𝟯 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗱 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄: “𝗭𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗼𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗢𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀” 𝗯𝘆 𝗜𝘀𝗮𝗮𝗰 𝗕𝗮𝘀𝗵𝗲𝘃𝗶𝘀 𝗦𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗦𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗸 -

Delightful children's tales in an old folk tradition are still enough for adults to wax nostalgic, too.

#bookreviews #literature #books #bookworm #book #read #readreadread #3words #isaacbashevissinger #mauricesendak #zlatehthegoat #folktales #jewishliterature #polishliterature #childrensliterature #shortstories

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜'𝗺 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴: "𝗭𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗼𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗢𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀" 𝗯𝘆 𝗜𝘀𝗮𝗮𝗰 𝗕𝗮𝘀𝗵𝗲𝘃𝗶𝘀 𝗦𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 -

Decades ago, I wondered if there was more to these stories than their childlike exteriors. Time to find out.

#shortstories #childrensliterature #zlatehthegoat #IsaacBashevisSinger #mauricesendak #jewishamericanliterature #polishamericanliterature

𝗧𝗕𝗥 𝗣𝗶𝗹𝗲: 𝗠𝗮𝘆 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘀 -

A few of the books I'm reading this month!

#books #literature #bookreviews #bookworm #tbrpile #tbrlist #tbr #jewishamericanheritagemonth #asianpacificamericanheritagemonth #mentalhealthawarenessmonth #elifshafak #thereareriversinthesky #vietthanhnguyen #thesympathizer #geneluenyang #supermansmashestheklan #jennyxie #eyelevel #saulbellow #IsaacBashevisSinger #zlatehthegoat #lmmontgomery #anneofgreengables

The year 1961 brought Anglophonic readers three newly translated and fascinating works of speculative fiction, two of which were by Jewish authors. Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung und andere Erzählungen (Metamorphosis and Other Stories), Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Der Spinozist (The Spinoza of Market Street), and Witold Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke are concerned with the world lurking beneath what we see as reality. Dark fantasy, the occult, magic, and the grotesque come together to make these texts unsettling forays into an alternate way of seeing the world.

Though Kafka had been translated into English since the 1930s, the 1961 edition of Metamorphosis and Other Stories, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir, suggests that, even in a decade that was filled with science fiction that was either written in or translated into English, there was a strong appetite for the absurd and strange. Many speculative fiction readers know the anthology’s included novella The Metamorphosis, in which a man is inexplicably transformed into a bug and must live his life within this strange limitation, unable to interact normally with other humans. Scholars have suggested that Kafka’s life as a Czech Jew writing in German enabled him to more readily explore alternate realities and unexpected points of view.

Like Kafka, Isaac Bashevis Singer was a Jewish author interested in the absurd and inexplicable. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978, Singer was quite prolific and, to date, the only Nobel Prize laureate writing mostly in Yiddish. Multiple collections of his stories have been translated into and published in English in the 1960s. In 1961, Curt Leviant’s translation of The Spinoza of Market Street offered Anglophone readers a unique perspective on a vanishing world: Polish Jewry before the Holocaust. In general, Singer’s stories explore evil temptations, folklore, legends, and mysticism. The earthly and demonic battle it out in Spinoza’s stories with, in the words of Kirkus Reviews, “fanciful worlds inhabited by marriage brokers, derelicts, rabbis possessed by the devil, moneylenders, ghosts, dybbuks, attended by all the rituals, superstitions and behavior of antique Jewish custom.”

The work of Polish author Witold Gombrowicz, like the works of Kafka and Singer, is steeped in the absurd and grotesque. Gombrowicz, like other Polish fantasists writing in the early-to-mid-twentieth century, was fascinated by the world behind or beneath everyday reality, as explored in the artistic movements of Decadence, Surrealism, and Expressionism. Gombrowicz’s first novel, Ferdydurke, which was condemned as scandalous when it was first published in Polish in 1937, is the story of a man who is suddenly transformed into a teenaged boy. He then attempts to live a life without constraints but soon learns that his life is necessarily shaped by his circumstances, and he can never really banish the ghosts of tradition and social mores, no matter how hard he tries. Eric Mosbacher’s 1961 translation of Ferdyduke allowed Anglophonic speculative fiction readers a unique window into Polish life through the experiences of a man limited by the social expectations for boys in 1930s Poland.

All three of these works capture a slice of life alien to Anglophonic readers as they are pulled into foreign worlds and ways of life that were made even more unfamiliar by their slants toward surrealism, grotesquerie, darkness, and social otherness. These stories in translation are as enjoyable and as uncanny today as when they were first written or translated into English.

As you journey to and from Seattle Worldcon 2025, consider spending some of your travel time on bringing some of yesterday’s translated speculative fiction into your today and tomorrow!

https://seattlein2025.org/2024/11/22/fantastic-fiction-sf-in-central-eastern-europe/

#FranzKafka #IsaacBashevisSinger #WitoldGombrowicz

Fantastic Fiction: SF in Central/Eastern Europe: The year 1961 brought Anglophonic readers three fascinating works of speculative fiction in translation, two of which were by Jewish authors. Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The Spinoza of Market Street, and Witold Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke are concerned with the world lu… (#FranzKafka #IsaacBashevisSinger #WitoldGombrowicz)

Full post: https://seattlein2025.org/2024/11/22/fantastic-fiction-sf-in-central-eastern-europe/

Probablemente, un 21 de noviembre
nace en Polonia,
🖋️#IsaacBashevisSinger (1904?-1991)
#PremioNobel de #Literatura 1978
Junto con Malamud, Roth, Bellow, Asimov o Auster,
está entre los grandes escritores estadounidenses de origen judío.
Maravilloso narrador, es obligado leerlo...

@OeconomicusRatio Und wenn man sich in diese Zeit zurück versetzt und dann noch daran denkt, wie viele in Europa Jiddisch gesprochen haben ... Vielleicht sorgt ja der Leuchtturm #IsaacBashevisSinger dafür, dass das Bewusstsein für diese Sprache erhalten bleibt.

Latest read, The Slaughterer (1967) by Isaac Bashevis Singer from The Seance; Yoineh Meir is selected as The Slaughterer or butcher for his village though he had hoped to be a rabbi, and the occupation drives him to madness.
#Books #ShortStory #IsaacBashevisSinger

Before-Shabbat quick reading recommendation: "Yentl Meltdown" by Jett Allen, from the latest issue of Jewish Currents.

Excellent short comic about Yentl the movie, the story, transness, and transgenerational trauma - read if you can, it will stay with you.

https://jewishcurrents.org/yentl-meltdown

#Jewish #Comics #JettAllen #JewishCurrents #Trans #Transmasc #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Mazeldon #Cinema #Yentl #Trauma #Cissexism #IsaacBashevisSinger

That should probably have had some hashtags, hm. #IsaacBashevisSinger ? #Yiddish ? #literature ?

We must believe in free will - we have no choice
#IsaacBashevisSinger