Word: singer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer entertained an audience of more than 600 in Sanders Theater last night by reading two of his short stories on life in a Warsaw ghetto...
...phrases are terse, the message mordant. It might also be credible if Singer had not just published Stories for Children, a collection of 36 works for the young, dating back to Zlateh the Goat in 1966. Without the original illustrations, his fictions stand revealed as something more than mere bedtime stories. Many are informed by Freudian insights; tale after tale demonstrates a strong desire to prod the audience-and in some small way retard or push forward the wheels of history...
Some are reminiscent of the rabbinical parables Singer heard his father tell in Poland. A rich miser lends his neighbor a silver spoon. Next day the borrower returns the utensil, and brings with it a smaller one because "your tablespoon gave birth to a teaspoon." Delighted, the miser offers a set of candlesticks, only to learn, two days later, that they have passed away. "How can candlesticks die?" screams the rich man. Greed gets a talmudic reply: "If spoons can give birth, candlesticks...
...town of Chelm, Singer's all-star cast shows the foolishness of unworldly wisdom. A congregation of elders, including Zeinvel Ninny, Feivel Thickwit, Dopey Lekisch, Gronam Ox and Shmendrick Numskull, encourages a wealthy man to move to the slums and live forever; after all, the records show that no one of means has ever died there. And when a huge carp slaps Gronam Ox with his tail, he sentences the fish to capital punishment: death by drowning in a lake...
...tales, the message is saltier. Rabbi Leib and the witch Cunegunde contend for the soul of the world. The evil woman loses every battle of wills. Desperately she conceives a plan that cannot fail to undo her opponent: she will marry him. But in stories like The Wicked City, Singer is no longer content to twinkle. The angry retelling of Genesis changes Abraham's nephew Lot from a shepherd into the radical lawyer of Sodom. In one case, Lot represents a man who has murdered his own parents, throwing the defendant on the mercy of the court because...