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The only time I ever heard him espousing religion was in denying evo–
lution. Ilc uphcld crcation, and gave a peculiar twist to the word "secu–
lar." Hc used it to describe Nazis, Communists, evolutionists. I don't
think hc rcalizcd, in the largcr scnse, how much he himself and the urban
charactcrs of his American tales had become secular. Hc had read decply
into Wcstcrn culture, including Ccrvantes, Proust, and Schopenhauer. To
a largc cxtent, hc was a citizcn of the world, with the sevcre handicap of
a Yiddish acccnt as markcd as Chico Marx's Italian. All thc while, three
hundrcd ycars of Polish-Jewish dark history weighed heavily on his mind.
How was his writing going ovcr? From Singer's
shtetl
stories, some
rcadcrs pigconholed him as a mystic or a dead writer from long ago. Yet
hc was riding thc IRT, watching TV news, commenting on daily events.
Thc Amcrican Catholic press gave him better reviews than the American
Jewish prcss, who sccmcd less surc what to make of him. The supernat–
uralism of rural Hasids sccmcd to correlate more
to
the concept of dread
in mcdicval Christianity than to mainstream Judaic beliefs. Why the
abscncc of good old schmaltz? How could nostalgic Jews identify with
him whcn no Yiddish words peppcrcd his books
to
tickle thcir mcmories?
SINGER MII.DI.Y COMPLAINED about professional aggravations. Knopf
had askcd him
to
cut his Tolstoyan novel,
The Family Moskat,
when it
was about
to
bc publishcd alongside a second Jewish novel cxpccted to
sell
by
thc truckload, John Hcrscy's
The Wall.
It still troubled him, many
ycars latcr. Hc complaincd of thc entry-level advances he was getting,
$)
,000
pcr book, wh i
Ie
grccn-a t-the-gi lis un knowns and flashes in the
pan wcrc raking in six figures. When I suggested he ask for more, he
shook mc off. He didn't want a book
to
bomb and lay a load of guilt
upon him. Singcr also complained that
Commentary,
the main Jewish–
oricnted magazine, wouldn't publish his stories. He loved to flirt with
the idca of getting an agent, especially when I told him I knew Candida
Donadio, a rruc literary agcnt in a field turning rabid with greed. But he
nc\'cr callcd her. I think he feared she might antagonize Cecil Hemley,
his ncw publishcr at Noonday Press. When Noonday became part of
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, the Hemleys translated some of the piles of
manuscripts in Singer'S drawcrs. It was a major turning point for him.
AI.MOST OVEf{NIGHT, Singcr was more widely accepted, though much of
his work was now in second-rate translations-not just in the U.S., but
in placcs like Spain, where he was even being read by Basques. One day
he rcccivcd an unsolicited letter inviting him to apply for a Guggenheim
Fcllowship. Hc told mc he wouldn't do it; he was "not a beggar." I tried