Isaac Bashevis Singer: A Life

Singer, the pre-eminent Yiddish American writer of the 20th century, is portrayed by psychoanalyst Hadda as a man plagued by family guilt and literary jealousy, who was prone to snide comments and blatant sexual liaisons. In 1935, Singer emigrated from his native Poland and what appeared to be a promising literary path to New York City, where he worked as a columnist for the Forverts, New York's leading Yiddish newspaper. Some 40 years later, in 1978, he was awarded the Nobel Prize, but despite his literary fame, Singer appears as a complicated, often shadowy figure in this brief biography. Yiddishist Hadda draws on her psychoanalytic training to explain Singer's personal and professional lives. While this helps us understand Singer's unconscious motivations (confused gender roles and literary rivalries), this presentation does little to illuminate his writing. Too often, characters in his fiction are reduced to reproductions of individuals in Singer's family, a view that, with repetition, hurts rather than helps this study of his character and his creations. While examination of such an eminent writer is long overdue, Hadda's biography is too narrow to be the last word on Singer's life. (Apr.)