A Friend of Kafka, and Other Stories

By Isaac Bashevis Singer

Book Overview

This book of twenty stories is Isaac Bashevis Singer's fifth collection and contains such classics as "The Cafeteria" and "On the Way to the Poorhouse."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374158800
• ISBN13: 9780374158804
• Release Date: January 1970
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Length: 311 Pages
• Weight: 1.16 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.1" x 1.1" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Most all of these stories all end in a death

Mr. Singer is a wonderful writer. I have read several of his books and found them all entertaining and interesting. Apparently these stories were written in Yiddish or German because they all needed to be translated. This is interesting because he has lived in United States of America for a long time and I would have thought he would have written in English. I guess that he must have been writing for publication in special newspapers and magazines. Most all of these stories all end in a death. Sometimes it is okay, the person dies and leaves a legacy that will be remembered for all time, other times it is their just desserts. All of these stories are worthy and interesting. 'A Friend of Kafka' - the friend is Jacques Kohn, a destitute actor, living in Warsaw. The writer is a writer (later on he sells a story) and both Jacques and the author frequent a writer's club. Jacques was born a Hasidic Jew in some small town in Poland named Jankel. He changed his name while in some of the capitals of Europe: Prague, Vienna, Berlin, etc. He had and was friendly with various celebrities of the day, but now he is down and out. He tries to look better than he is but the folks he knows, know him for who he is. Throughout the story he pokes fun at Jewishness ("Jews remember too much.") and his associates, former and present. He claims to be haunted by Fate, who is trying to bring him down, but to play the game (not necessarily to win, but certainly not to lose) is why Jacques keeps on keeping on. 'Guests on a Winter Night' - Isaac's (5 to 10 years old) Aunt Itta Fruma has come to with his family. She has lost the house she had been living in. His father is reluctant to put her out, mostly because he is trying to be a good Jewish person and he does not feel it is absolutely necessary. She tells stories of the family and tends to religious rites like a man as well as as a good Jewish widow. She moves in and the family is thrown into disarray and disagreement. After a time she moves out and all is well. In the end she passes on and the family feels worse for having not been more charitable. 'The Key' - Bessie Popkin is beset by demons of her own making. She has been widowed for years and trying to live on a meager income. She frightens herself with imagining various evilness in her neighbors and shopkeepers, etc. When she goes out this time, all goes well enough, but her key breaks in the lock, so she has to spend the night outside and does not know what to do to get into her apartment or what to do with her groceries. She learns in the end all her fears were fantasies and so becomes happy. 'Dr. Beeber' - Another poor fellow met at the writer's club. This one's story is better and ends with a surprise. Dr. Beeber lives the life of Riley, carefree and happy. Then he meets a woman who finds him utterly charming. She talks him into marriage, but he is not quite happy. He gets out of it and resumes his happy dissipated life. 'Stories

Singer is Singer, but this is not his best

I do not know of a greater short- story writer than I.B. Singer. He has it all, a tremendous storytelling ability, a capacity for creating memorable characters, a capacity to present interesting ideas in dialogue, great humor, colorful idiomatic language, the evocation of a world- or worlds gone, deep Jewishness ( for those who care) a capacity to vividly so vividly evoke situations of conflict and drama, an interesting way of writing about sexuality, a probing of and questioning of God, loneliness, love, hunger, sadness, death. He has it all. Yet these stories are not among his best. They have a certain weakness with characters sometimes seeming more odd than compelling , and with the lust instead of firing the imagination tailing off into sordidness. Short Friday, Gimpel the Fool , The Spinoza of Market Street, Passions are all superior collections. But this is still Singer and so is worth reading. Certain enjoyment you will certainly get- if not the greatest.

More from the master of the short story

Let me begin by saying that I have never read anything by I. B. Singer that I thought was a waste of time. This man is incredible with the stories he writes and the style he writes it in. What is even more amazing is that Singer always maintained that his stories lost about 40% of their literary value in translation. As great as I think he is, I apparently will never appreciate how great he really is because I can't read Yiddish. That said, I don't recommend this book for an introduction to the author. It is very good but it is not one of his better collections of short stories. I'd actually rate it a 3.5 on this scale but, with Singer, you always round up. For a good introduction to the author I would recomend "Passions". The stories I did enjoy the most were certainly worth the price of admission. Those stories would include the title story. The last line is terrific but not if you hadn't read the story first. I enjoyed "The Key" in which a lonely widow discovers that she is surrounded by friends that she never before realized. "The Cafeteria" is the type of love story that Singer writes when he is one of the lovers. True romance seems to only happen to others in his stories. "The Chimney Sweep" is a nice little story about what a knock on the head can do for a fellow. "Schlomele" is a story about the sort of zany characters the author seemed to find so easily in this country. "The Colony" is a sort of haunting story about a visit to Argentina. It seems like all of his short story collections have a story about a visit to Argentina. They seem to always be very good stories, too. "The Wager" is the story of the tragic outcome of a practical joke gone bad. "The Son" is a short but touching tale of a father and son reunion in a case where they were separated near birth and rejoined as grown and near-grown men. There were many other stories but, as I looked back over them, they didn't seem as memorable as most of Singer's stories I've read in the past. I started out by writing that you can't go wrong reading Isaac B. Singer. I'll close by saying the same thing but I suggest you introduce yourself to him with a different book. I wouldn't want you to get the wrong impression.

spectacular view of a vanished world

It is a mystery to me why these books are all going out of print. Singer is one of the great 20c masters of the short story. I would characterise them as genius: they evoke lives in the deepest sense, offering a glimpse of an utterly alien existence. I was attracted by the title, and delightfully surpirsed at the power of the writing, including stories of neglected sholars, demons and harmless goblins, and the way of life of pre-WWII Poland. Every story is superbly crafted.Warmly recommended. This writer deserves to be read.