Re-reads 

Hunger – Knut Hamsun (Norwegian)

The unnamed narrator dominates the reader’s sensibilities with a completeness that few novels can match. We’re totally immersed in his actions, thoughts and emotions. He’s a writer living in Christiana (Oslo) who can’t sell his work, and he doesn’t turn to other means of making a living. So he starves, he lives in hovels (or out in the open). The hunger of the title is very real. But most important are his thoughts and emotions (which drive his actions). We’re in a mind that is, to put it mildly, unusual. Most of the time I was bewildered by the man, and, since I couldn’t relate to him, I couldn’t feel empathy. Often I thought he was crazy (a thought he has too). Why did he do this, why did he say that? No halfway normal person would follow wayward impulses as he does. In one instance – involving his encounter with a woman he names Ylajali (nobody in the book has a given name) – I doubted that it had actually happened. Why would a sane woman get interested in such a weird character? Can we attribute his eccentricities to hunger? I don’t think so, for starving people have a sense of practicality, which our character lacks. My edition contains introductions by Isaac Bashevis Singer and Robert Bly (who did the translation). I read both, searching for some reference to the issue of insanity. I searched in vain. What I did learn was that Hamsun experienced a prolonged period of hunger. This was his first novel, written in 1890; in the work that followed he turned more and more to a realistic approach (which I prefer). Anyway. . . This novel kept me interested, it’s vivid, it even has a jaunty quality (which is odd, considering its subject matter). On the last page our character impulsively gets a job on a ship about to leave port. This is good: on the ship he must do practical work, and do it well. He must interact with others in a rational way. He must be a normally functioning man. If not, they’ll toss him off the boat in the middle of the ocean. I never wanted to toss this book into the ocean. But I don’t get, on this reading, the virtues attributed to it by Singer and Bly and others, who see it as a landmark in psychological fiction. 3

A Cab at the Door – V. S. Pritchett

A memoir about the author’s youth (ending when he’s in his late teens). One thing that struck me as peculiar was the detail he included. I’ll make up an example: an aunt Viv he knew when he was six has a mole on her chin and wheezes when she laughs. And there’s more – what she says, etc. Why does it matter to the reader (the aunt will play no role in his life; she just appears on page 14 and never again). And how could he remember all that about her? My surprise was greatly heightened when I learned that the author was 68 when he wrote this book. What we get is a clutter of characters and events, all described with care. These people come and go, and chronology is shaky. His immediate family are not given precedence; some (such as his three younger siblings) are ignored. His mother is composed of a few standard reactions. His father plays a more significant role, and is presented as a pompous fool. Victor seems not to love any of them. We do get to know him, but he doesn’t come across as someone I could sympathize with. His growth as a writer is chronicled, but who cares? Despite all these negative factors, things improved when I changed my attitude toward what I was reading: I gave up trying to make sense of the potpourri, I just let it all wash over me. I took in the moment, and didn’t worry about its significance. The main character is actually London of the early 1900s. Not upper-class London, not slum London, but the lower end of middle-class London. It rises from the pages, a monster of a city, teeming and vigorous. We’re immersed in its streets, shops, parks, offices, weather, etc. And, foremost, its people – their appearance, gestures, speech, attitudes. On that basis, the book works, because these brief snippets are lively. Actually, Pritchett wasn’t a novelist, and it shows. He had a vast array of books published, but only five were novels, and he once stated that he didn’t like writing them. But to write a memoir one needs to have some novelistic skills, and the lack of them shows in Cab. Still, for the passing enjoyment I got out of this odd book, it deserves a weak 3

The Fall – Albert Camus (French)

Two men meet in a bar in Amsterdam (“May I, monsieur, offer my services without running the risk of intruding?”). What follows is a monologue: one man (Jean-Baptiste) talks to another (who never says a single word). This occurs over a number of days, at various meeting places. What we get is a prolonged confession, a dark one, but presented in a witty, offhand way. The speaker examines his life and the motives driving him. What he confesses to is his falsity and pridefulness and emptiness. The book is highly cynical (“Of course, true love is exceptional – two or three times a century, more or less”). Our narrator’s good acts are actually, under his scrutinizing eye, seen to be motivated by vanity, a need to be considered virtuous in his eyes and in the eyes of others. It amounts to a greed that needs to be constantly fed. And, it’s implied, many of the human species act under similar drives. I have few high-minded illusions about human nature, but I found Jean-Baptiste to be an extreme specimen – not a believable one. He merely serves the purpose of allowing Camus to make philosophical points. But to do so in a novel is a tricky proposition. Halfway through this confession I took the place of the man listening and decided that, if I were him, I would avoid meeting up with J-B at all costs. So why take his place and read on? Camus’s acclaim as a writer (the Nobel Prize at the youthful age of forty-four), and his death three years later (car accident), impart a certain glamor to his work. I may once have been impressed. Delete

Re-reads

Pan – Knut Hamsun (Norwegian)

This novel is strange and perplexing. Not that it’s written in an obscure way – the prose is as clear as could be. But the main character —Thomas Glahn, whose journal we’re reading – feels and acts in ways that are inexplicable. He’s been living with his dog Aesop in a hut by an immense forest for two years, and his emotional bond with nature is extreme; it affects him in a deep, even rapturous way. But then he falls in love with a young woman – Edvarda – and, again, his feelings toward her are extreme. In the beginning she responds, but then she begins to withhold, then to give a bit. He’s emotionally pulled one way and then the other. The merest slight by her will cause him to go overboard, and when he’s angry he’ll do crazy things (such as shoot himself in the foot). The stage is set for tragedy – the “gift” that Glahn gives Edvarda when he leaves is truly shocking. Hamsun may have been responding to the glamorization in fiction of outsize emotions. He showed such emotions as being devoid of glamour, but rather a manifestation of a consuming madness.

The Job Hunter – Allen R. Dodd

This “Diary of a Lost Year” follows the travails of a NYC ad executive who finds himself out of a job. It’s not due to any lack on his part – in the course of this book he emerges as intelligent, creative, hard-working. But, due to some shifting in the upper ranks of the big corporation he works for, he’s deemed  expendable. This is a very readable account of his search for a position that corresponds to his experience and salary (though his expectations steadily lower). His search is actually a job in itself – he tells his wife that he labors ten hours a day to be a bum: pounding the pavement, eating at automats, making calls to prospective employers from public telephone booths. Corporate America can be a mean world for those looked upon as outsiders – he encounters a lot of callousness. What kindness and sympathy he finds comes from a cadre of job seekers like himself. This book first appeared in 1962 as articles written for a trade journal called Printers’ Ink, and it no doubt was read with a sense of trepidation. At the end our narrator finds a job, but not at the level (or salary) he was used to. Still, his new employers seem like decent, fair-minded people. His life style drops quite a few notches, but that’s OK (he realizes he had been living beyond his means). Though he’s found security, he’s left with a lingering suspicion – things are good now, but what if . . .

The Day of the Locust – Nathanael West

The setting of this fever nightmare is the underbelly of Hollywood, a place of cheap artifice populated by weirdos, grotesques, losers. Written 1939, it’s rough stuff even by today’s standards. Though today’s standards don’t apply, for the force of West’s vision is his own, and his skill is not to be duplicated. Tod, the main character, is fairly stable, though his sexual obsession with Faye is sick (a fact he fully comprehends). Faye, an aspiring actress, is a casually amoral user, and has an effect on every man she comes in contact with (if put on the screen – assuming her allure would transfer – she could be a sensation). Memorable characters swarm about the pages – and are often quite funny: Harry, the aging vaudevillian, who can’t stop doing routines even on his death bed; Abe, the pugnacious dwarf, always ready to dispense verbal or physical abuse. The book made me wonder about West’s state of mind. Though he doesn’t use overt gore or vulgarity, he seems to have a to-hell-with-it attitude, and he respects no limits of propriety. Was it written in anger, bitterness? This author of great talent received no financial compensation for his first three novels, and was stuck in Hollywood doing scripts for B- westerns. He died in a car accident shortly after the publication of Locust. He was 37 years old.

The Monkey’s Wrench – Primo Levi (Italian)

Faussone is a rigger – a mechanic who can do everything from weld a seam to operate a crane (and anything in between). This man with minimal schooling is so good at building things that he’s called to faraway lands (Africa, India, Russia) to work on the construction of a bridge or a tower. He tells of his projects to someone who is, clearly, Primo Levi. Faussone is a likeable and entertaining guy – a real individual emerges (though, being non-mechanical, I couldn’t understand most of the work he was describing). Levi is making a point: manual labor (as opposed to purely intellectual pursuits) can require a high degree of intelligence and creativity. He’s a chemist, and he tells one story in which he discovers the problem in some paint his company has sold. What Levi is contemplating in this book is abandoning his chemist job and becoming a full-time writer. Faussone responds with these words: “Excuse me for saying so, but if I was in your shoes, I’d give it some careful thought.” It’s better, he goes on, to do things with your hands; you can see your success, and, if you fail, you can fix it. This was good advice – which, of course, Levi was giving himself through his character. Levi, as writer, was not a novelist (Wrench, though classified as fiction, has no plot). What he wrote about in most of his books were his experiences as a prisoner at Auschwitz. Though these books have value as a testimonial, they made him relive an emotionally unhealthy subject.

The Ring Is Closed – Knut Hamsun (Norwegian) 
Hamsun wrote this novel when he was seventy-seven, and it would be his final one. A subsequent book, On Overgrown Paths, was mainly a defense of his wartime actions (he was accused of collaboration with the Nazis). I don’t know if his life had begun to unravel when Ring was published in 1936, though from its tone of resignation I suspect it did. His main character is a strange man, disconnected from those things that others find important. Abel has a deeply ingrained “What does it matter?” attitude. On rare occasions he has strong feelings, but they soon fade. His relationships with people – even the three women who play a role in his life – lack depth. When his father dies he comes into a substantial inheritance, but there’s nothing he wants to spend the money on: his ragged old jacket is fine, he’s satisfied living in a squalid shack. He pays off debts and gives much of the rest away – he’s generous with something that has little value to him. Abel isn’t always on the fringes of life; at one point he’s made captain of a milkboat that carries passengers up and down the river. A respectable job, but he tires of it, and off he goes to a foreign country. When he’s away from his home village the narrative shifts to other characters. This loosely constructed novel is written in a prose stripped to the bare essentials, but Hamsun can still hold one’s interest and is still a master at depicting character. His title suggests that he saw Ring as his last work of fiction, and in it he imparts the somber conclusion that all striving – even for happiness – is futile.

Daughters of the Samurai – Janice Nimura
After Commodore Perry’s fleet forced its entry into Edo Bay in 1853, the Japanese government realized that they could no longer continue living in isolation, clinging to a backward technology. One offshoot of their determination to catch up was to send five girls to the United States, where they would live with American families and attend American schools; their purpose was to absorb Western culture (and, of course, the English language) and – after ten years – return to Japan prepared to impart what they had learned. We follow the lives of three of the girls sent on this odd mission: six year old Ume, eleven year old Shige and twelve year old Sutematsu. They grew up Americanized and thus lost contact with the world to which they returned (this would be especially true for Ume). To tell their story the author had to depend entirely on research; we get a patchwork of excerpts from letters, newspapers and the writings of people who had contact with the girls. But a book so dependent on secondhand sources is limited. The main problem with Daughters is that the girls (later women) don’t come to life. I never got more than an inkling of their feelings. They didn’t keep intimate diaries, and in their letters they were sparing as to what they revealed. In the case of two of the girls, on their return to Japan they married and had children; the demands of family life left them little time for letter writing. As a result Ume, who remained single (and kept up a vigorous correspondence), takes center stage, but her efforts to assert herself as an educator didn’t make for compelling reading. This book is no more than a dutiful, plodding effort, and the prose, both Nimura’s and her quoted sources, is too often either stilted or gushy.

A Permanent Member of the Family – Russell Banks
I read eight of the twelve stories in this collection before I called it quits. Banks has seventeen novels to his credit, and many have achieved acclaim. I read one, Continental Drift, and, though I didn’t care for it, it was a serious, ambitious work. Most of these stories are tired and tepid. The prose is competent – Banks writes in a straightforward, simple way – but if he makes a point (often he doesn’t, as in the piddling “Green Parrot”) it’s a flimsy one. My reaction to “Christmas Story” and “Lost and Found” was, basically, “Huh?” – because they wound up nowhere. “Transplant” does have a purpose; in it a man meets with the wife of the donor of his heart to let her listen to it beat; I should have found this touching, but instead it struck me as gimmicky. “Former Marine” is the best of the lot, but it suffers from a flawed premise: that an old guy could pull off bank robberies with such ease. I’ll close this review with one more observation. Banks is seventy-eight years old. This collection may be his last work of fiction, and he ends it with “The Green Door.” In it a poor soul (drunk and probably mentally ill) is stabbed to death. Though this could have been prevented by the first person narrator, he tells the homeless guys who will commit the murder and robbery, “He’s all yours.” Then, “for reasons I can’t know or name,” he watches the proceedings (which are described in graphic detail); then he drives home, goes to bed, and quickly falls to sleep. What we have is a scene of brutality made worse by the presence of an unfeeling observer. Does Banks want to end his career on such a note?

H. M. Pulham, Esquire - John P. Marquand
If taken on a superficial level, this fictional autobiography is a pleasant read, in a lulling sort of way. Yet I finished it with misgivings. For beginners, is that “Esquire” meant to be mocking? Though Henry Pulham has the outward trappings of success, his personal life is devoid of pleasure or purpose. He’s alone in his family, unable to relate to his wife and two children. He can cope with things, but not with emotions. When his wife has an affair Marquand provides information so that the reader is fully aware of it, but Henry remains clueless. His youthful romance with Marvin Myles stands out as the brightest episode in a humdrum existence, but in this depiction of first love Marquand (like his protagonist) isn’t able to connect; not helping matters was my persistent doubt that a vibrant woman like Marvin could feel strongly about someone as bland as Henry. His relationship with his wife is more convincing. Kate is a discontented woman; she doesn’t love Henry and it shows in her constant carping. Though he has bouts of irritation (which he immediately chides himself for), he never becomes bitter or despairing; such feelings are not options for a person brought up to put the best face on whatever life hands you. So there it is, the story of Henry Pulham, told in his own guileless words, and what am I to make of it? Marquand’s light-handed approach gives it a humorous aspect, but I think the author had a darker agenda in mind. On the final pages Henry writes the “Class life” that he’s been putting off for the entire novel (his class at Harvard is having its twenty-fifth reunion). The closing sentences: “We spend our winters in town and our summers in North Harbor, Maine. In either place the latchstring is always open for any member of our Class.” What struck me was that only one member of his Class has remained a friend, and he’s the man with whom Henry’s wife had an affair. I think that J. P. Marquand was not unaware of this sad irony.

On Overgrown Paths - Knut Hamsun (Norwegian)
This book was written during the three years when the author – nearly ninety years old – was held in custody by the Norwegian government, facing charges of collaboration with the Nazis. Hamsun gives a defense of his wartime actions; you can accept it or not, though I can vouch for the truth of his claim that there’s no anti-Semitism in his many novels. In my readings of ten of them I recall a Jewish watch-seller who would cheat anyone gullible enough to let him, but he’s a benign rascal, not a Fagin. Hamsun faces most of his incarceration with resignation; the exception is a four month confinement in a Psychiatric Clinic. He doesn’t provide details of this stay, but it seems that the constant probing into his mental faculties was, for him, unbearable. He writes that when he went into the Clinic he was in good health; when they released him he was “turned into jelly.” Age, physical infirmity (he was deaf and partially blind), and his situation make this book a sad farewell. In the first part a buoyant spirit sometimes shines through, but as time passes his capacity to find pleasure in the simple things of life wanes. Paths is mainly made up of “trifles” that include routines, observations, encounters, memories. Near the end he recounts events that took place when he was a young man in America; he is, for the last time, a storyteller. Shortly thereafter the court verdict comes down; the final words in the book are: “I end my writing.” I’ll end this review with a quote in which Hamsun encapsulates his special gift: “ . . . I was no stranger to the field of psychology . . . during a very long career of writing I had created several hundred figures – created them inwardly and externally like living people, in every condition and aspect, in dreams and in action.”

The Government Inspector - Nikolai Gogol (Russian)
The director of a play must be faithful to the author’s intent. This rendition, directed by Peter Raby, didn’t ring true. Most jarring was the use of vulgar language, which I haven’t come across in any of Gogol’s other works. Later, reading Raby’s “Adaptor’s Note,” my suspicions were confirmed. He talks of “cuts, amalgamations, modifications” (one of these cuts is the omission of an entire scene). So this is an adulterated version of the real thing and should be avoided. I’d like to see (for a play should be seen) a faithful production. Despite Raby’s tinkering, Gogol launches into his story of mistaken identity with a madcap exuberance. Every character is a villain of one stripe or another, but they’re too grotesque and foolish to condemn. One can simply gape at them in wonder and amusement.

The Easter Party - V. Sackville-West
I assume that Miss Sackville-West was acquainted with real people. Possibly, in her fiction, she allowed herself the indulgence of dreaming up unreal characters. Even the dog in the story – the noble Svend – is unlike any dog that ever existed. The plot involves a group of people who gather at a country estate. One of the guests, Lady Juliet Quarles, a woman notorious for her love affairs, sweeps onto center stage: “Dar-lings! Oh, my sweets, I do apologize, I grovel.” (She’s outrageously late, you see.) I have to admit, somewhat guiltily, that for a while I was curious as to why cold, controlled Walter never consummated his decades long marriage. But I soon recovered my senses and abandoned this contrived bit of nonsense. I’ll let the inside dust jacket summary take over; it captures the novel’s tone of feverish extravagance so well that Miss Sackville-West could have written it. Regarding the characters: “Delicately, and with the supreme perception which has distinguished the author’s previous works, she sets their dormant, ruling passions in motion, probes their secrets, catalyzes their problems.” About the author: “Few writers can match the quiet dignity of Miss Sackville-West’s prose or the maturity of her understanding. In The Easter Party the rare technical adroitness with which she fashions her characters into contrapuntal patterns, renders their conversations into brilliant fugues, and . . .” Well, Dar-lings, enough of that.

The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer (Yiddish)
Over 600 pages of them, and not one of those pages is boring. Though the locale of some stories is pre-Hitler Europe, to read them is to enter a Grimm-like forest where supernatural beings lurk. Did Singer believe in the malignant powers he writes about? All that can be said with certainty is that they fascinated him. Not only do demons and Satan exist, they sometimes narrate a story. These forces intervene in human lives; men and women struggle in their grasp or submit willingly to their bidding. Working from this premise, Singer’s characters confront good and evil, question the existence of god, try to fathom the meaning of life. No beliefs are respected and no answers are provided (least of all by a Jewish religion that’s depicted as a morass of superstition). The pieces that take place in the present (in which Singer plays a role, either an active one or as a listener to a tale told to him by someone else) are less exotic, though they too have an element of other-worldliness. Satan may not appear in New York, but peculiar people and odd occurrences abound. Not all stories fit the mold I’ve described; some stay grounded in reality. Nor was every story to my liking. But always evident is Singer’s intense absorption in human nature and behavior. Because so many of his characters are ruled by aberrant passions, this book gives off a sense of wildness. As an author Singer possessed a unique power, perhaps given to him by one of his demons: the power to compel the reader to enter the dark and tangled forest. *

The Women at the Pump - Knut Hamsun (Norwegian)
“People from the big city have no conception of the scale of things in a small town. They think they can come and take their stand in the marketplace and smile their superior smile; they think they can laugh at the houses and the paving – how often they feel that way!” Thus this book begins. Though the omniscient narrator’s familiar, jaunty tone is sustained throughout, the residents of a fishing village get a thorough examination, and few come out unscathed. This is a comic novel only in the sense that human failings are treated in a bantering way. Of the doctor made resentful by his lack of success: “Nor did he ever attain anything respectable in the line of malice, he had started too late; as an elderly castaway he attained only to a sour dissatisfaction, to bitterness, rancor, petty vindictiveness, slander.” Hamsun uses the village as a microcosm; his universal subject is life. He perceives it to be hard; only the rare individual isn’t twisted or damaged in some way. He respects a man who’s brave, resilient and simple, who confronts life as it is and doesn’t examine it nor whine about it. I use the word “man” because this is a masculine novel; women matter, but the minds Hamsun enters are those of males. As for a plot, many years roll by, things happen in the village, small and momentous, to people of both high and low station; these events are topics of gossip for the women who meet at the pump. In the closing chapters Hamsun seems at a loss as to how to wind things up, and the book loses its momentum. Still, this is another considerable accomplishment from the Norwegian master.

Love - Elizabeth von Arnim
The title, in its simplicity, is misleading; this is a novel filled with conflict. A young man (Christopher, twenty-five) becomes infatuated with an older woman (Catherine). Though flattered and enlivened by his intensity, she makes determined efforts to discourage him. But even when she reveals to him that she’s forty-seven and has a nineteen-year-old daughter, his ardor is not dampened; he continues to insist on marriage; Catherine weakens. Complicating matters is the husband of her daughter. He’s a reverend in his fifties, and though he’s much older than his wife, he and his priggish mother consider Catherine’s relationship with a mere boy to be repugnant. Since he has the power to separate Catherine from her daughter, his uncompromising attitude carries weight. In the midst of these pressures, Catherine marries Christopher. But love doesn’t conquer all; instead it leads her into a desperate struggle. She’s in the last stage before old age sets in, and to combat that dissolution she has elaborate (and expensive) “treatments” to make her appear young; they help, but they also make her look cheap. Catherine loses something precious to her: her dignity. Her formerly quiet life is in emotional turmoil, and though her daughter sticks by her, their harmonious relationship is altered. Love turns out to be a mixed bag. Are the ecstasies (which, on Christopher’s side, become less and less ecstatic) worth the grief? For me the answer is no; reading this book was a painful experience. The author creates a rose-colored aura, not unlike what would be found in a romance novel, yet the roses have thorns.

Wayfarers - Knut Hamsun (Norwegian)
This long novel begins when Edevart is in his mid-teens, ready to strike out on his own. He’s not regarded highly in his village, mainly because he hadn’t done well in school. But there are varieties of intelligence, and Edevart is quite capable. He’s strong and good-looking, virtuous and honest. We follow his journey to manhood. A major influence is August, a wayfarer by nature (homeless, never settled, never content); August creates change wherever he goes with his restless inventiveness. But it’s Edevart’s first love, Lovise, who alters the course of his life. The idyllic weeks they spend together prove indelible, even though, as time passes, he becomes disenchanted with her. She’s basically a good, caring person, but she’s not the simple and pure soul he thought her to be. She, like August, becomes restless – another wayfarer. By the end of the book Edevart’s character has hardened considerably; the naive boy is gone. Back in his home village, idle and restless (that word again), he receives a letter from Lovise; she has moved to America. The book ends with Edevart disappearing, but we know that he’s gone to join her. I was left with the conviction that happiness does not await him. Happiness (or at least contentment) lies in being satisfied with where you’ve been set down in the world and accepting traditional values. Hamsun was in his late sixties when he wrote this book; these are an old man’s conclusions. What’s so impressive is the freshness and vigor with which he depicts the feelings of a young man. *

Joe the Engineer - Chuck Wachtel
After starting (and quickly discarding) a string of literary novels that were done in carefully-wrought prose, full of deep thoughts and feelings, Wachtel’s fast-moving novel was a welcome change. Joe is a strong character, as are the secondary ones (particularly his wife and his co-worker, Joe Flushing Avenue); the authenticity of the gritty Queens locale is an added plus. Joe is a dissatisfied soul, unhappy with his marriage and job; his negative outlook on life is bolstered by a deeply-ingrained cynicism. I found this story of a flawed man on the wrong track to be interesting, though I was put off by the novel’s vulgarity, which sometimes descends to the level of bathroom humor. In the closing pages Wachtel seems to give up on his material. A fight at a funeral parlor comes across as Keystone Cops foolishness. And at the end the reader is left with no idea what the future holds for Joe; the author simply abandons him.

Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly - John Franklin Bardin
I liked the premise (woman released from mental hospital after two years; reason for her hospitalization unstated) and the precision of the writing. But then the prose took on an overheated tone and elements that had been initially intriguing – the whereabouts of the harpsichord key, the question of Basil’s involvement with another woman – were fixated on but not developed. The person’s mind we’re in was murky with mysteries. I’m sure that if I had read further (and I would have, twenty years ago), her dark problem would have been revealed. But now, when annoyance sets in, I stop reading.

Gimpel the Fool - Isaac Bashevis Singer (Yiddish)
A mixed bag. Sometimes you pull out a pearl (“Gimpel the Fool”) and sometimes a slimy maggot (“The Mirror”). The problem with the latter story – and others like it – is its extreme cruelty. When Singer delves into the supernatural his imagination conjures up elaborate horrors. Still, even these repugnant stories have a perverse power. Singer was a complex man; he could convincingly show a gentle and compassionate side, as in “The Little Shoemakers,” “By the Light of the Memorial Candles” and “Joy.” He explored basic questions, and he mostly concluded that life is an inexplicable mystery. He ends “Joy” with a character saying “One should be joyous.” Considering the darkness of so many stories, one has to wonder how successful Singer was in finding simple joy. *