SIMPLE GIMPL

The definitive edition of a well-known piece of Jewish literary history.

Originally published in Yiddish in 1945, one of Singer’s most canonical stories describes a village simpleton, a guileless, good-hearted, gullible fool, Gimpl, who works in a bakery and appears to believe whatever he is told. He is told all sorts of things: that the moon has fallen down, a cow has flown over the roof, the Messiah has arrived. At first he vows never again to believe what he is told; then, “to believe everything. What do you gain by not believing? Today you don’t believe your wife, tomorrow you won’t believe in God.” The story was famously translated into English by Bellow in a matter of hours, though the faithfulness of that translation was quickly called into question. The present volume, gorgeously illustrated by Finck, presents Bellow’s version alongside a translation begun by Singer himself and completed by the translator and scholar Stromberg; this is followed by the Yiddish original. On its own, the story is magnificent: a little jewel cut with a manic humor. But the real value of this volume is in laying the two translations side by side and comparing the different flavor each one lends to Singer's prose. In Stromberg and Singer’s translation, Gimpl “had seven nicknames: jerk, jackass, moron, idiot, nincompoop, sucker, simpleton.” In Bellow’s, Gimpl’s nicknames are “imbecile, donkey, flax-head, dope, glump, ninny, and fool.” To Stromberg and Singer, Gimpl’s wife “had a mouth that moved a mile a minute,” while Bellow says her “mouth would open as if it were on a hinge, and she had a fierce tongue.”

Beautifully printed and presented, this new edition is a gift to readers and scholars alike.