Review of Isaac Bashevis Singer's "The Family Moskat"
I'm finally done with Isaac Bashevis Singer's 600+ page novel The Family Moskat. I suppose any novel set in Poland about Jewish people that ends just before World War II has got to be tragic but Singer's is tragedy within tragedy within tragedy. The lives of most of the people, even before the outer threats, are tragic, even the deeply religious people who are sustained by their inner faith see the traditions they have known and loved being undermined or dismantled due to new patterns of thought that are sweeping Europe.
All the marriages are unhappy or become unhappy, the main character, Asa Heschel, is deeply flawed and never actualizes his potential and acts like a mensch only sporadically, despite the fact that he is gifted with an immense intellect and spiritual sensitivity.
Unlike Tolstoy, Singer even makes all of his simple folk pathetic, such as the drunken peasant who comes home and beats his wife, or the petty thieves and prostitutes. There really is no redemption in this novel, as Singer is fully aware, for he ends it with the lines, "Death is the Messiah. That's the real truth."
And yet, even with this plot drenched in melancholy, Singer has written a great novel. I would call it great simply on the merit of its scope and breadth. Very few novelists would have the ambition to even attempt to write such a sweeping, historically demanding novel, and only a rare few could pull it off.
And Singer does pull it off: he creates a seamless fictional world in which dozens of characters live, each character with a distinct way of talking, thinking, behaving.
And in the background, history grinds on, history that Singer handles no less expertly than his characters. Nor does he neglect the natural world: hundreds of descriptive passages are sprinkled throughout the book that vividly render the fields, forests, skies, landscapes etc. of Poland, as well as the marketplace, streets, parks, restaurants, shops, sidewalks, and all the other varied features of Warsaw.
Each description is plain enough to not distract, yet rich enough to evoke a striking multisensory image. As a craftsman, Singer is a master at providing the significant detail and making each setting feel real, not just a backdrop for the plot to unfold.
And the plot, also, is full of twists and turns, occasional suspense, and quite a bit of drama. Like "War and Peace," it contains love stories, war stories, and many subplots. It contains just enough seemingly random happenings to make the reader feel that that this is exactly the way real life proceeds, and, indeed, Singer is a master of realism.
If you like historical fiction, want to learn about pre-WWII Jewry in Poland, want to understand the environment in Poland before the Nazis invaded, Singer delivers the goods. But beyond all that, his novel transcends its time and place, albeit not as profoundly as the masterworks of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, but excitingly close considering that he was an author who was with us right up until the 1990s.
All the marriages are unhappy or become unhappy, the main character, Asa Heschel, is deeply flawed and never actualizes his potential and acts like a mensch only sporadically, despite the fact that he is gifted with an immense intellect and spiritual sensitivity.
Unlike Tolstoy, Singer even makes all of his simple folk pathetic, such as the drunken peasant who comes home and beats his wife, or the petty thieves and prostitutes. There really is no redemption in this novel, as Singer is fully aware, for he ends it with the lines, "Death is the Messiah. That's the real truth."
And yet, even with this plot drenched in melancholy, Singer has written a great novel. I would call it great simply on the merit of its scope and breadth. Very few novelists would have the ambition to even attempt to write such a sweeping, historically demanding novel, and only a rare few could pull it off.
And Singer does pull it off: he creates a seamless fictional world in which dozens of characters live, each character with a distinct way of talking, thinking, behaving.
And in the background, history grinds on, history that Singer handles no less expertly than his characters. Nor does he neglect the natural world: hundreds of descriptive passages are sprinkled throughout the book that vividly render the fields, forests, skies, landscapes etc. of Poland, as well as the marketplace, streets, parks, restaurants, shops, sidewalks, and all the other varied features of Warsaw.
Each description is plain enough to not distract, yet rich enough to evoke a striking multisensory image. As a craftsman, Singer is a master at providing the significant detail and making each setting feel real, not just a backdrop for the plot to unfold.
And the plot, also, is full of twists and turns, occasional suspense, and quite a bit of drama. Like "War and Peace," it contains love stories, war stories, and many subplots. It contains just enough seemingly random happenings to make the reader feel that that this is exactly the way real life proceeds, and, indeed, Singer is a master of realism.
If you like historical fiction, want to learn about pre-WWII Jewry in Poland, want to understand the environment in Poland before the Nazis invaded, Singer delivers the goods. But beyond all that, his novel transcends its time and place, albeit not as profoundly as the masterworks of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, but excitingly close considering that he was an author who was with us right up until the 1990s.
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