Ironically, the last conversation I had with my mother before she
died was when she showed me an article she'd read about Isaac and
said, "You should meet this Isaac Singer, he can help you." And then
one night he called. "Halaw? Can you take me to Bard College?" So I
would pick him up every Tuesday morning. He'd come into the car
wearing an old coat with ripped pockets, and unopened letters falling
out. So I'd take the letters and type replies. "You can type?" he said;
back then, having good typing skills was like having good computer
skills is today. And that's how I became his secretary. He dictated
letters to me for many years, and then he started dictating stories for
children, and then for adults. Later, I went to Columbia to study
Yiddish, and after that I started translating.
RH: What a fantastic opportunity to absorb knowledge about
writing, at the side of one of the masters.
DT: "You are in the factory of literature," he said to me once. I
could learn more from him than I could in any university program.
RH: And although there's clearly a great deal of affection in the
relationship you write about, you're also quite honest about how
difficult he could be at times.
DT: Farrar Straus Giroux just published a newly translated
novel by Isaac, Shadows on the Hudson, and Richard Bernstein
gave it a rave review in the New York Times. Afterwards,
though, a few people wrote terrible stories about his dark side. I
think that like all great artists he had two sides, a force of light and a
force of darkness. Both were intense within him, and they were
necessary for him to create work of the depth he did. I don't think he
ever got as much control over his dark side as one should with time,
and I think he went to his grave regretting that he couldn't quite
harness his inner demons.
I was privileged to witness much of his bright side, and I tried to
write as positive a portayal as I could because I knew how many
books were going to come out that would attack him. It's hard to be
his defender, but I do my best.
RH: You do point out that he was aware of his bad side, and that
when he realized he had hurt somebody he could be quite
apologetic.
DT: He was very conscious of the fact that he could be
piercingly brutal. He abandoned his son, he had a distant relationship
with his brother. He could tell you that what he did was terrible, but
he couldn't quite not prevent himself from doing it. He probably
wouldn't even disagree with a lot of the complaints in the letters
people have been writing to the Times recently.
RH: What was it like for you to revisit these memories?
DT: Anybody who wants to write a memoir is a masochist. I
signed a one-year contract, and I thought writing the book would be
a piece of cake. Seven years later (laughs)...
I've kept a journal every day since I was fourteen, even if it's just a
few lines. So I had plenty of notes about Isaac, and once I realized I
was going to write this book, they became very important in helping
me sort out when events I remembered took place. There was no
way I could have written this book, especially with such accurate
quotes.
I remarried in 1988, the year I signed the contract, and then I had
three children in four years. So I had my life as a wife and mother,
and then I had to go in my office in the same building and literally
step into a time warp to reconstruct everything about the past. Not
just the events, but the emotional state. You have to have an
incredible focus, and it took me a long time to focus as intently as I
needed to. It would take me a full hour sometimes just to put myself
into the past to pull out those emotions, recalling them as I read
through the notes. It could be a very depleting process.
But having a contract with a publisher was like a whip that forced
me to finish the job. I know too many friends who have been
working on their doctorates who just never finish because it takes so
long and gets so exhausting.
RH: What's next for you?
DT: I was very relieved when I finished this project. I wanted
very much to get back to my own fiction. My dream is to bring short
fiction back to the newspapers. And then suddenly I got a call from
Roger Straus about a book of Isaac's stories in Yiddish that had just
been published in Israel. Isaac said to me once before he died, "I
have to see to it that you will be busy with Isaac Singer for the rest
of your life." And he has so many untranslated stories...
