Editing Isaac Bashevis Singer (section)

==Literary career==
Singer's first published story  "Oyf der elter" ("In Old Age", 1925) won the literary competition of the ''Literarishe Bleter'', where he worked as a proofreader.<ref name= joshee>[https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/singer_isaac_bashevis "Singer, Isaac Bashevis"], by Joseph Sherman, ''[[YIVO Encyclopedia]]''</ref> A reflection of his formative years in "the kitchen of literature"{{Sfn | Telushkin | 1997 | p = 123}} can be found in many of his later works. Singer published his first novel, ''[[Satan in Goray]]'', in installments in the literary magazine ''Globus'', which he had co-founded with his lifelong friend, the Yiddish poet [[Aaron Zeitlin]] in 1935. It is set in the years following 1648, when the [[Chmielnicki massacres]], considered one of the greatest Jewish catastrophes, occurred. The story describes the Jewish messianic cult that arose in the village of [[Goraj, Lublin Voivodeship|Goraj]]. It explores the effects of the  faraway false messiah, [[Shabbatai Zvi]], on the local population. Its last chapter imitates the style of a medieval Yiddish chronicle. With a stark depiction of innocence crushed by circumstance, the novel appears to foreshadow coming danger. In his later work ''The Slave'' (1962), Singer returns to the aftermath of 1648 in a love story between a Jewish man and a [[gentile]] woman. He portrays the traumatized and desperate survivors of the historic catastrophe with even deeper understanding.

===''The Family Moskat''===
Singer became a literary contributor to ''[[The Jewish Daily Forward]]'' only after his older brother Israel died in 1944. That year, Singer published ''[[The Family Moskat]]'' in his brother's honor. His own style showed in the daring turns of his action and characters, with double adultery during the holiest of nights of Judaism, the evening of [[Yom Kippur]] (despite being printed in a Jewish family newspaper in 1945). He was nearly forced to stop writing the novel by his editor-in-chief, [[Abraham Cahan]], but was saved by readers who wanted the story to continue.{{Citation needed|date=April 2020}} After this, his stories—which he had published in Yiddish literary newspapers before—were printed in the ''Forward'' as well. Throughout the 1940s, Singer's reputation grew.

Singer believed in the power of his native language and thought that there was still a large audience, including in New York, who longed to read in Yiddish. In an interview in ''[[Encounter (magazine)|Encounter]]'' (February 1979), he said that although the [[History of the Jews in Poland|Jews of Poland]] had died, "something—call it spirit or whatever—is still somewhere in the universe. This is a mystical kind of feeling, but I feel there is truth in it."

Some of his colleagues and readers were shocked by his all-encompassing view of human nature. He wrote about female homosexuality ("Zeitl and Rickel",{{Sfn | Singer | 1968}} "Tseytl un Rikl"), published in ''The Seance and Other Stories'',{{Sfn | Singer | 1968a}} [[transvestism]] ("Yentl the Yeshiva Boy" in ''Short Friday''), and of rabbis corrupted by demons ("Zeidlus the Pope" in ''Short Friday''). In those novels and stories which refer to events in his own life, he portrays himself unflatteringly (with some degree of accuracy) as an artist who is self-centered yet has a keen eye for the sufferings and tribulations of others.

===Literary influences===
[[File:Dan Hadani collection (990044399930205171) (cropped).jpg|thumb|Singer in 1969]]
Singer had many literary influences. Besides the religious texts he studied, he grew up with a rich array of Jewish folktales and worldly Yiddish detective-stories about Max Spitzkopf and his assistant Fuchs by [[Jonas Kreppel]].{{Sfn | Tree | 2004 | p = 35}} He read Russian, including [[Dostoyevsky]]'s ''[[Crime and Punishment]]'' at the age of fourteen.{{Sfn|Singer|1963}} He wrote in memoirs about the importance of the Yiddish translations donated in book-crates from America, which he studied as a teenager in Bilgoraj: "I read everything: Stories, novels, plays, essays... I read [[Avrom Reyzen|Rajsen]], [[Strindberg]], Don Kaplanowitsch, [[Turgenev]], [[Tolstoy]], [[Maupassant]] and [[Chekhov]]."{{Sfn|Singer|1963}} He studied the philosophers [[Spinoza]],{{Sfn|Singer|1963}} [[Arthur Schopenhauer]],{{Sfn | Carr | 1992}} and [[Otto Weininger]].{{Sfn | Tree | 2004 | p = 68}} Among his Yiddish contemporaries, Singer considered his elder brother to be his greatest artistic example. He was also a life-long friend and admirer of the author and poet [[Aaron Zeitlin]].

His short stories, which some critics feel contain his most lasting contributions,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Searls |first=Damion |date=September 1, 2012 |title=A Guide to Isaac Bashevis Singer |url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-guide-to-isaac-bashevis-singer/ |access-date=2022-04-27 |website=Los Angeles Review of Books |language=en |quote=The opinion seems to have hardened into indisputable fact that Singer's stories are better than his novels, but I'm not convinced.}}</ref> were influenced by [[Anton Chekhov]] and [[Guy de Maupassant]]. From Maupassant, Singer developed a finely grained sense of drama. Like those of the French master, Singer's stories can pack enormous visceral excitement in the space of a few pages.{{citation needed|date=May 2014}} From Chekhov, Singer developed his ability to draw characters of enormous complexity and dignity in the briefest of spaces.{{citation needed|date=May 2014}} In the foreword to his personally selected volume of his finest short stories, Singer describes Chekhov, Maupassant, and "the sublime scribe of the [[Joseph (Genesis)|Joseph]] story in the Book of Genesis" as the masters of the short story form.{{sfn|Singer|1982|p=vii}}

Of his non-Yiddish-contemporaries, he was strongly influenced by the writings of [[Knut Hamsun]], many of whose works he later translated, while he had a more critical attitude towards [[Thomas Mann]], whose approach to writing he considered opposed to his own.{{Sfn | Tree | 2004 | p = 88}} Contrary to Hamsun's approach, Singer shaped his world not only with the egos of his characters, but also from Jewish moral tradition embodied by his father in the stories about Singer's youth. There was a dichotomy between the life his heroes lead and the life they feel they should lead—which gives his art a modernity his predecessors did not express. Singer's stories often involve highly individualist and anti-conformist characters rebelling alone against society. In a 1974 interview, Singer stated that "every human being, if he is a real, sensitive human being, feels quite isolated. It is only the people with very little individuality who always feel that they belong." He added that "Since I believe that the purpose of literature is to stress individuality, I also, unwillingly, stress human lonesomeness".<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Gilman |first1=Sander L. |last2=Singer |first2=Isaac Bashevis |date=1974 |title=Interview: Isaac Bashevis Singer |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/464611 |journal=Diacritics |volume=4 |issue=1 |pages=30–33 |doi=10.2307/464611 |jstor=464611 |issn=0300-7162|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

Singer's themes of witchcraft, mystery and legend draw on traditional sources, but they are contrasted with a modern and ironic consciousness. They are also concerned with the bizarre and the grotesque.{{citation needed|date=May 2014}}

An important strand of his art is intra-familial strife, which he experienced when taking refuge with his mother and younger brother at his uncle's home in Biłgoraj. This is the central theme in Singer's family chronicles such as ''The Family Moskat'' (1950), ''The Manor'' (1967), and ''The Estate'' (1969). Some critics believe these show the influence of Thomas Mann's novel ''[[Buddenbrooks]]''; Singer had translated Mann's ''Der Zauberberg'' (''[[The Magic Mountain]]'') into Yiddish as a young writer.

===Language===
Singer always wrote and published in Yiddish. His novels were serialized in newspapers, which also published his short stories. He edited his novels and stories for publication in English, which was used as the basis for translation into other languages. Some of Singer's stories and novels have not been translated.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Searls |first=Damion |date=September 1, 2012 |title=A Guide to Isaac Bashevis Singer |url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-guide-to-isaac-bashevis-singer/ |access-date=April 26, 2022 |website=Los Angeles Review of Books |quote=There are several novels still untranslated into English.}}</ref>

===Illustrators===
The artists who have illustrated Singer's novels, short stories, and children's books, include [[Raphael Soyer]], [[Maurice Sendak]], [[Larry Rivers]], and [[Irene Lieblich]]. Singer personally selected Lieblich to illustrate two of his books for children, ''A Tale of Three Wishes'' and ''The Power of Light: Eight Stories for Hanukkah,'' after seeing her paintings at an Artists Equity exhibition in New York City. A [[Holocaust]] survivor, Lieblich was from Zamosc, Poland, a town adjacent to the area where Singer was raised. As their memories of ''shtetl'' life were so similar, Singer found Lieblich's images ideally suited to illustrate his texts. Of her style, Singer wrote that "her works are rooted in Jewish folklore and are faithful to Jewish life and the Jewish spirit."<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MJ4qAQAAIAAJ&q=%22her+works+are+rooted+in+Jewish+folklore+and+are+faithful+to+Jewish+life+and+the+Jewish+spirit.%22 |title=The Pakn Treger |date=2002 |publisher=The Center |language=en}}</ref>

===Summary===
Singer published at least 18 novels, 14 children's books, a number of memoirs, essays and articles. He is best known as a writer of short stories, which have been published in more than a dozen collections. The first collection of Singer's short stories in English, ''[[Gimpel the Fool]]'', was published in 1957. The title story was translated by [[Saul Bellow]] and published in May 1953 in the ''[[Partisan Review]]''. Selections from Singer's "Varshavsky-stories" in the ''Daily Forward'' were later published in anthologies such as ''My Father's Court'' (1966). Later collections include ''A Crown of Feathers'' (1973), with notable masterpieces in between, such as ''The Spinoza of Market Street'' (1961) and ''A Friend of Kafka'' (1970). His stories and novels reflect the world of the East European Jewry in which he grew up. After his many years in America, his stories also portrayed the world of the immigrants and their pursuit of an elusive American dream, which seems always beyond reach.

Prior to Singer's winning the Nobel Prize, English translations of dozens of his stories were published in popular magazines like ''[[The New Yorker]],''<ref>{{Cite magazine |title=Isaac Bashevis Singer |url=https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/isaac-bashevis-singer |access-date=2024-04-08 |magazine=The New Yorker |language=en-US}}</ref> ''[[Playboy (magazine)|Playboy]]'' and ''[[Esquire (magazine)|Esquire]]'' that published literary works.

Singer was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1978.<ref name=nobellecture>{{Citation |year=1978 |last=Singer |first=Isaac Bashevis |url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1978/singer-lecture.html |publisher=Nobel prize |title=Lecture}}.</ref>

Between 1981 and 1989, Singer contributed articles to ''[[Moment (magazine)|Moment]]'', an independent magazine which focuses on the life of the American Jewish community.<ref>{{cite archive |first=Isaac |last=Bashevis Singer|item-url = http://search.opinionarchives.com/Moment_Web/digitalarchive.aspx |type=Textual Record |date=June 1981 to January 1989 |collection=Moment Magazine |institution=Opinion Archives |location=Digital Archives}}</ref>

===Film adaptations===
His novel ''[[Enemies, a Love Story]]'' was adapted as a [[Enemies, a Love Story (film)|film by the same name]] (1989) and was quite popular, bringing new readers to his work. It features a Holocaust survivor who deals with varying desires, complex family relationships, and a loss of faith.

Singer's story, "Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy" was adapted into [[Yentl (play)|a stage version]] by Leah Napolin (with Singer), which was the basis for the film ''[[Yentl (film)|Yentl]]'' (1983) starring and directed by [[Barbra Streisand]].

[[Alan Arkin]] starred as Yasha, the principal character in the film version of ''[[The Magician of Lublin (film)|The Magician of Lublin]]'' (1979), which also featured [[Shelley Winters]], [[Louise Fletcher]], [[Valerie Perrine]] and [[Lou Jacobi]]. In the final scene, Yasha achieves his lifelong ambition of being able to fly, though not as the magic trick he had originally planned.

Perhaps the most fascinating{{Sfn | Tree | 2004 | p = 161}} Singer-inspired film is ''Mr. Singer's Nightmare and Mrs. Pupkos Beard'' (1974) directed by [[Bruce Davidson (photographer)|Bruce Davidson]], a renowned photographer who became Singer's neighbor. This unique film is a half-hour mixture of documentary and fantasy for which Singer wrote the script and played the leading role.

The 2007 film ''[[Love Comes Lately]]'', starring [[Otto Tausig]], was adapted from several of Singer's stories.