SOURCE: "Isaac Bashevis Singer: Sex as Cosmic Metaphor," in The Midwest Quarterly, Vol. XXIII, No. 4, Summer, 1982, pp. 365-79.

In the following essay, Sheridan studies Singer's association of sex in marriage with redemption and his critical views of unrestrained sexuality and perversion.

The 1978 Nobel Prize in Literature granted to Isaac Bashevis Singer may be looked upon as not only deserved international recognition given to this great Yiddish author, a unique and powerful literary voice, but as a tribute to Yiddish literature as well. It is nothing new to point out that Yiddish is a language whose extinction is imminent. Singer has long parried with questions concerning his commitment to writing in Yiddish. He has said, "It's like the Jews generally. They die all the time and they keep living all the time," and "I like to write ghost stories. . . . Ghosts love Yiddish, and as far as I know, they...