The Muses of Isaac Bashevis Singer

This documentary has achieved that rare hybrid: a compelling film that both entertains and informs. Isaac Bashevis Singer was a leading figure in the Yiddish literary movement, writing and publishing only in Yiddish, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1978. Whether you know nothing about Singer or if you have read every one of his fanciful stories, you will be riveted by this portrait of the women who inspired him. The interviews with his translators are an enticing pastiche of high art and gossip. Conversations with Singer’s biographers, his Israeli granddaughter, playwright Leah Napolin (who wrote the play Yentl with Singer) and the aformentioned translator/muses reveal a complex man who thrived on the ministrations of smart and beautiful women. An extraordinarily talented writer who lived in the labyrinth of his own imagination, Singer craved fame and loved women almost as much as he loved Yiddish. Muses is more about the women who midwifed Singer’s work into English than about Singer’s writing itself. It will make you read the short stories “Gimpel the Fool,” “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy” or the novel Enemies, a Love Story with new eyes. These master works were written by Singer alone, but they were reborn in English through a collaborative (and sometimes desire-laden) process of translation. —Nancy K. Fishman