The American fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer: lost and found in America
McGregor, Barbara Ruth
McGregor, Barbara Ruth
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Date
1985
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Abstract
If Isaac Bashevis Singer's Old World work preserves a dead Polish past, his New World work defines a living American present. Singer emigrated to American in 1935, only four years before Hitler's invasion of his native Poland precipitated its inevitable and eventual obliteration. During the first twenty-five years in America, Singer's fictional re-creations of the Old World predominated. Since then, however, Singer's fiction increasingly confronts an American present. Singer's American fiction focuses on East European Jewish immigrants spiritually lost in America, an emphasis marking an important development in his writing. Singer's American-Jewish characters suffer exile on several levels. Besides the Jewish Diaspora, the Holocaust, and transplantation, Singer's characters are disconnected from their birth country, their language, and their cultural and religious roots. Jewish Exile becomes American Exile for exiled artists and intellectuals disillusioned with secular solutions to spiritual problems. A trying and often frustrated search for meaning ensues as they attempt to re-identify themselves as Jews and define themselves as Americans. Trapped between past and present in a terrifying American isolation, they respond to spiritual lostness by insistently questioning devine and human truth. Lost in America, Singer's Polish-Jews ultimately find they neither totally can forget the past nor fully can accept the present. Though a fair assessment of Singer's contribution to Contemporary American Literature rests on criticism which balances Old and New World work, critics largely have ignored Singer's American work. Such neglect persists despite his two American novels, over fifty collected American short stories, and one American memoir. This study attempts to right a serious critical imbalance by evaluating Singer's American fiction in terms of its predominant image, spiritual lostness; its central movement, the search for meaning; and its principal characters, Polish-Jewish immigrant-survivors living in America.
Contents
Subject
Subject(s)
Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 1904---Criticism and interpretation
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Dissertation
Description
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xiv, 324 leaves, bound
Department
English