New Yorker Fiction 2015

A WRITER'S WIT
All the real things in Russia are done in the villages.
Ernest Poole
Born January 23, 1880

About that Inventor

Kinsella / Mortensen

January 26, 2015, Isaac Bashevis Singer*, “Inventions”: The narrator (as if he is the author himself) relates the story of Morris Krakower, who, in 1930s Warsaw, addresses a conference of leftist Communists and encounters a ghost keeping him awake much of the night before. ¶ Perhaps this story gives the twenty-first century reader a view through a couple of windows into the world of nearly a hundred years ago. One, how fiction is formed: the author who creates a narrator as if this story has happened to Singer himself. Two, the reader sees several sides of the political realities that people living in Communist countries faced. ¶ In the past I’ve been critical of the magazine for trotting out previously unpublished stories of deceased authors; it almost seems like a violation of the author’s person, his or her career. I suppose the editors have their reasons concerning this one, as well: is it a beat-you-to-the-punch stance of presenting something arcane, or do they wish to put forth a work with literary or historical value and ask the readers to consider its merits? Again, I have to wonder. Did Singer himself wish to have “Inventions” published in English? Could the piece have been rejected in the 1960s, when it was written? ¶ I have mixed feelings about the story. It seems like a simple tale, its metaphors perhaps a bit obvious. At the same time, the narrative must give the reader some insight into what it must have meant to be a Jew in Communist Poland, and that alone is a good reason to bring it before our eyes.

*Usually dependable online sources disagree on Singer’s birth date, so I leave it to the reader.

Edward Kinsella, Illustrator
Jens Mortensen, Photographer

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