NOTE: Today’s book review was inspired by another book entitled Letters. That book was a memoir of scientist and storyteller Dr. Oliver Sacks, told through a lifetime of his personal correspondence with friends, family, patients and many other interesting people. Over the course of his letter writing, Dr. Sacks often made reference to the written works of others. Today’s book is one such work that he referenced.
The Context in Which Dr. Sacks Made Reference to Gimpel the Fool by Isaac Bashevis Singer
***For the third time in the same letter between Dr. Sacks and his friend Jonathan Miller, Sacks makes a literary reference. This time, instead of making the reference with regard to Miller, Oliver Sacks does so toward himself and his medical studies. ***The first two literary references (Lionel Trilling and Edmund Wilson) can be found here and here.
Here is a short summary of the whole letter:
In August of 1963, Oliver Sacks wrote a letter to his friend Jonathan Miller and Miller’s wife, Rachel. In 1963, Miller had resigned his position in the comedy troupe Beyond the Fringe and was laying the groundwork for a move into the world of theatrical directing. Beyond the Fringe had been achieving a great deal of success up until this point and had moved to London to continue their work in a larger market when Miller had stepped aside. All throughout this transitional period, Miller and Sacks had kept in touch via letters and phone calls. As was always the case with these two friends, Sacks was highly supportive of his friend and encouraged him to pursue his ambitions and broaden the scope of his creative expression. In today’s portion of the letter, Dr. Sacks ends his advice to Miller and begins to fill his friend in on how his studies have been going. It is while doing so that Sacks says the following:
“Myself: I’m in Neuropathology for a few months: slicing brains, peering at slides. Satisfied with fossil cells, ignoring our colleagues in the electron microscopy lab. I shrug my shoulders, like Gimpel: who is to say how many removes we are from reality?”
***Dr. Sacks goes on to comment about how fascinating he finds the field of neuropathology and how under-reported the subject matter seems to be, in his opinion. Unbeknownst to Sacks at the time of this letter, neuropathology and storytelling were to shortly become his life’s work.
A Brief Summary of the Storyline of Gimpel the Fool By Isaac Bashevis Singer
Gimpel the Fool is the main character in this Yiddish morality tale about faith and tolerance and positivity. Gimpel the Fool takes place in a small village in Poland. In the beginning of the tale, Gimpel is working as a baker/breadmaker’s assistant. He is teased unmercifully by the citizens of the town who delight in playing the most ridiculous jokes on him. Gimpel believes in the goodness of his fellow humans and so, even though he suspects he is being fooled by each outlandish claim, he goes along with the joke anyway. The townsfolk can’t believe how he can be so easily fooled all of the time and infer that he is truly a simpleton thus, he is dubbed by all as Gimpel the Fool. But Gimpel is no fool at all. His personal belief system is such that he refuses to expose those who trick him because he does not believe in negativity. He also believes that no real harm is being done so he lets things slide.
Eventually, he becomes lead baker and breadmaker. At this time, it is suggested to him that he needs to acquire a wife. A matchmaking session pairs Gimpel with the village prostitute who, Gimpel is told, is simply misunderstood and actually finds him to be a suitable match. Naturally, this woman is simply there to live off of GImpel’s hard work at the bakery. While he works at night preparing bread for the new day to come, she entertains all manner of gentlemen callers. In time, she gives birth to six children, all from different fathers. Through it all, Gimpel continues to profess his undying love for his wife and proclaim how happy he is in his world. That is until one night when he comes home early from the bakery only to find his assistant in his bed with his wife. Gimpel is distraught. He asks his Rabbi for advice. The Rabbi advises Gimpel to divorce his wife and never set foot in their home again. Even though Gimpel feels the full weight of his humiliation and betrayal deeply within his heart, he still longs to forgive his bride. In the end, he tells the Rabbi that he was actually mistaken…that he only saw a shadow in his bed and not the assistant at all. The Rabbi grants Gimpel permission to rescind his divorce decree. Gimpel is overjoyed to return home to the life he once lived with his wife. However, as he returns home, he discovers that his wife is actually on the verge of death. On her deathbed, she confesses her sinful ways to Gimpel as a means of atoning for all she has done so that she can get into Heaven. Gimpel forgives her, as his heart compels him to do. Then she dies and he is alone again.
Now a widower, Gimpel has a dream in which the Devil visits him. In this dream, the Devil encourages Gimpel to taint the next day’s supply of bread by urinating into the dough. The Devil tells Gimpel that the time has come to stand up for himself and exact revenge on all those who have teased, mocked, ridiculed and betrayed him throughout the course of his life. In his grief, Gimpel agrees. He returns to the bakery. He urinates into the dough and begins to bake it. While the tainted bread is in the oven, Gimpel is visited by a vision of his dead wife. She is clearly suffering in the afterlife and warns Gimpel against sacrificing a lifetime of goodness and faithfulness for the temporary satisfaction that may or may not come as a result of his thirst for revenge. Gimpel quickly realizes the grave nature of his actions. Immediately he pulls the bread from the oven and buries it all in a field. He sells the bakery and leaves his village forever.
In his travels, he is greeted in village after village by people who don’t know of his history and, as a result, offer him respect right off of the bat. He tells them stories from his life that read like wisdom to those who hear them. He develops a reputation of being a sage and a prophet of sorts. In meeting new people and being received so warmly everywhere he goes, Gimpel begins to understand what true happiness feels like for the first time in his life. When his turn comes to die, he takes his final breath, confident that he has followed, not only the word of God but, the spirit of those words, too, and is comfortable that his unwavering faith will be rewarded.
My thoughts on Gimpel the Fool by Isaac Bashevis Singer (for what that’s worth)
I enjoyed this story. It came from a collection of short stories entitled Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories. Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in Poland and left for America just a few years before the Nazis invaded Poland and began their efforts to wipe all traces of Judaism off of the continent of Europe. Like many Jewish people who settled in New York, Singer continued to feel the pull of his heritage. It was for that reason that he wrote all of his published work in the language of his birth, which was Yiddish. *(Btw, Gimpel the Fool was translated into English by fellow writer Saul Bellow). While Singer continued to follow many of the Jewish traditions in which he was raised, his writing and his political views drifted away from strict religious doctrine because of how betrayed he felt by God for allowing the Holocaust to have happened. Like many new American Jews, Singer lost family members to the Nazi death camps. Consequently, his stories tended to evolve in their messaging, focussing more on the ideals contained in Jewish teachings rather than the orthodoxy of it all. The story of Gimpel the Fool is a perfect example of how his writing evolved with time. It is a story about the virtues of living a faithful life, regardless of what challenges life may place in your path. To this day, many people who find themselves bearing burdens of one sort or another, read Gimpel the Fool and find within it, an empowering message of hopefulness, faith and resilience that allow them to carry on and persevere in their own life. As a result, Gimpel the Fool remains one of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s most popular and enduring works. In the early 1970s, Singer was honoured by being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for the uplifting nature of his collective published stories.
I am not surprised that this short story would have meaning for Dr. Oliver Sacks as well. Like Singer, Dr, Sacks had left his homeland (England) and found himself learning to create a new life for himself in America. Unbeknownst to Sacks at the time of his letter to Miller, he was to soon move to New York City and, like Singer, spend the bulk of the rest of his life there. Furthermore, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Dr. Sacks were both Jewish. For Dr. Sacks, he also maintained the traditional Jewish rituals but did so with one foot firmly planted in the world of science so that he was never a hardcore follower of Judaism, either. Finally, as you will come to learn as his career begins to unfold, Dr. Sacks will face many criticisms that will remind you of how Gimpel was mocked and ridiculed for his beliefs, too. Part of what would make Dr. Oliver Sacks famous in the years to come was that his views of how the human brain worked were different from many of the institutional views of the medical world at the time. When faced with resistance and criticism, you can maintain your faith in your own beliefs or you can become submissive and lose who you ever were as a person. Although Dr. Sacks did not know it yet when he mentioned Gimpel the Fool to his friend Jonathan Miller, he was to endure a period of professional isolation based upon his views on neuropathology but, like Gimpel in the end, Sacks would find vindication and would be regarded as a wise visionary and wonderful medical practitioner by people, far and wide.
The link to the official website for Isaac Bashevis Singer can be found here.
The link to the official website for Dr. Oliver Sacks can be found here.
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