Word: krochmalna
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...with it; Max has been rendered impotent by his troubles. In Warsaw, particularly on Krochmalna Street, he quickly encounters a number of women as eager to use him as he is them, with generally unhappy results. There is, as Singer warns, little of God's wisdom and mercy in this book, but the display of human perversity and sheer cussedness is enthralling...
Another eight stories take place in Warsaw during the early decades of this century. A few of these, like The Divorce, relate the memories of a young boy whose rabbi father dispenses spiritual and practical advice to the teeming neighborhood around Krochmalna Street. Simply paying attention to the people who come to the apartment for help trains the lad to become a writer: "I was interested in people's talk -- their expressions, their excuses for wrong deeds, and how they twisted things to suit themselves." And he or someone very like him appears in other Warsaw stories as an apprentice...
...Singer's favored settings are here, from small Polish villages named Frampol or Krasnobrdd to Warsaw's Krochmalna Street ("the part where the Jews lived") to Manhattan's Upper West Side, the neighborhood the author has called home for more than four decades. These specific locales bring forth universal truths. "One place is pretty much like another," says a character in The Destruction of Kreshev. "If they're on the face of the earth, they're all the same...
...author has played many times before, and not a whitless enjoyable for that. Among his many accomplishments, Singer is a master at showing how familiarity can breed contentment. Here again is Warsaw when hailing a cab meant finding a horse-drawn droshky; here are the smells and sounds of Krochmalna Street, the intrigue and gossip at the Writers' Club, the dark, snowy vistas on the Vistula...
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