Isaac Bashevis Singer was born Icek-Hersz Zynger on July 14, 1904, in Leoncin, Poland. His father, Pinkhos Menakhem Zynger, was a rabbi, and his mother, Batsheve Zylberman Zynger, was the daughter of a rabbi. From 1908 until 1917, the family lived on Krochmalna Street in Warsaw; in 1917, Singer , his mother, and his younger brother moved to his grandfather's shtetl in Bilgoray.
Although he was briefly enrolled in a rabbinical seminary in Warsaw, Singer, like his older brother, novelist Israel Joshua Singer, turned his attention away from the religious culture of his family. In 1923, he became a proofreader at the Yiddish literary journal Literarishe Bleter, co-founded and edited by his brother. Singer's first published story, "In Old Age" (Oyf der elter), appeared in that journal in 1925 and won an award in its literary contest. For the next decade, Singer continued to write short stories, articles, and reviews for the Yiddish and Hebrew press, but his primary income came from translations. He had particular success with his Yiddish translations of novels by Erich Maria Remarque, Knut Hamsun, and Thomas Mann.
In 1929, Singer's son by Runia Pontsch, Israel Zamir, was born. His first novel, Satan in Goray, was serialized in the periodical Globus in 1934 and published as a book by the Yiddish section of the Warsaw P.E.N. Club in 1935. Singer left Poland in 1935 and followed I. J. Singer to New York, where both were employed by the Jewish Daily Forward (Forverts), the premier American newspaper of Yiddish language and culture. Forverts maintained a tradition of publishing literature and journalism for the Jewish immigrant culture. This publication became the springboard and showcase for Singer's life work as a writer; he published articles, short stories, and novel serializations, and conducted correspondence with other Yiddish authors under its banner until his death in 1991. Most of his translated novels and stories originally appeared in Forverts, usually under the pseudonym Isaac Bashevis. His other pseudonyms included Isaac Warshofsky and D. Segal.
In 1940, Singer married Alma Haimann Wasserman, an immigrant from Germany. They remained married until his death, although he was involved with other women. In 1943, Singer became a United States citizen. His brother, Israel Joshua Singer, who was a major influence on his life and career, died the following year.
With the publication in English of his novel The Family Moskat in 1950, Singer gained a new audience, which then grew substantially after his short story "Gimpel the Fool" appeared in translation by Saul Bellow in the Partisan Review in 1953. Subsequent translators included Laurie Colwin, Ruth Schachner Finkel, Mirra Ginsburg, Elaine Gottlieb, Herbert Lottman, Aliza Shevrin, Elizabeth Shub, and his nephew Joseph Singer, among others. Singer continued to write in Yiddish, although the English translations served as the source of foreign translations. Singer usually made the first English translation of a story himself, dictating it to a translator who polished the text. Translations of Singer's short stories were published in Harper's, Commentary, Encounter, Playboy, Esquire, and other periodicals, and primarily in The New Yorker after 1967. Singer's chief English publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, published many collections of his short stories, as well as his best known novels, The Slave (1962), The Manor (1967), The Estate (1969), Enemies: A Love Story (1972), Shosha (1978), Scum (1991), The Certificate (1992), and memoirs, Love and Exile (1984).
The adaptation of Singer's work to the stage and screen began with his Forverts serialization of The Family Moskat, which was simultaneously broadcast live as a weekly radio soap opera on WEVD in New York. In addition to radio dramas, Singer wrote plays and at least five stage versions of his stories, including "Teibele and Her Demon" and "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy." Three of his novels have also been made into films: The Magician of Lublin (1978), Yentl (1983), and Enemies: A Love Story (1989).
Singer did not begin writing for children until he was in his sixties, but his first book, Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories (1966), received a Newbery Honor Book Award, as did The Fearsome Inn (1967) and another collection of stories, When Shlemiel Went to Warsaw (1968). In 1970, he won the National Book Award for A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw. His works for children attracted some of the most famous illustrators of children's books in America, including Maurice Sendak, Nonny Hogrogian, Eric Carle, Uri Shulevitz, and Margot Zemach, and were translated into more than a dozen languages.
During his career, Singer received innumerable awards, citations, and honors, including honorary degrees from universities worldwide. His work was honored with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978. Singer died in Surfside, Florida, on July 24, 1991.
Sources:
Hadda, Janet. Isaac Bashevis Singer: A Life. New York : Oxford University Press, 1997.
Dictionary of Literary Biography
Volume 6: American Novelists Since World War II, Second Series. James
E. Kibler, Jr., ed. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1980.
Volume 52: American Writers for Children Since 1960: Fiction. Glenn E.
Estes, ed. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1986.
Volume 278: American Novelists Since World War II, Seventh Series.
James R. and Wanda H. Giles, eds. Gale Group, 2003.
"Isaac Bashevis Singer." Contemporary Authors Online, http://galenet.galegroup.com, accessed 5 August 2004.
Kresh, Paul. Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Magician of West 86th Street. New York : Dial Press, 1979.
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