“When you are alone, how long the day can be! I read a book and two newspapers, drank a cup of coffee in a cafeteria, worked a crossword puzzle. I stopped at a store that auctioned Oriental rugs, went into another where Wall Street stocks were sold. True, I was on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, but I felt like a ghost, cut off from everything. I went into the library and asked a question—the librarian grew frightened. I was like a man who had died, whose space had already been filled.”
The so-called “Yiddish Hawthorne,” Isaac Bashevis Singer, presents a collection of stories representing the full range of a master storyteller. There are sixteen tales in all, the title story, "Short Friday," being the love story of an old couple who revere the Sabbath and, on that Friday in early winter when the sun sets earliest, find their greatest happiness.
New York: Farrah, Straus and Giroux, 1964. First printing (stated). Hardcover. Octavo. 243 pages. Dust jacket price clipped but in good condition and in protector. Boards stained with some edge wear and slight bumping to corners. Binding tight and square. Owner’s name on end papers. Pages clear. Nice, solid copy.
