Editorial September 28, 1992 Issue

The art of being a Christian Scientist

Mary Metzner Trammell

"There was no soul in it, no real soul in it. And I missed it!"

That's what the late Isaac Bashevis Singer told me about a short story one of his students at the University of Miami had just written. At the time, Singer, one of the great novelists and short story writers of our time and Nobel laureate for 1978, was Distinguished Professor of Literature at the university. Because I was teaching part time in the same department, I had the opportunity to interview him one afternoon in his office.

In resonant Yiddish rhythms he explained to me that the young woman who'd written the short story was an excellent writer. But her story was empty and "vulgar" because she was "just quoting television, or quoting some other writer, or something from the press." So nothing about the story rang true. The plot was "all sarcasm and all joke"—with no soul.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Editorial

A motion picture not to be believed