JOLLY DAYS

More I.B.S.

More from Isaac Bashevis Singer:

I need three conditions to write a story. The first is that I have a topic or a theme, call it what you like, a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. I don't believe in the kind of writing where the writer cuts off a slice of life. While some great writers succeeded in making their slice of life tasty to the literary palate, most of these slices have no taste whatsoever and are a bore to the reader. Modern fiction almost despises storytelling. It is so interested in depicting the inner man that it forgets to tell how the outer man looks, who he is and what he is doing. The psychologizers and sociologizers of modern fiction have actually declared war on the story, which to them is an old-fashioned institution. I still believe that the mission of literature is to tell a story, where there is tension and where the reader does not know at the beginning what the end will be.

[ Note: It is interesting that already, in 1972, the centrality of story driven literature was so clearly decaying. Post-modernism, with its disdain for all but the ironic and coolly detached, would have left Singer feeling literature had devolved even further. Interest in form for itself, for theory, for ideological correctness, has supplanted the driving vision and ancient power of story-centered literature. This is one reason comics, movies, video games, have such attraction — they tell stories. ]

The second condition is that I must have a passion to write this story. Sometimes the topic is good but nevertheless I feel indifferent to it, Indifference and art never go together. The artists were always forced to do their work, whether by muse, a dybbuk or even the desire to make money.

The third condition is the most important. I must have the convction, or perhaps the illusion, that I am the only writer who could write this particular story. A real story could only be written by one man. No writer in all the world or in any generation could have written “The Death of Ivan Ilitch” but Tolstoy. If I could imagine for a second that a story of mine could be written by another person, this story would be out.

From Singer's Nobel Lecture:

The pessimism of the creative person is not decadence but a mighty passion for the redemption of man. While the poet entertains he continues to search for eternal truths, for the essence of being. In his own fashion he tries to solve the riddle of time and change, to find an answer to suffering, to reveal love in the very abyss of cruelty and injustice. Strange as these words may sound I often play with the idea that when all the social theories collapse and wars and revolutions leave humanity in utter gloom, the poet - whom Plato banned from his Republic — may rise up to save us all.

I have to admit that I share this romantic notion of the artist.