The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Hardcover, 1982

Status

Available

Call number

F SIN

Collection

Publication

Farrar Straus & Giroux (1982), Edition: 1st, 610 pages

Description

Collection of forty-seven stories selected by the Nobel Prize winning author from among the writings he authored from 1957-1981.

Barcode

5299

Language

User reviews

LibraryThing member jburlinson
What sets Singer's stories apart from those of his numerous imitators is a streak of arsenical steel that runs through even the most apparently genial of these folk-like tales. Singer comments in the author's note to this collection: "At its best, art can be nothing more than a means of forgetting
Show More
the human disaster for a while." Frankly, Singer does not quite accomplish this goal -- the reader never forgets. This is a good representative sampling of his body of work.
Show Less
LibraryThing member SteveSilkin
As you read the stories, you enter his world. Slowly and first, then you're there: The old folk tales, and then life in the modern world: And how the folk tales cast a shadow on the modern world. Beautiful stories, beautiful endings.
LibraryThing member albertgoldfain
I sampled 13 of these stories from the breadth of Singer's career and will definitely come back for the rest. All of the stories are tightly focused around a singular worldview (especially the early ones set in Frampol), but that doesn't make any of them predictable. There is much to discover here
Show More
about Yiddish culture, the immigrant experience, and magic.
Show Less
LibraryThing member byebyelibrary
Started reading Singer only recently and am completely blown away. Some Nobel prize winners get legitimized by the prize while others legitimize the prize. Singer is in the latter category. Before coming to Singer, I had read a ton of Cormac McCarthy. I think there are parallels between the two.
Show More
Both are obsessed with suffering and loss and move seamlessly from gritty realism to philosophy and allegory. With both, the reader is liable to feel intimidated, to feel as if he or she is not on the proper spiritual or intellectual stage to truly comprehend the stories. And that is fine with Singer and McCarthy. I think that is a fair definition of genius for genius cannot exist without integrity.
Show Less

ISBN

0374126313 / 9780374126315
Page: 0.5627 seconds