When I wrote, I failed to complete certain letters and sometimes whole words. I had the painful feeling that I had ceased to be myself and was unable to become someone else. But David Bendinger is a manchild, possessed by a mature capacity to reflect on his desperate youthfulness. During his wretched first evening in Warsaw, he stops at a shoemaker to have his shoes resoled, and despite his fatigue and hunger he is able to ruminate philosophically while waiting in the shoemaker's gallery. According to Spinoza it was no more than a modus of thought, an attribute.
Time is real.
A philosophy is needed that is built on time and space. Later, when David's growing involvement with his leftist landlady brings him in contact with several Marxist members of Warsaw's Writers' Club, he remains skeptical of their passionate faith in the Soviet Union. Even sex is an occasion for philosophical reflection. A maturer Isaac Bashevis Singer is looking back and simultaneously mocking and celebrating his youthful self. There must be room within Him for Satan, ghosts and demons.