"At the onset of the nineteen-thirties, my disillusionment with myself reached a stage in which I had lost all hope." With these wryly self-mocking words Mr. Singer begins his third volume of memoirs [Lost in America] which takes him from Warsaw to New York by way of Paris, and then on a harrowing (illegal) train trip to Toronto to gain the permanent visa that will prevent his deportation to Nazi-occupied Poland. Many of the features of Mr. Singer's adventures as an up-and-coming writer will be familiar to readers of his novels and short stories: he shares lodgings with ghosts and dybbuks (and blames them for his chronic writer's block); girlfriends materialize wherever he alights; and old acquaintances bring him up to date on their marital troubles over coffee and rice pudding in kosher cafeterias. The author survives one crisis after another—often saved by a check or a...