Isaak Bashevis Singer grew up with little of his brother's insurgence and social idealism, and therefore never experienced the latter's bitter disillusionment. More cynical than romantic, and with a firmer grasp of the postwar world of the 1920's, he proceeded surefootedly toward his lifework as a writer by training as a journalist. He made no effort to enter the mainstream of literary fashion, but wrote about what he knew best—the Hasidic aspects of Jewish life. At a time when Yiddish literature had reached maturity and was concerned with the grievous events of the day rather than the pious medievalism of the past, young Singer devoted his first major work [Satan in Goray (1935)] to the spectacular and psychotic aspects of 17th-century Jewish life—and not as certain other writers, with a view to extolling the faith in survival but, on the contrary, to expose and satirize the psychopathic messianism of the time. (pp. 479-80)

Intentionally or not, Singer in this book employs his obvious literary talent not to soar spiritually or depict the tragic situation sympathetically, but to destroy illusions and satirize the potency of faith. He presents the epoch of Shabbati Zevi in its extreme superstitious grotesqueness: its depression of reason and exaltation of unreality, its asceticism and eroticism. He hardly dwells on the pathos which led to the madness but stresses instead the childishness, even foolishness, which this madness revealed. His cynicism is all the more devastating because it is barbed with the sharp-edged refinement of fictional art. His preoccupation with hysterical and knavish characters to the near exclusion of sane ones—he kills Rabbi Beinush early in the narrative—gives the book an aspect of negativism which tends to weaken its undoubted literary merits. As a novel, moreover, it does not hold together, consisting mostly of a number of decorative scenes. (pp. 482-83)

Publishing only short stories, [Singer] remained relatively obscure until 1950, when his second major work, The Family Moskat, was first serialized…. (p. 483)

Covering a half century of Jewish life in Poland during the break-up of its traditional piety and its grievous persecution, the novel depicts its various aspects with masterly familiarity and a firm grasp of essentials. The range in personalities—and a number are vividly portrayed—is from the extremely pious Hasid to the complete skeptic, from the wealthy businessman to the hapless poor, from the philosophical rationalist to the self-indulgent sophist; in events it covers the traditional town in the process of disintegration and destruction as a result of intellectual emancipation followed by war and massacre, the city ghetto in all its poverty, grime, bustle, intellectual ferment, and individual aspiration, overwhelmed by social cataclysm and world chaos. With magical literary power, Singer brings alive a host of human beings struggling and suffering in a world they never made, loving and hating, believing and doubting, dreaming and planning and quashed as they play their miniscule parts in the arena of human existence. In the process one overlooks the partial artifice of plot and the actions of certain characters which accord less with their inner logic than with the author's particular purposes. To give one instance, Asa is made not to remember Hadassah's correct address, so that she remains unaware of his escape—which leads to her marriage to Fishel and Asa's to Adele. These and other flaws of construction do not, however, detract from the major significance of the novel as a work of fiction: it is an intensely conceived narrative pulsating with human life and revealing the inner emotional recesses of the individuals involved.

Singer is not only a fine novelist but also a master of the short story. In his first collection, published in 1957, the title story, "Gimpel the Fool," has similarities to Peretz's "Bontche," but with Singerian differences. (pp. 486-87)

[The] stories in the volume are written with sprightliness and skill, but with a mischievousness bordering on antipathy. Fully aware of human weaknesses and the ease with which most men are tempted, Singer seems to enjoy depicting and disclosing their individual foibles. For all his rare insight and masterly description, he tends to yield the quality of sympathy to the temptation of clever disparagement.

The Magician of Lublin (1960) is the piquant story of Yasha Mazur, an ingeniously clever acrobat, magician, and lock picker. The loving husband of Esther, a good and devoted wife, he is also the paramour of Magda, his acrobatic assistant, and Zeftel, a lively grass widow; in addition he courts high-born Emilia, a professor's attractive widow. A man of 40, at the height of his "hidden powers," an agnostic and inclined to reflection, he enjoys his various involvements. (p. 489)

Much more limited in scope and conception than The Family Moskat and less intensive and meaningful than Satan in Goray, [The Magician of Lublin] has a lustiness and psychological overtones that keep it from becoming mere picaresque fiction. Yasha is not a conventional philanderer and rouge; even when he commits wrongs he suffers from pangs of conscience and wishes he had not become so involved. Moreover, he has the moral courage to admit his misdeeds and to atone for them with a self-punishment reserved for the ascetic and saint. That his singular behavior, which would normally seem queer, appears plausible is due to Singer's powers of exposition and characterization. Yasha in particular, but also the others in the novel, are portrayed realistically, without affection or sympathy, but also without manipulation and artfulness. One has the feeling, indeed, that Singer enjoys depicting the Yashas of the world more than the Asas.

In 1961 Singer published another volume of stories, The Spinoza of Market Street…. (pp. 490-91)

[These stories] are similar in character and quality to the previous group. They are very well told, and the moral in them is implicit—Satan and his minions are again shown to succeed in tempting man and causing him to falter and fall. Singer effectively employs traditional Jewish legends and superstitions to demonstrate man's littleness and weakness, doing it with sardonic humor and a mastery of the genre.

The Slave (1962), like Satan in Goray, has its setting in 17th-century Poland shortly after the devastating massacres of 1648–1649. (p. 493)

For all its melodramatic content, the novel is an intense and passionate love story in a setting of medieval Jewish life. Jacob and Wanda are perhaps the most appealing characters created by Singer; their simple, pure hearts and keen suffering give them an engaging and palpitating reality. Equally attractive is the primitive background: the pagan peasants on the mountainside, living close to nature and unrestrained in their fears and brutishness; the medieval town steeped in piety and superstition, ridden by fear of the Polish squire and his constables; and the passions, jealousies, and greed generated by human beings in close association. All of this folklore, exotic atmosphere, and genuine emotion is depicted with an intimate knowledge and artistic sensuousness that combine to give the book major status as a work of fiction.

Short Friday (1964) is Singer's third volume of short stories, and in content and effect they are again similar to the earlier collections. Many deal with witches, demons, and evil spirits—all titillating human beings to sin and forbidden pleasures. (pp. 495-96)

In all these stories Singer exploits the taboos, legends, and superstitions in Jewish folklore, and weaves his narratives out of the beliefs, fears, and abnormalities of the characters he delineates. His remarkable talent as a writer of exotic tales and Hasidic life imbues the volume with a literary charm that tends to favor it with a significance greater than it really has.

In the fall of 1967 Singer published The Manor, which he had written some years earlier, the first of two volumes in which he provides an epic account of life in Poland during the last third of the 19th century. (p. 497)

As in his earlier novels, Singer deals at length and significantly with the events and salient thoughts and ideas of the time in which his characters live and function. Moreover, the protagonists have a [very complicated and tangled existence]…. Love and lust, piety and enlightenment, serene and stormy cohabitation, the problem of Jewishness in a gentile environment, and the miserable individual decline of haughty and romantic Poles after 1863—all of these aspects are treated in vivid detail and with artistic zest. As in his other works, Singer here also tends to overstress the traits and egocentricities of his characters, giving their personalities a somewhat uneven reality; nor is any protagonist endowed with the imaginative universality of great fictional art. Yet the narrative as a whole has real magnificence. (p. 499)