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Stumbling Into Modernity: Introduction Fear of Safety Chapter One Free Will and Faith How do you battle a foe you cannot see, a foe that you can only conceptualize? It provides Singer with a theme he will use as a catalyst his entire career, an appropriate and affecting dialogue for this century, which has seen priorities shifted with unprecedented speed, and one indeterminate value superceded by another as the need arises and convenience permits. Chapter Two God, The Devil, and Free Will One of the major appeals of Singer's work is that his characters are not engaged in allegorical lessons, as occurs in his predecessor's work, where characters are given a bit of personality to make them appealing and identifiable as types, but who are there mainly to serve as players in a morality tale. Chapter Three Victimizing Women Women's sexuality is a threat to Singer. His male characters are continually fortifying themselves against it, projecting all their fears onto the female. A look at a novel by Esther Kreitman (Singer's sister), unveils Rashomon-like a point of view sorely lacking in Singer's work. Chapter Four Humor and Passivity as Weapons For all their anxiety and for all their meditation on why are we here, Singer's characters offer a measure of hope in their seeking, in their passion to discover deeper meaning and to not be satisfied with their present circumstances or current awareness. If an ultimate meaning is not forthcoming — a solution that would answer questions and satisfy skeptics — it is those characters who search for one that display an aliveness in the face of what might otherwise condemn one to defeat. Singer's authorial bemusement at his character's plight and sympathetic regard for their predicament is how he manifests hope. Humor is not a weapon used adversely to conquer a foe but a strategy to make it unnecessary to conquer. Conclusion Art as Redemptive What is the appeal of stories, what is satisfying? We can see literature as a grand newsletter of the organization we all, as humans, belong to. Singer's emphasis on the story assumes we all have something in common — not necessarily a familiarity of tribal custom or of shared rituals, but a common emotional response to people we are in contact with, and to our own isolated quest for individual meaning. Bibliography |