[The Spinoza of Market Street] raises a difficult problem in criticism, and I should like to be candid in facing it. Singer is probably the most brilliant, though far from the most characteristic, living writer of Yiddish prose. Devoted as he is to the grotesque, the erotic, the demonic and the quasi-mystical, he is something of a sport in the communal tradition of Yiddish writing. Simply in terms of native talent—by which I mean his capacity for winning our quick and total assent to the bizarre world of his fictions—there cannot be a dozen living writers in any language as fortunate as he. Yet after reading his work over the past seven or eight years in both Yiddish and English translation, I find myself uneasy. I remain under his spell, admire his virtuosity, respond to his cast of imps and devils, but fail to see any...