Singer's Typewriter and Mine
Reflections on Jewish Culture
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
In Singer’s Typewriter and Mine, a follow-up to The Inveterate Dreamer (Nebraska, 2001), Stavans interweaves his own experience with that of other Jewish writers and thinkers, past and present, to explore modern Jewish culture across the boundaries of language and nation. Juxtaposing the personal and the analytical, these essays and conversations take up the oeuvres of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Mario Vargas Llosa, translation and God’s language, storytelling as midrash, anti-Semitism in Hispanic America, Yiddish and Sephardic literatures, the connection between humor and terror, impostors as cultural agents, the creators of the King James Bible, and the encounter between Jewish and Latino civilizations, to name but a few of Stavans’s topics here. Funny, engaging, and provocative, this collection continues Stavans’s project of opening new vistas in our cross-cultural understanding of language, literature, and life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Stavans, a professor of Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst, begins this wide-ranging and fascinating collection (a follow-up to 2001's The Inveterate Dreamer) on a light note with a nine-page comic that introduces him as "the renowned Mexican Jewish writer and cultural critic" to a time-traveling 19th-century rabbi who finds himself on a plane for the first time. That sense of playfulness persists throughout the book, even as Stavans concisely and intelligently explores a range of topics, from the lack of a much-needed biographical treatment of activist rabbi Marshall T. Meyer to the impact of Isaac Bashevis Singer on literature. Anti-Semitism in Venezuela, Jewish elements of Maurice Sendak's children's books, a look back on the achievements of human rights champion Jacobo Timerman (whom he dubs Argentina's Mandela) all this and more are addressed in cleverly written, thought-provoking essays. Pieces on Sephardic literature and whether of multiculturalism in American society is real or illusory demonstrate that even when deployed in a longer format, Stavans's gifts as an essayist are not diminished. Though intimidatingly particular at first glance, Stavans's charming and erudite prose will draw in even those unfamiliar with his subjects.
