This story is a perfect little parable, the kind of story you read and afterwards think that it couldn’t be improved upon. But then I read “The Son from America” and after that I was hooked.
They were rambling and disjointed and without coherent theme. To be honest, the first several stories didn’t impress me much. But that is not to take away from the value of Singer’s stories. I think I prefer Borges personally, because I enjoy the intricacies of his fantasy worlds, the mind-puzzles, the conundrums. And finally, both often insert themselves into their stories as themselves, playing the narrator or an observer who objectively observes and comments upon the main events.
In addition, both writers, in many of their stories at least, write of idiosyncratic characters from their native lands: Singer of Jewish communities in Poland, and Borges of rough common folk in Argentina. First of all, both writers deal with elements of the fantastic, though Singer is concerned mainly with that which has to do with Jewish folklore and legend, and Borges delves much further into the out-and-out bizarre and surreal. Soon after starting to read this collection I found myself comparing Singer’s stories with those of Jorge Luis Borges.
0 kommentar(er)
