And what of the crities? "I would say they are a necessary evil," he said laughingly. "There must be crities because if not, every man with talent or without talent would publish books; and it would be casier to fool the reader than it is today. The only trouble is there are some crities whom we can also easily fool, but what can you do?" Singer shrugged and continued. "Most people live according to a cliche. Although they fight cliches and the Establishment, they become Establishment themselves. It's almost in human nature that people imitate one another and ape one another. There are few original people, and they sometimes don't appear original because they don't try to appear original." Mrs. Singer tried to interest her husband in another piece of toast, but he declined.

"There are original men who dress conventionally and live conventionally and their originality is there," Singer said. "While another man can put on a . . . " He paused for a moment, searching for a bizarre image. "A green top hat." he continued. "And he will put on glasses, not over his eyes but over his mouth, and he will still be a banail person. The writer who sits down and tries to be original in every line will never really be original." Singer accepted the toast, took another bite, and began to talk about modernity.

"I think that the Iliad and the Odyssey are as modern today as they were four thousand years ago, while some of the books which sound very modern today will be forgotten a day later," he said, chewing his toast meditatively. "Now take the Sunday Times, which is so modern and so fresh Sunday morning. Monday it's already in the garbage." His eyes opened wide wonderingly. "How does it come? It seems that being modern is not enough. The word up-to-date. which people use nowadays so much and about which they make such a fuss is not really such a great quality. It may be a good quality in a newspaper but not in writing." He paused for a moment and swallowed a few spoonfulls of oatmeal.

'In Literature Nothing Dies'

Singer looked wistful again as he spoke of his favorite topic-the shtetl, now nothing but dust and ashes'. "It's true that the world which I describe has vanished physically; but in literature nothing dies, nothing vanishes. The holocaust did not really destory Jewish culture. The same people or their children built Israel. To me the people from Warsaw are as much alive as those in New York today."

Singer understandably refuses to write about the holocaust. Most of his family were killed in the war and he feels he lacks the perspective to write about the war and the death camps. His only son. who is a schoolteacher, lives on a kibbutz in Israel with his wife and two small children. "I continue the heredity of my parents," Singer said. "I brought up a son."

Singer and his wife have visited Israel twice. He spoke of Israel with intense enthousiason. "There is an atmosphere there which cannot be explained," he said. "Before I went there I was afraid. But the moment you are there all fear vanishes automatically, and there comes over you a feeling of clation which you cannot explain. It's not an accident that this country has become the spiritual fatherland of half of humanity. There is something in the climate there, in the sky in the very air. I think Nietzche said it: that only Israel could have produced prophets."

Singer would not consider moving to Israel, among other reasons, because Hebrew is spoken there. He has made up his mind to write in Yiddish as long as he lives. "Maybe in the next world I will begin to write in Hebrew," he said.

And what of the future of Yiddish? It is said that if a Yiddish reader dies, there is no one to replace him. But Singer has some comfort for Yiddish scholars. "We have now in the world about three-and-a-half billion people," he said. "A hundred years from now there will probably be a hundred billion people the way we multiply. And every one of these hundred billion people will need a topic for a Ph.D. And you can imagine what they will do to Yiddish. They will bring up every book-good or bad every manuscript, and write dissertations about it." Singer belives the Jews will remember Yiddish. "Jewish people suffer from all kinds of sicknesses," he said. "But amnesia is not one of them. Our trouble is that we remember too much."

Singer's stories and novels are varied in scope and focus. The Magacian of Lublin is a bittersweet variation on the theme of the Wandering Jew; Satan in Goray deals with the orgiastic response to a false messiah in seventeenth-century Poland, while stories like "Short Friday" celebrate domesticity and the simple virtues: But perhaps Singer's masterpiece of short fiction, "Gimpel the Fool." provides the most tender display of his virtuoso talent. In a world which places a premium on wisdom, Singer's hero is the fool, the one who receives goat turds instead of sweets. The simpleton is the perfect symbol of alienated man-the butt of both divine and carthly humor.

The Supernatural

Another important element in Singer's work is the cast of demons, goblins, and witches who drift in and out of his stories with all the caseof spirits passing through a wall. It is hard to ask Singer to analyze the supernatural and the mystic element of his work: for as he once remarked. "To ask a writer what elements he used in writing is like asking a chicken what chemicals it used in laying an egg." Yet supernatural forces and the wisdom of the Cabbala (a Jewish book of mystecism) play an important role in his life and in his work

"I am a believer in the so-called supernatural." he said between pieces of toast. "I say so-called because it is my conviction that telepathy and clairvoyance and premonitions and ail these things are really a part of naturel. You cannot photograph a ghost just as you cannot photograph talent or love. But this is not a proof that they don't exist."

Singer's family was shocked when he decided to become a writer instead of a rabbi, yet he is a deeply religious man. Though he believes in the importance of tradition, his decision was a singfficant break with his heritage. To the Jews of the ghetto, secular writers were dangerous heretics. But Singer remained close to the Jewish traditon in his own way.

Judging from passage in his short stories and novels. I thought that his position on religion might be antiexistentialist, though he detests labels and categories. Yet many of his characters are skepties. The God of Yascha. the profligate-turned-ascetic in The Magician of Lublin is a God who "revealed Himself to no one [and] gave no indications of what was permitted or forbidden." This deus absconditus appears in other stories as well. In "A Tale of Two Liars" Satan mocks a praying prisoner. "Are you stupid enough to still believe in the power of prayer? . . . There was enough prayer, wasn't there, when Chmielnicki came? How were those prayers answered? Children were buried alive, chaste wives raped-and later their bellies ripped open and cats sewed inside. Why should God bother with your prayers? He neither hears nor sces. There is no judge. There is no judgment."

'I'm Always Praying'

Yet the wastrels repent, the righte ous stand firm, and all go to heaven or hell according to their merits. Singer is neither a skeptic nor a dogmatist. To those brought up on a steady diet of realism and humanism. his simple faith is refreshing. "When I'm in trouble I pray," he said. And since I'm always in trouble I'm always praying." But he seldom goes to synagogue. "If I had small children, I would take them to synagogue . . because small children need organized religion." he said. Singer's God is a paternal God who listens to our prayers and knows our weaknesses and our strengths.

Singer has pronounced opinions on literary humor. He rejects the savage and cruel mocking irony of younger writers in favor of the self-deprecatory humor of the shtetl. "I will tell you." he said, prefacing his remarks with the characteristic phrase of the born racontear: "If you laugh, either you laugh at others or you laugh at yourself. If you don't want to laugh at others, you have to make humor about yourself."