In His Own Hand: Some Manuscripts of Isaac Bashevis Singer

The Topsy-Turvy Emperor of China (1971) is not the best of the stories Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote for children. But it possesses one virtue that makes it worth attention: it is the only children’s story Singer wrote out originally in English. All the others were translated from Yiddish and refined by Singer and his collaborators into American English. Though The Topsy-Turvy Emperor of China was also subsequently polished by Singer and his translator Elizabeth (Libby) Shub, written out in English as it is in Singer’s Old World script, it is unique.

The manuscript is literally part of a find in 1993 on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in the same apartment where, twenty years earlier, Singer and Shub had worked on this and many other stories. This manuscript was in a box Shub found in the back of a closet while preparing her flat to be painted in 1993. Singer had never come for the sheaves of drafts Shub told him she had kept, so she eventually packed the small carton; this she marked “Singer mss.” and tucked away. It was not rediscovered until June 1993.

During the mid-1960s and well into the 1970s, Singer would come with his manuscripts and notes to Shub’s apartment overlooking the Hudson, settling himself in a comfortable chair while Shub sat upright at the typewriter. He would read the story aloud in Yiddish. She would type it in English. When the first version was done, she would read it aloud, pencilling in the changes they both made. She would type it again; they’d improve it again; and then it was done. From the incomparable 1966 collection Zlateh the Goat to When Shlemiel Went to Warsaw, The Golem, and The Fools of Chelm and Their History, Libby Shub influenced and improved Singer’s writing in the sense of polishing his English prose. None of the draft manuscript pages demonstrates that her contribution included rewriting plot or developing character. Singer certainly needed no help with these. But, as the manuscript pages to follow do demonstrate, his English prose, though fluent after decades in this country, remained “accented.”

Naturally, this is evident with the most clarity in the Topsy-Turvy Emperor of China with its English-as-a-Fourth-Language ¹ prose.

The drafts of Singer manuscripts found in Shub’s closet were typed on onion skin and thin yellow paper from decades past, covered here and there with pencilled edits, or accompanied by entire paragraphs, even pages, in script. Stories like “A Friend of Kafka” were there in draft; in fact, as the editing on this famous Singer story shows, the original title was “Jaque Kohn.” My notes, dated June 27, 1993, read in part as follows:

Mrs. Shub (LS) has thirteen manila envelopes or folders containing manuscripts in various stages of preparation. Some are first draft containing original writing, revisions, or additions in Mr. Singer’s hand (in fountain pen); most of the editing/proofreading is in LS’ hand, typically in pencil. Other manuscripts LS received later in the publication process in her capacity of overall editor, rather than translator, in order to ensure continuity among various chapters which were translated by different people, e.g., Enemies: A Love Story

(working titles: Enemies: The History of a Love and The Husband). ²

Five of the folders contained various stages in the editing of Enemies: A Love Story. A huge file contained three chunks of the multi-generational saga The Manor. Other folders contained an essay, “Chassidism and Its Origins”; ³ “Motele the Tailor,” an adult story that appeared in October 1967 in The Jewish Daily Forward (original publisher of so much of Singer’s work)—pages 12–16 are handwritten by Singer; and “Shosha,” the lovely story about saying good-bye to his Warsaw neighborhood that Singer wrote especially to conclude his autobiography for children, A Day of Pleasure. This latter story was typed on six yellowing pages, with Shub’s handwriting recording three on-the-spot versions of the ending. Shub’s scrawling hand commemorates the speed of the creative...