TWENTY-ONE STORIES

by S. Y. Agnon ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 18, 1970

S. Y. Agnon, 1966 Nobel Prize winner, authorized this collection of his short stories before his death in February of this year. In at least one story the editor has deleted the more obscure references to little-known Jewish rituals, one of the elements in his translated work frequently faulted by critics. In these selections Agnon's allusions are well in hand, evoking the lost order of Eastern European Jewry and its diminished authenticity. Even in his stories of modern tones (""Metamorphosis,"" ""The Doctor's Divorce,"" ""Face Answers to Face""), Agnon's characters rely upon a polarized logic of true and false that is negated in Kafkaesque betrayals, contradictions and paradox. The experiences of the twenty-one stories reflect almost incommunicable loneliness and bewilderment: whether it be ""The Tale of the Scribe"" whose life of purity in the service of God accompanies the sorrows of childlessness in his wife and the starved love of their marriage; or the surrealistic searches of ""The Letter"" where even in the Land of Israel, the narrator endures a nightmarish longing for the House of Study symbolically misplaced through time's changes. His quest is mocked in singsong prose, the shallow substitutes he must accept. In these stories, Agnon laments the spiritual disintegration of man. He remains dream-like, camouflaged, and voluntarily exiled, without will to investigate the processes of corruption he deplores.

Pub Date: May 18, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Schocken

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1970

Categories: FICTION