Isaac Bashevis Singer emigrated to the United States in 1935, which was the year of his first novel Satan in Goray. Since then, he has written more or less exclusively about the Jewish world of pre-war Poland, or more exactly—it’s a relevant qualification—about the Hasidic world of pre-war Poland, into which he was born, the son of a rabbi, in 1904. So not only does he write in Yiddish, but his chosen subject is even further confined in place, and culture, and now to the past. Nevertheless, his work has been lucky with its translators, and he has to be considered among the really great living writers, on several counts.
People ask me often, ‘Why do you write in a dying language?’ And I want to explain it in a few words. Firstly, I like to write ghost stories and nothing fits a ghost better than a dying language. The deader the language the more alive is the ghost. Ghosts love yiddish and as far as I know, they all speak it…
By Angela Carter Wednesday 15 February 1978 13.09 GMT
Isaac Bashevis Singer begins with a disconcerting irony: "I was brought up in three dead languages - Hebrew, Aramaic, Yiddish." This ironic statement functions as an invocation of those dead who spoke, specifically, the Yiddish of Poland. He invites us to a seance to hear their voices; Shosha is a haunting rather than a novel.
From comedy by Kingsley Amis to Shakespeare's tragedy, the novelist considers literature 'where the old take precedence'
Paul Bailey
William Trevor at home in Exeter. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe for the Guardian
Paul Bailey was born in 1937 and worked as an actor before taking up full-time writing in 1967. His novels include At The Jerusalem (1967), which won the Somerset Maugham award; Peter Smart's Confessions (1977) and Gabriel's Lament (1986), both shortlisted for the Booker prize; and Sugar Cane (1993), a sequel to Gabriel's Lament.
He has also written plays for radio and television, and his non-fiction includes two volumes of memoir, An Immaculate Mistake: Scenes from Childhood and Beyond (1990), and A Dog's Life (2003). Three Queer Lives: An Alternative Biography of Naomi Jacob, Fred Barnes and Arthur Marshall (2001), is a biography of three gay popular entertainers from the 20th century.
Chapman's Odyssey, Bailey's new novel, tracks the psychic voyage made by an elderly writer, bedbound in hospital, through the characters, real and imaginary, that have meant most in his intense imaginative life. In the Guardian's review, Alfred Hickling described it as "an enigmatic work whose meaning is worth grasping for. It is the kind of book that could be construed as a deeply moving, valedictory statement of a valuable career."
"When I wrote my first novel At the Jerusalem in the 1960s I wasn't especially conscious that I was tackling the subject of old age. My characters were real women who just happened to be advanced in years. I am in my seventies now, so when writing Chapman's Odyssey I was looking back on a life lived, which every so often resembled my own. I like to think that the narrative has a certain youthful energy, however, but I might be mistaken. Old age is a fact of life and should not be isolated from it. More sentimental rubbish has been written about the 'plight of the elderly' than I can bear to contemplate.
"There are hundreds of novels in which elderly characters feature – in the great works of Dickens, Dostoevsky and Balzac, for example. They function in the narrative but don't occupy centre stage. Here are some titles in which the old take precedence."
1. "Old Love" by Isaac Bashevis Singer
This is one of the master's most poignant short stories, written in his own old age, about a romantic affair between a couple of pensioners.
2. "Ending Up" by Kingsley Amis
Perhaps only Amis could make someone suffering from nominal aphasia as funny as he is touching. The tone throughout is mordantly comic.
This heartbreaking long short story about a woman with Alzheimer's and the weird course her life takes while her husband watches in dismay and confusion has all the honest virtues that distinguish Munro from virtually every other living storyteller.
4. "Memento Mori" by Muriel Spark
Spark's masterpiece, with its echoing reminders that we must all die, is horrifically funny from beginning to end. The dialogue throughout is a joy.
5."Doctor Faustus" by Thomas Mann
Mann's great novel is concerned with the life of a famous composer who, as the title suggests, has forged a pact with the devil. No other novel matches its deep knowledge of the creative urge.
6. "As a Man Grows Older" by Older by Italo Calvino
This comic masterwork isn't strictly about old age, but it is concerned with the attainment of knowledge that comes with the passing of the years.
7. "The Old Boys" by William Trevor
Trevor's first novel is funny and moving and quietly observant of the eccentricities to which the elderly are prone.
8. "Confusion" by Stefan Sweig
This novella is told in the first person by an elderly professor who looks back on the unhappy man who was the greatest influence in his life. The story ends with a surprising and touching revelation. 9. "King Lear" by William Shakespeare
It's not a novel, of course, but it is arguably the greatest play in the language. We watch in pity and terror as a once proud man is reduced to almost nothing.
10. "The Book of Job"
One of the masterpieces of the Old Testament, especially in the King James translation. As with King Lear, Job is the victim of malign fate. He has to suffer the indignities of sores and lesions before he is restored to humanity.
Collected Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer – review
These peculiar tales of life in eastern Europe showcase Isaac Bashevis Singer's genius for storytelling
Anthony Cummins
Sunday 26 February 2012 00.05 GMT
T
he Yiddish author Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991) filled his fiction with demons and imps rather than Zionists or antisemites: he felt writers could leave the real world to politicians and sociologists. Most of the four dozen or so tales in this book unfold in Jewish eastern Europe before Hitler and Stalin arrived. Among their protagonists are a cuckolded baker, a cross-dressing schoolgirl and Satan, a narrator several times over, whose dupes include a precocious scripture buff coaxed into Christianity. "If everything goes well," the devil wheedles, "they'll make you pope one day." The story ends in hell.
Singer, who won a Nobel prize in 1978, left Poland for New York before the second world war, and later pieces here draw more on Brooklyn literary life than old country folklore. While the supernatural element recedes, much peculiarity remains, and things get even funnier. A magazine asks a grumpy critic for an essay on Yiddish writers and, instead, receives one about horses, well past the deadline. The editor sees in his boss's eyes "something like the grief of a doctor when a patient comes to complain about a head cold and it turns out to be a malignant tumour".
Singer's gossipy, buttonholing style ("now listen to what happened") crackles with wit: one character learns early in life that "if one wanted to be a real Jew there was no time for anything else". Many of the best tales owe their appeal to inexplicable deeds. In "The Manuscript", a refugee crosses back into Nazi-held Warsaw to retrieve the draft novel her lover left behind. That alone would make a story, but when she returns only to find the author in bed with another woman, our shock leaves us entirely in sympathy with her impulsive response – and in wonder at Singer's manipulative skill.
