Singer, Isaac Bashevis - Bryan Cheyette (review date 1988)
Bryan Cheyette (review date 1988)
SOURCE: Cheyette, Bryan. “Mistakes Made and Mended.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4464 (21 October 1988): 1180.
[In the following review of The Death of Methuselah, and Other Stories, Cheyette concludes that Singer's stories continue to hold universal appeal while treating subjects specific to Jewish culture and history.]
Isaac Bashevis Singer's novel The Penitent (1984) was an uncharacteristic tirade against modernity. Since its publication in Yiddish in 1974, Singer has been assiduously rewriting his act of betrayal as a young man in Warsaw in the 1920s, a betrayal which culminated in his departure from the devout Yeshiva world of his Polish-Jewish parents—subsequently destroyed in the Holocaust—for the sacrilegious world of his incorrigible imagination which, since the 1930s, has found a congenial home in America. The Penitent, as its title suggests, is about a modern-day...
[The entire page is 804 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
