Irving H. Buchen
Isaac Bashevis Singer and the Eternal Past.
New York University Press/University of London Press, 1968. First edition. xv/239 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 5.75" x 8.75", is bound in green cloth, with stamped dark blue lettering to spine. Book is in fine condition, with firm binding, clean and bright interior. Dust jacket, with price of $6.95 on front flap, exhibits light shelfwear. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
"Isaac Bashevis Singer's work presents a paradox. He is at the same time a Yiddish writer and a modern writer, and his vision is both involved in and removed from either tradition. This is the first book-length examination and appraisal of his work. It is also the first book to sketch his life, using biographical material that has never before appeared in print.
Here Irving Buchen sets Singer's achievement against the double backdrop of Yiddish and modern literature. Although Singer writes in Yiddish and regularly has recourse to Jewish settings and rituals, his preocccupation with demons, witches, and dybbuks, often under sexual stress, sets him apart from earlier, more benevolent Yiddishists. Nor is Singer comfortable in modern demonic or existential camp. He neither champions alienation nor applauds the heroics of the gratuitous act. Unexpectedly, he is a conservative sensationalist and his presentation of the Devil and evil serve as his dramatic and oblique way to God and good.
Aesthetically, too, Singer is difficult to classify. Hailed by avant-garde writers like Henry Miller, Singer stubbornly urges the recovery of the old-fashioned story teller's art, laments the lack of illusion of form, and pleads for an art free of symbology and commentary. Indeed, his final aesthetic position is modeled on the supreme example of God the eternal artist. Singer's preoccupation with the past is so unaccommodating and uncalculating that his ghosts and spirits not only recover the past, but also appear to make it eternal."