The Day I Got Lost

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Novelist, Short Story writer. Was born on July 14, 1904, in Radzymin in Poland. Born to a family of religious Jews, he was raised in an overcrowded, poor Jewish quarter of Warsaw. His older brother became a novelist and his sister became a novelist. He was a voracious reader.

He starts working in journalism, one year after, he emigrated from Poland to the United States, his old brother awaited him, and he took a job in New York, writing for The Jewish Daily Forward.

In 1925, he debuted as a fiction writer with the short story "In Old Age". And in 1935 his first novel, "Satan in Goray", was published.

In 1978, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died on July 24, 1991, in Surfside, Florida.

Isaac Bashevis Singer a Life in America

The short story "The Day I Got Lost", was published in 1973 in the United States, it was part of the book "The Puffin Annual", then in 1984 was reprinted in the collection titled "Stories for Children". Alfred Kazin noted in his 1974 review of the book in The New York Times that: "Isaac Bashevis Singer is an extraordinary writer. And this new collection of stories, like so much that he writes, represents the most delicate imaginative splendor, wit, mischief and, not least, the now unbelievable life that Jews once lived in Poland."

At the time that the book was written, at the United States, the Vice President of that Nation resigned because of tax evasion. The Sears Tower is completed during May. The 108 floor 1,729-foot tall structure became the tallest building in the world, a title that it held for 25 years. World Trade Center in New York becomes the tallest building in the world. Sydney Opera House is opened. I really don´t see the connection with the historical background.

I think that this story is going to be about the scariest day in the life of the protagonist and how she/he got out of that terrible situation. Meanwhile, we can read about the adventures that this day carries on.

Isaac Bashevis Singer belongs to de Post Modernism literary movement that is a form of literature which is marked, both stylistically and ideologically by a reliance on such literary conventions. Reaction to the limitations of Modernist literature and the radical changes the world underwent after the end of World War II.

He was from Poland. He wrote his books in Yiddish. His genre is Realistic Fiction and the type is a short story.

About my predictions about the reading, I can say that it tells us about the "adventures" that the character pass to get back home, in the meanwhile, he meets a new friend that becomes the new family member. The history wasn´t scariest, Profesor Shlemiels was taking all the situations with a good mood and trying to look for some solutions about them. It also looks like one forgot things takes to another one. I thought that it will be a scary story because of the title, and it wasn´t. And after all the situation, the Profesor gives up on trying to solve the riddle of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Instead, he started writing a new book called The Memoirs of Shlemiel, and he said that he doesn´t forget the manuscript in a taxi or any other place.

Well, in the story, a 60-year-old professor, has a dilemma. He can´t remember where he lives. When the professor was in a cab on his way to his home in New York City when he realizes that he forgot his address. The taxi driver leaves him at a drugstore so he can look for his address, but he remembers that he get an unlisted phone number so his students couldn´t call him to his home, so he´s unable to find information. He calls some friends of him, but everyone was at his house, because of his Birthday celebration. So he went back to the sidewalk, it is raining and he, of course, left his umbrella somewhere. So he stands under an overhang and starts thinking about the eternal question, which came first, the egg or the chicken? And suddenly a wet-soaking black dog appears, they are standing there when a taxi drives by and splashes them both. The cab stops because the passenger has recognized the professor and so he was going to the professor party, he gives them a ride, to the professor and his new friend, the black dog. Now, the black dog is part of professor family, and its name is Bow-Wow.

It is wonderful how a "rough day" can turn into a "great day", it all depends on the way we can see the situations and our attitude at them.