Books that Changed My Life

Isaac Bashevis Singer once said that every writer needs to have an address. Why else do we speak of Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy as Russian writers, and of Jane Austen and Dickens and George Eliot as English writers, and of Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Márquez as South American writers, and so on? In this connection, and in nuance and perception (and with conscious respect for the obvious differences in stature and renown), I am a Jewish writer as John Updike is a Christian writer, or as V. S. Naipaul is a Hindu writer, or as Salman Rushdie is a Muslim writer. I have been, enchanted by Jewish fable (the golem tale, for instance) or struck to the marrow by Jewish historical catastrophe (as in the little book called The Shawl). It is self-evident that any writer's subject matter will emerge from that writer's preoccupations, and it goes without saying that all writers are saturated, to one degree or another, in origins, in history. And for everyone alive in the century we have left behind, the cataclysm of murder and atrocity that we call the Holocaust is inescapable and indelible, and inevitably marks-stains-our moral nature; it is an event that excludes no one.

And yet no writer of stories should be expected to be a moral champion or a representative of "identity." That way lies tract and sermon and polemic. When a thesis or a framework-any kind of prescriptiveness or tendentiousness-is imposed on the writing of fiction, imagination flies out the door, and with it the freedom and volatility and irresponsibility that imagination both confers and demands. I have never set out to be anything other than a writer of stories. It disturbs me when, as sometimes happens, I am mistaken for a champion of identity in the currently fashionable multicultural sense, with its emphasis on ethnic collectivities. (The Greek origin of the word "ethnic," by the way, refers to anyone who is neither Jewish nor Christian. One of my dictionaries defines ethnic as "pagan.")

Writing Advice: The Human Ocean

The experiments which the modernists make all deal with form, with what they call form, with silly things‑whether to punctuate a poem or not to punctuate, whether to sign with capital letters or with small letters. This is of no value. I say to myself, why don't they look into the human ocean which surrounds them where stories and novelties flow by the millions? It's there where my experiments take place‑in the laboratory of humanity, not on a piece of paper.

from Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer

Writing is Sedentary

Writing is sedentary. Without a regular exercise program, both your body and your creative brain will be in trouble. (Oh, stop whining. You know I'm right.) THE WRITER January 2003 From "What I know, for sure ... I think"

(A best-selling author offers words of wisdom gleaned from 20 years of writing) by Susan Elizabeth Philips

The Young Reader Only Cares About the Story, Not the Author

When I was young I used to read books and I never really looked at who the author was. I didn't care. When I was a boy of twelve, I read Tolstoy, but I didn't know it was Tolstoy. I didn't even know that I was reading a translation. What's the difference? I was interested in the story, not the author. I could not repeat the word Dostoyevsky. I didn't care because a real reader, especially a young reader, never cares too much about the author. On the other hand, the academic reader doesn't really care about the story; he cares about the author. We are living now in a time when people are so interested in the author that the story is almost secondary, which is very bad. Many of the readers of today themselves want to be writers. They are interested in the shop; they are interested in the maker. The good reader, the real reader when he is young, doesn't care so much who Tolstoy was and what he was. He wants to read the book and he enjoys it.

from Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer

The Young Reader Only Cares About the Story, Not the Author

When I was young I used to read books and I never really looked at who the author was. I didn't care. When I was a boy of twelve, I read Tolstoy, but I didn't know it was Tolstoy. I didn't even know that I was reading a translation. What's the difference? I was interested in the story, not the author. I could not repeat the word Dostoyevsky. I didn't care because a real reader, especially a young reader, never cares too much about the author. On the other hand, the academic reader doesn't really care about the story; he cares about the author. We are living now in a time when people are so interested in the author that the story is almost secondary, which is very bad. Many of the readers of today themselves want to be writers. They are interested in the shop; they are interested in the maker. The good reader, the real reader when he is young, doesn't care so much who Tolstoy was and what he was. He wants to read the book and he enjoys it.

from Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer

The First Fifteen Years of Life

There is something about writers—the first fifteen years of their life is never lost to them. It is like a well which is never exhausted.

from Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer

Books that Changed My Life

Isaac Bashevis Singer once said that every writer needs to have an address. Why else do we speak of Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy as Russian writers, and of Jane Austen and Dickens and George Eliot as English writers, and of Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Márquez as South American writers, and so on? In this connection, and in nuance and perception (and with conscious respect for the obvious differences in stature and renown), I am a Jewish writer as John Updike is a Christian writer, or as V. S. Naipaul is a Hindu writer, or as Salman Rushdie is a Muslim writer. I have been, enchanted by Jewish fable (the golem tale, for instance) or struck to the marrow by Jewish historical catastrophe (as in the little book called The Shawl). It is self-evident that any writer's subject matter will emerge from that writer's preoccupations, and it goes without saying that all writers are saturated, to one degree or another, in origins, in history. And for everyone alive in the century we have left behind, the cataclysm of murder and atrocity that we call the Holocaust is inescapable and indelible, and inevitably marks-stains-our moral nature; it is an event that excludes no one.

And yet no writer of stories should be expected to be a moral champion or a representative of "identity." That way lies tract and sermon and polemic. When a thesis or a framework-any kind of prescriptiveness or tendentiousness-is imposed on the writing of fiction, imagination flies out the door, and with it the freedom and volatility and irresponsibility that imagination both confers and demands. I have never set out to be anything other than a writer of stories. It disturbs me when, as sometimes happens, I am mistaken for a champion of identity in the currently fashionable multicultural sense, with its emphasis on ethnic collectivities. (The Greek origin of the word "ethnic," by the way, refers to anyone who is neither Jewish nor Christian. One of my dictionaries defines ethnic as "pagan.")


The Book That Changed My Life: Interviews with National Book Award Winners and Finalists