions, we are once
again treated to more treasures
from the mind of the most crea-
tive of storytellers. The stories
are just as fresh and vital as'
ever. The characters are as
unique and complex. While it
now appears that he is becom-
ing more and more overtly auto-
bio-ranhical, dealing with aging
writers constantly bothered by
insane admirerers ("The Ad-
mirer") or literary gossip ("The
New Year's Party"), the beauty
of the stories and tenderness of
his characters still compare
with his often considered great-
est work "Gimpel the Fool,"
the story of a young gullible
baker, convinced to marry the
town slut.
How has Singer retained his
unique, naive sensitivity to char-
acters and stories while many
of his fellow storytellers have
altered their styles to conform
to the craft demanded by con-
temporary standards? The an-
swer stems from the tradition
in which Singer was schooled.
He is a Yiddish writer, descen-
dent of Mendele, and Peretz, the
storytellers of the commonfolk
throughout the Yiddish speak-
ing world. Singer still writes in
Yiddish (he still contributes all
his material first to the Yiddish
newspaper the Jewish Daily
Forward, a language that is
rapidly dying, a language that
many don't even consider a lan-
guage at all, but a dialect or'
secret code not unlike pig-latin ish businessman, living out his
or slang. But it is a language, fortune and loneliness in a con-
the language of the Jews, spo- dominium down in Miami
ken and written in day to day Beach, is taught the magic and
affairs while the holy Hebrew unearthly power of love by the
was reserved for the synagogue passion of a woman living next
and the private studies of schol- door. Love, in Singer's world,.
ars and rabbis. It is this lan is a mystery, an unexplainable'
guage, filled with folk influences any place, be it pre-arotimoan
and freed from the restrictions or modern day Israel.
of formal tongues, that has al-1
lowed Singer to spill his tales JT IS THIS unity of theme
without intererence. Yiddish is and characters, regardless of
a language that Singer has said, time or locale, that characteriz-
"contains vitamins that other es all of his work. The recent
languages don't have." volume of stories contains tales:
from both eighteenth century
T Russia as well as twentieth cen-
IT IS ODD but at a time' tury Buenos Aires. He allows
when literary criticism is con- us a glimpse of the lives and
stantly on guard, judging each minds of men and women of
new literary work as it relates the shtetls and ghettos of pre-
to the general trend of literary war Poland, a world that was
history, Singer's work stands destroyed before we were born.
apart. Every new story is a new Yet he also shows the remnants
treat, not to be criticized by of that world, the Jews now
contemporary standards nor to scattered all over the globe, in
be compared to contemporary Brooklyn and Jerusalem, fight-
works. The most recent collec- ing to retain some character-I
tion of short stories is no dif- istics of that dead culture, deal-
ferent than most other Singer. ing with the changes and pres-
While for other writers such a sures of modern life.'
statement would be a scathing n
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Brother and
Sister
You and I lived together
in a house no one knew about,
like a beautiful shipwreck
always trying
to rock itself to sleep.
Father stood by the red brick wall
but we painted over him.
He was our secret password,
our wooden Indian,
our decoy for the world, with a fistful
of cigars that others took
out of his hands.
And Mother was hidden in the chimney,
smoke easing from her upturned eyes.
You broke my bathtub galleons
and I hung your doll from the brass
curtain rod.
Our shadows walked on stilts,
and at night we read scandalous stories
about the scissors and the willing
newspaper
in the frontroom at three a.m.
We loved to feel the close
thunder like the cracking of castle walls!
The pincers Mother left clocking
in the hallway closet
terrified us,
and we played our game:
I was the Count, swirling my block
raincoat,
and I bit your neck.
We strolled the windswept moors forever!
You were my first'dance,
my Gothic waltz,
my game of keepoway.
We wondered if we told
stories to the darkness
or the darkness told them to us.
It was a fine house,
a champagne darkness,
a bright space between the pointy teeth.
Now, you've smoked those cigars
Dad had no use for.
And I've found a woman with soft
pincers of her own.-
--Lawrence Russ
criticism, for Singer it is noth-
ing but a compliment. The stor-
ies haven't changed because
Singer's youthful perspective
hasn't changed. He still looks
at the world with alien eyes,
revealing his origins from a cul-
ture that was always separate
from the rest of the world. It
is this characteristic that allows
his work the sensitivity and
subtle naivity that gives us an
original perspective on the con-
fusion of the twentieth century.
Some critics have claimed that,
Several stories in this new
collection find Singer confusing
both worlds. In the role of an
old man, he jumbles the world
of pre-war Poland and 1970's
America. A sight, a smell, a
face will suddenly send him
back ages to his home town of
Bilgoray where his father was
the town rabbi and where hisI
brother Joshua (I.J. Singer, con-
sidered by some to be the great-
est of Yiddish writers) fought
tradition and broke away from
his Jewish training.
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his preoccupation with the su- I
pernatural, a world habitated by iIS CHARACTERS, whether
demons who rule our emotions, they be survivors of the
thoughts and actions, has stifled Holocaust, eccentrics in small
his work. The present collection Polish towns, or assimilated'
for example, is filled with tales Jews in America, are still Jews
of men succumbing to the irre-
sistable powers of a witch ("The united by the tradition they can-j
Witch"), or being tricked and not ignore or forget. It is this
tortured by dybbucks ("The Two tradition that makes Singer's,
Sisters"). Yet it is this very stories so special; one that
concern with the irrational, that makes his tales of mystery, ad-
gives his work a timeless quali- venture and romance, seem
ty. The power of demons adds fresh and natural compared to'
mystery to a world where mys- work of contemporary writers,1
teries are becoming few and on'htrmns sta hr
far between. Like his use of sex, one that reminds us that there
the supernatural Is an ingredient was a time when there were
that makes his stories uniquely no writers at all.
Singer, and releases even the
most modern settings, the most Martin Porter is a Hopwood
modern themes, from the re- A ward winner in fiction and a:
strictions of time. In one story, founding father of the Daily
"Old Love" an old, retired Jew- Sunday Magazine.
(
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314 E. Liberty
Ann Arbor, Mich.
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Law student Lawrence Russ
is a three-time Hopwood Award
winner in poetry.
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