Isaac In America

"When I was born, my mother asked the midwife, `Is it a boy or a girl?' and the midwife said, `Neither one. It's a writer," quips the late Isaac Bashevis Singer in this endearing 1986 portrait. Narrated by actor Judd Hirsch, this Oscar-nominated film follows the Nobel prize winning author as he revisits the New York of his younger days while scenes from his short story "A Day in Coney Island" are dramatically recreated. a titan of Yiddish literature, Singer had a sharp wit and a wealth of great anecdotes (in the film he says that he made $20 for his famous story "Gimpel the Fool," while Saul Bellow made $120 for translating it). Sharing his ideas about writing, Singer claims that a good memory is a writer's best tool, insists that truly great novels are about love in one form or another, and talks about the importance of hanging out in cafeterias for prime eavesdropping. Whether discussing literature, religion, the Yiddish language, or his early adult years in New York, Singer is consistently entertaining and, watching him rediscover--excited and wondrous--the old boarding house in which he lived, or the site of the Jewish Daily Forward newspaper headquarters, is a real joy. (I was fortunate enough to hear Singer speak once, and one of the most prized volumes in my personal library is a signed first edition of The Collected Stories.) a wonderful film about a great writer. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (R. Pitman)