One of Singer's best friend is Henry Miller, who sent him The Tropic of Cancer in Hebrew: yet Singer is critical of the humor in Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint. "The humor which is there is not real humor." he said. "It's not a humor which comes from character or from situation. It's the humor of embarrassment. This humor of revealing things which are to be covered has become important in this generation, but it's not going to last because how much can you uncover? Once the toilet and the masturbation are already in the literature, you have nothing else to uncover."

'You May Destroy the World'

We returned to Singer's mysticism and his interest in the Cabbala. The Cabbalists believe that there are millions of worlds and that this world is the worst of them. According to Jewish law, one is not allowed to study the Cabbala before the age of thirty; but Singer was not even thirteen when he began to read it secretly. "I remember that I saw there one name of God. a very strange kind of name," he said. "They said, 'Don't ever use this because you may destroy the world. So I had the illusion that if I ever uttered this word, all the houses would fall down, the sky would become red, and we would all collapse. And I said in my heart. 'Now, I have the power to destroy Warsaw.' It's one of these childish illusions. "He never tested the power of the word because he thought he might be the first victim. "As a matter of fact I'm still afraid," he added and laughed softly to himself at the thought.

Many of Singer's stories for children are derived from folktales. He laments the loss of interest in folklore. "Folklore was to me the soil on which literature grew." he said. "It is true that folklore contains a lot of foolish things, but it also contains grains of truth which are eternal. I am sure that a hundred years from now they will consider psychoanalysis folklore. And perhaps Marxism also."

Singer conceded that he cannot ignore politics. But he feels that polities and literature are incompatible. "The wheels of history are too heavy to be pushed by a writer." he said. "I don't mind if a philosopher tries to save humanity, or a sociologist; but a fiction writer who sits down to write a book with the idea to save humanity does not reach anything. He does not save humanity, and he spoils his book."

Singer has faith in the younger generation. "If the generations would really go down the way the old people think, we would be worse than amoebas now," he said. "The young people today will be old people forty years from now; and they will say. "Aaach! In our times in 1970 life was so wonderful. What an idyllic life!" As the Frenchmen say. The more things change, the more they remain the same."

In Parentheses

Now it was Singer's turn to ask the questions. You live in Peekskill, do you know the Shatsky's? I didn't. How does one become a Harvard student? I couldn't answer that either; no one ever explained it to me.

I asked. Singer to autograph my copy of The Magician of Lublin. He was talking as he wrote, and he unwittingly signed my name instead of his. When he noticed his mistake, he put my name in parentheses instead of crossing it out and signed his own underneath. I remembered my grandmother's belief that if a person's name were erased, he would be climinated from the Book of Life in heaven: and I wondered.

Outside, the sky was cloudy; and the naked trees bent in the wind. I almost tripped on the walk, and I remembered a quotation from Singer's story, "A Friend of Kafka": "Anyone who happens to come in contact with a great man marches with him into immortality-often in clumsy boots."