Yet when he spoke, he sounded strong and steady. Somehow, I had the impression that I might shatter him if I breathed too hard, as the wind shatters a porcelain statuette placed too near a windowsill. Singer radiates a childlike innocence, an awareness of the constant surprise of life, which one rarely finds in a man so old but he also seems possessed of a certain embryonic fragility. An clongated depression down the back of his skull reminds one of an infant's delicately shaped head. His head is smooth and round: only a few stray wisps of hair above the temples soften the sharp contours of his face. His white, parchment-like skin stretched tightly over the bones of his skull contrasts sharply with his somber black suit.

Not surprisingly, many of his simple tales and anecdotes of the old country ring with more authenticity than the slick, cynical products of our modern literati.Īs I ate breakfast with Singer, his wife, Rabbi Gold from Hillel House, and a friend who was cager to meet Singer, I realized why the author seemed so familiar. His stories and novels portary a life which vanished with the thud of German army boots-that of the shtetl, the Eastern European Jewish village. In a melting-pot country whose image of the Jew is a hybrid composite of the sex-crazed fantasies of Alexander Portnoy and the excessive mentality of Fiddler on the Roof, Isaac Bashevis Singer is a refreshing breeze of sanity and reality. The following interview took place about three weeks ago when Singer came to speak at Harvard. 'Children still belive in God, the family, angels devils witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff,' he said as he accepted the award. His recent book, A Day of Pleasure, won the National Book Award in children's literature. Isaac Bashevis Singer, author of Satan in Goray, The Magician of Lublin, and several collections of short stories, is the foremost living writer in Yiddish.

Isaac bashevis singer satan in goray