In “Gimpel The Fool,” Isaac Bashevis Singer illuminates the mystery, depth, and folly of humanity with clarity and immediacy, as if the storyteller was in the room. Perhaps Singer is a fool like the rest of us but if so, one who is truly worthy of a Nobel Prize.
“Gimpel” is a series of stories, set mostly in the late 1930s (although the tales are timeless), and loosely centered around an Eastern European Jewish community of Frampol, its fools, rabbis, matchmakers, its rich and poor, traditions, and devils, those who “see without being seen.”
Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “Gimpel The Fool” reminded me again the benefit of reading and enjoying the masters, literature that resonates across generations.