SANFORD PINSKER
207
occupy a realm quite different from life. Far too much of contemporary
literary criticism operates on very different principles, ones more inter–
ested in the litmus tests of race, class, gender, and sexual choice than on
the actual story before one's eyes. Thus, a good story confirms precon–
ceptions while a bad one is filled with unpleasant surprises. This is to
grab hold of the wrong end of the stick, for what fiction of any conse–
quence does is, first, surprise, and then convince. Granted, this preoc–
cupation is hardly limited to academic critics who seem unable to write
a paragraph that does not include terms such as "hegemonic" (nearly
always as a modifier for "conspiracy"), "patriarchal," and "privileged";
common readers often suffer from the same sense of specific expecta–
tions unfulfilled.
Here, an anecdote attributed to
I.
B. Singer may be instructive. Some–
where in the mid-
I
970s, when Singer-amazingly, improbably-regu–
larly published his stories in the pages of
The New Yorker
and was
much in demand on the lecture circuit, a Yiddish club in Brooklyn
invited him
to
read one of his stories. "Invited" is probably the wrong
word, not only because they lacked the wherewithal
to
pay him, but
also because no heartstring went unpulled. As Singer tells it, the group's
president began his pitch this way: "By us, you can read your story in
Yiddish-to
lalltzmen
Itechnically, Jews who grew up in the same East
European
shtetll
who understand. Not like those university types who
laugh at the wrong places and make fun of your accent behind your
back." "What could I do?" Singer said ruefully. "These are old peo–
ple"-as if he, then in his seventies, was not.
So he took a cab to Brooklyn (paying the fare himself), and arrived
to
find eight Yiddishists occupying the president's living room. No
doubt the turnout was disappointing, but Singer read a story nonethe–
less. When he finished, the same president who had been so solicitous
abruptly changed his colors: "This is not a good story. This is a
shmlltzidke
Idirtyl story, I spit on your story." And that is precisely
what he proceeded to do, on the rug beneath Singer's feet. A second per–
son was also outraged, but this time because Singer'S story was not, in
his words, "a Zionist story." He also spat, as did each of the others in
rurn. For some, the story deserved (and received) a spit because it was
not "kosher" or because it was not historically accurate or because its
Yiddish was not "refined" enough. "Imagine," Singer remarked, "eight
people and nine spits!"-this because one member spat twice: once
because the story was not Orthodox and then because it was a
shonda
(shame) for the
goyim.
