Word: shtetl
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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...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. 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. 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...
...born in Radzymin, a suburb of Warsaw, in 1904," he began. "But my parents moved to Warsaw when I was about three." For several years he lived with his grandfather in a village called Bilgoray. It was there that he acquired his impressive knowledge of shtetl life...
Crities and commentators often interpret Singer's purpose in writing his tales of the Shtetl in terms of a desire to teach American Jews about the old country. According to Singer, this is only a secondary consideration. "When I sit down to write, I never think for whom I'm writing," he insisted. "I think what I should write. If I am satisfied, I know there is a chance that some readers will also be satisfied...
...Singer looked wistful again as he spoke of his favorite topic-the shtetl, now nothing but dust and ashes'. "It's true that the world which I describe has vanished physically; but in literature nothing dies, nothing vanishes. The holocaust did not really destory Jewish culture. The same people or their children built Israel. To me the people from Warsaw are as much alive as those in New York today...
Singer has pronounced opinions on literary humor. He rejects the savage and cruel mocking irony of younger writers in favor of the self-deprecatory humor of the shtetl. "I will tell you." he said, prefacing his remarks with the characteristic phrase of the born racontear: "If you laugh, either you laugh at others or you laugh at yourself. If you don't want to laugh at others, you have to make humor about yourself...