The Death of Methuselah, and Other Stories (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Isaac Bashevis Singer
- First Published: 1988
- Type of Work: Short stories
- Time of Work: Ancient, medieval, and modern times
- Setting: Poland, New York, and antediluvian Earth
- Genres: Short fiction
- Subjects: Suffering, Traveling or travelers, Sex or sexuality, Marriage, Reality, Jews or Jewish life, Adultery, Metaphysics, Miracles, Holocaust, Jewish, Evil
- Locales: New York, Poland
This volume of short stories, the tenth since Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories (1957), explores what Isaac Bashevis Singer calls in an author's note “modern man and his disappointment with his own culture.” The stories are permeated with an irony that results from the clash between mystical explanations of life and rational ones. Ancient and modern views are juxtaposed. Many of the characters are wanderers, sojourners of some sort; many are advanced in age. A holy man, a recluse, an artist, criminals, Holocaust survivors, faithless husbands and wives, perverts, cynics,...
[The entire page is 2346 words long]
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