"The Spinoza of Market Street" by Issac Bashevis Singer -1961 - translated from the Yiddish by Translated by Martha Glicklich and Cecil Hemley - 2006 - 17 Pages
Sunday, March 26, 2023
The Spinoza of Market Street, title story of a short-story collection by Isaac Bashevis Singer, published in Yiddish in 1944 as “Der Spinozist.” The collection was published in English in 1961.
"The Spinoza of Market Street" by Issac Bashevis Singer -1961 - translated from the Yiddish by Translated by Martha Glicklich and Cecil Hemley - 2006 - 17 Pages
Friday, March 24, 2023
The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn- 2006- 517 Pages
The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn- 2006- 530 Pages
Thursday, March 23, 2023
"Ivy Gates" -by 岡本かの子門 KANOKO OKAMOTO - 1936. - published in Japanese Short Stories:Works by 14 Modern Masters: Kawabata, Akutagawa and More Translated by Lane Dunlop Foreword by Alan Tansman TUTTLE Publishing Tokyo Rutland, Vermont Singapore “Books to Span the East and West”
Japanese Literature Challenge 16 January through March 20232023 is the 15th Year in which I have participated in The Japanese Literature Challenge hosted by Dolce Bellezza. In 2009 when I first participated I had yet to read any works originally written in Japanese. Now numerous Japanese writers are on my read all I can of their works list.. The post World War Two Japanese Novel is a world class cultural treasure.Both new and experienced readers will find numerous suggestions on the website. To participate you need only post on one work and list your review on the event website (listed above). New book bloggers will find participation a good way to meet others and expand those following their blogIn January for The Japanese Literature Challenge I posted uponAt the End of the Matinee by Keiichiro Hirano -2016- 306 pages- translated from the Japanese by Juliet Winters CarpenterIn February I posted on Tokyo Ueno Station- A Novel by Yu Miri -2014- translated from the Japanese by Morgan Giles - 2019 - 189 PagesYesterday I was kindly given a review copy of a very valuable collection of Japanese authored short stories.Japanese Short Stories:Works by 14 Modern Masters: Kawabata, Akutagawa and More Translated by Lane Dunlop Foreword by Alan Tansman TUTTLE Publishing Tokyo Rutland, Vermont Singapore “Books to Span the East and West”There are 12 stories in the collection. All the authors are deceased, three were women. There are very informative biographies of each writer, taken together they provide an overview of the development of the short story in Japan.Ivy Gates" - A Short Story by 岡本かの子門 KANOKO OKAMOTO is narrated by an upper class woman in a house with numerous servants. The story opens with a stunning account of the beauty of the ivy growing on the Gates of her house. The most important character is a house maid."It was as if the quick-tempered Maki, by being able to calculate with her eye the spread of the growth of the tips, had for the first time discovered in herself a love for nature. Although an honest person, Maki was set in her ways to the point of inflexibility.Because of this, her two marriages had ended in divorce. Obliged to work as a maidservant in the house of strangers many years, this aging woman, who somewhere in herself possessed a hard shell of ego, had at least had the gentle side of her drawn out by these ivy tips. It pleased me. Past fifty and on the outs with all her relatives, childless, Maki herself had come to feel subconsciously the hardness of her lot. Hadn’t the natural development of her emotions and the necessity to find something to love in her later years appeared to some extent even in this matter of the ivy?"The emotional core of the story centers on how Maki bonds with a neighbourhood girl she once loved and overcame her loneliness.Kanoko Okamoto was born on March 1, 1889, in the Akasaka district of Tokyo, now Minato-ku. Both her father, who had been a purveyor to the Tokugawa shogunate, and her mother, descended from a famous old family of Kanagawa Prefecture and skilled in the ballad drama known as tokiwazu, were persons of artistic taste. “Ivy Gates” belongs to a group of stories about ordinary Tokyo people written during the last years of Okamoto’s life. It preserves the atmosphere of the Meiji and Taisho eras that lingered on in the low-lying shita machi district east of the Sumida River and the hilly district to the west until the late thirties. Her writing was much admired by Yasunari Kawabata, and more recently has served as an inspiration for the artist Mayumi Oda. Her major work is the long novel Shojoruten (The Vicissitudes of Life). On January 31, 1939, on a trip to the Ginza with a young friend, Kanoko Okamoto was stricken by a cerebral hemorrhage as she got off the bus. She died eighteen days later.Mel Ulm
Wednesday, March 22, 2023
Two Short Stories about Witches by Theodora Goss "You Might Be a Witch" and "The Witch" and an Essay "Why I Write Fantasy" by Theodora Goss - from her collection The Collected Enchanments" - 2023
Two Short Stories about Witches by Theodora Goss "You Might Be a Witch" and "The Witch" and an Essay "Why I Write Fantasy" by Theodora Goss - from her collection The Collected Enchanments" - 2023
Monday, March 20, 2023
"My Evil Mother" - A Short Story by Margaret Atwood - 2023- included in her new collection Old Babes in the Wood
"My Evil Mother" - A Short Story by Margaret Atwood- 2023- included in her new collection Old Babes in the Woods
I acquired this wonderful story as a Kindle Single for $0.99
This has been a good month for short stories so far, two classic works by Issac Singer and now a brand new story by Margaret Atwood.
As the story begins the teenage narrator is mad at her mother for telling her she must end her relationship ship with her boyfriend. The father is long gone, what happened to him is left vague. The mother has income but it seems to come from other women who employ her to cast spells. As time ago on, the story takes us to where the daughter rebellious 15 year old daughter. The mother seems increasingly convinced she is a witch of sorts. We see the parental roles reversing.
There is a lot to ponder here. Is the mother using the idea she has occult powers to give herself status? Does the delusion pass along to the daughter?
This story was a lot of fun to read
https://margaretatwood.ca/ has lots of info
Mel Ulm
Sunday, March 19, 2023
The 1619 Project : A New Origin Story - created by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times Magazine. - 2021 - 559 Pages
The 1619 Project : A New Origin Story - created by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times Magazine. - 2021 - 559 Pages
Saturday, March 18, 2023
A Friend of Kafka" - A Short Story by Issac Bashevis Singer - Translated by the author and Elizabeth Shub from the Yiddish - originally published in The New Yorker -March 15,1968
"A Friend of Kafka" - A Short Story by Issac Bashevis Singer - Translated by the author and Elizabeth Shub from the Yiddish - originally published in The New Yorker -March 15,1968
Issac Singer (1902-1901-born Poland) won the Nobel Prize in 1986 for the full body of his work. He is best known to the public as the author of Yentil, the basis for a very popular movie. Singer's, even though he left Poland in 1935 because of the rise of the Nazis, work is very rooted in the culture in which he was raised. He became an American citizen. Singer died and is buried in Florida. . He indicated his biggest influences as a short story writer were Anton Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant
You can read the story in the Kindle sample of the book pictured above. It is included in The Collected Short Stories of Issac Bashevis Singer as well as the Library of America collection of his works.
A few days ago I read a wonderful story by Issac Singer, "The Gentleman from Cracow" set among farmers, merchants of Ashkanazi heritage in Cracow,Poland. Today's story, "A Friend of Kafka" is set in Warsaw amongst people involved in the Yiddish theater, highly literate men, women play a big part in the story but pretty much as the sexually attract the men in the story. There are aristocrats among the characters. The narrative is structured around the conversations of two friends. A lot is about the relationship of one of the men to Franz Kafka. One of the characters used to be big in the theater, the other is a writer. A good deal happens in the story. An old man's sexual capacity is restored in a sexual encounter with a countess hiding from a murderous lover.
The narrator always has to loan money to the old actor who loves to hear himself talk on everything from the brothel visit he took Kafka on to his chess game with the fates.
“Didn’t you once ask what makes me go on, or do I imagine that you did? What gives me the strength to bear poverty, sickness, and, worst of all, hopelessness? That’s a good question, my young friend. I asked the same question when I first read the Book of Job. Why did Job continue to live and suffer? So that in the end he would have more daughters, more donkeys, more camels? No. The answer is that it was for the game itself. We all play chess with Fate as a partner. He makes a move; we make a move. He tries to checkmate us in three moves; we try to prevent it. We know we can’t win, but we’re driven to give him a good fight"
"A Friend of Kafka" is ten minutes of delight, funny, and made me feel I was getting private gossip from old Warsaw.
There are about 40 Singer Short stories in the edition I have of his work. I hope to read all of them
Mel Ulm