Book Review: "Love and Exile" by Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Love and Exile” by Isaac Bashevis Singer is an autobiography of one of the century’s greatest writers growing up in one of the most turbulent times in history. Isaac Bashevis Singer tells his story about being in Poland and then America, the language of the book is absolutely incredible with its deep understanding of culture, history and the aesthetics of the human being. From start to finish, this is one of the best books by Isaac Bashevis Singer I have ever read and even though it is one of the longest, I also think that it is one of his most detailed attempts at explaining all of his other books. When it comes to Bashevis Singer’s works, there is normally characters that are troubled and hurt in some way, shape or form by their own histories, haunted and looking for a new present. This is also true of Isaac Bashevis Singer himself as he wanders the earth looking for purpose and searching for meaning throughout recent history and all its war.

Here are some of the quotations that I found the most compelling of all of the novel and they really add some sort of character to the book:

“Every day I learned the most astonishing things from these newspapers. In Italy a Jew was Prime Minister, only one step away from being a king. In London, a Jew was given the high title of Lord. The Tsar wanted to borrow money from Baron Rothschild but the Baron refused him credit. There were also articles about science: the earth is fifty times as large as the moon. Some of the stars are as large as the sun or even larger and many times as bright. In Italy, in Portugal, in the United States of America and in other countries, earthquakes took place where hundreds and thousands of people were killed. There were stories in this newspaper about giants, midgets about a baby born with two heads, and about Siamese twin brothers who were doomed never to be separated. Meteors fell from the sky and formed deep holes in the earth. Volcanoes spat out fiery lava. Rivers overflowed their banks and covered whole villages. In China, thousands of people starved to death. In India a man walked barefoot on burning coals. In America a millionaire gave a birthday party for his sixteen-year-old daughter and the flowers alone cost five thousand dollars or ten thousand rubles.”

Whilst the author is growing up, there is clarity about wanting to take in as much knowledge of the outside world as possible as many young children do. But it also introduces the feeling of displacement into the novel as Isaac Bashevis Singer will then begin to move and relocate as he writes. This is just where the fascination with that began. It gets far darker though as the book goes on.

“The ponderings about suffering of flies expanded soon included all people, all animals, all lands and all times. I had passed Yanash’s Bazaar a number of times and had seen the slaughterers killing chickens, ducks and geese. The butchers began to pluck their feathers even while those creatures were still alive and wallowing in their own blood. I once saw my own mother kill a trembling fish for the Sabbath. My mother told me that when a fish is eaten for the honor of the Sabbath and a pious Jew makes a blessing over it, its spirit is elevated. Sometimes sinful souls of humans enter fish and the fish’s death is an atonement for the sins of those souls. But how about the fish that are not killed for the Sabbath? How about the fish that are eaten by Gentiles or sinners? And how about the pigs that are killed, scorched in hot water while still alive? What spirit was atoned in them? Where is their compensation for the tortures they went through?”

These are just two of the quotations that appear as the protagonist learns more and more about his faith, his history and himself. When he finally leaves the home, there is a sense of bewilderment in all of this as he then has to apply or discard it to the real world. And that is where Isaac Bashevis Singer’s character of contrarian thought comes in with his haunted history of existential being.