Word: aarons
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Aaron Greidinger, the hero and narrator, recapitulates the careers of other Singer characters and, in many small details, that of Singer himself. Growing up in Warsaw in the early years of this century, Aaron slowly disentangles himself from the strictures and teachings of his rabbi father and becomes attracted to secular philosophy and literature. As a young man he lives penuriously on what he can get by writing for the Yiddish-language newspapers. His other support is the warmth offered by a succession of women. Chief among these is Betty Slonim, an American actress with an old, wealthy impresario boyfriend...
...Instead, Aaron marries Shosha, a stunted, retarded girl he had known as a child. He knows exactly what this move means: "I was rejecting a woman of passion, of talent, with the capability of taking me to wealthy America, and condemning myself to poverty and death from a Nazi bullet." Why? It is the most frequent question in Singer's fiction and the one least frequently answered. Aaron offers tentative explanations to himself and others: loyalty to the past that Shosha shared with him, a mystic identification with her simplicity, even the conviction that Shosha is the one woman...
...behave irrationally and about how many of his plots hinge on the machinations of dybbuks or the fist of fate. Such readers forget the most important ingredient in the ancient art of storytelling that Singer practices: wonder, awe at a world that can contain such deeds and such doers. Aaron echoes his creator when he complains about the cold passion for explanations: "Who says that everything nature or human nature does can be expressed in motives and words? I had been aware for a long time that literature could only describe facts or let the characters invent excuses for their...
Shosha is crammed with such absolute opinions, but to enjoy the book a reader does not have to agree with them. Singer is the least didactic of writers. His attention is always on making his characters do and say diverting things. Dr. Morris Feitelzohn, Aaron's mentor and friend, has only a small role in events, but his erudite, sardonic comments add enormously to the novel's texture: "I love the Jews even though I cannot stand them. No evolution could have created them. For me they are the only proof of God's existence...
Singer's dialogue is a reminder that once conversation meant more than banter on a TV talk show, that ideas were once as tangible and as nourishing as potatoes. That time is ended, and the people Singer celebrates were wiped out or dispersed. Yet they live. Several times Aaron toys with the notion that time is a book in which the dead exist on pages sim ply not legible to the living. Singer's books reverse this concept: they are time, lovingly preserved and animated by laughter and wisdom...