Singer's Midget

EAST OF EDEN--I. J. Singer--Knopf ($2.50).

Israel Joshua Singer's big book, published two years ago, was The Brothers Ashkenazi, a chronicle of Polish Jewry told against a background of the textile industry of Lodz. Critics praised the vigor of its narrative, verisimilitude of its atmosphere, especially its detachment. Some critics called it a Polish Forsyte Saga; a few went so far as to call Author Singer the Polish Tolstoy.

Of East of Eden, the best that can be said is that its earlier chapters compare favorably with the minor novels of Sholom Asch. The worst that can be said is that much of it sounds as though it had been dictated by the Jewish Daily Forward's Editor Abraham Cahan, Author Singer's first U. S. sponsor and one of the shrillest critics of things Communist. In this story of an underdog, the hero is Nachman Ritter, son of a poor peddler. A Talmud student turned baker, Nachman is bewitched by an egomaniac Communist caricature, endures nine years' incredible persecution for his faith. Escaping to Russia, he is arrested, exploited, tortured, framed, at last bitterly disillusioned. But before

Nachman is sacrificed to the OGPU, Author Singer has long ago sacrificed him as a plausible character. As the last third of the story turns into out & out melodrama, even anti-Communist readers are likely to feel that literature as well as Nachman has been the victim of a frame-up.

Like his hero, 45-year-old Author Singer, son of a Warsaw Rabbi, grew up in extreme poverty. Unlike his hero, he abandoned his studies for the Rabbinate out of distaste rather than necessity. An itinerant tutor, salesman, artist's model, he served in the Russian army, saw the German occupation of Poland, weathered the Polish Revolution. Since 1922, when he published his first book of short stories, most of his work has been published in the Jewish Daily Forward, which also sent him to the Soviet Union as correspondent in 1926. Since 1934 Author Singer, his wife and 16-year-old son have lived in Brooklyn.

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