by Jessica Kirzane

A Provincial Newspaper and Other Stories
Written by Miriam Karpilove
Translated from the Yiddish by Jessica Kirzane
Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 978-0815611585

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Miriam Karpilove’s satirical novella “A Provincial Newspaper,” published in Yiddish in 1926, centers on an overworked writer of popular serialized fiction and journalist for a small-time regional Yiddish newspaper in Boston.

The character contrasts the romantic vision of the romance writer with the realities of being a newspaperwoman:

“This is how I got ready to write. I sat in a light, summery dress that was so thin that the breeze passing between the door and the window came right to me. I felt comfortable, I felt prepared to accomplish a lot of work. But then – the telephone! Who was it? What did he want? It was Mr. Rat, and he wanted me to come into the editorial office. What? On a Sunday?”

Karpilove pulls no punches. She tells her readers about her narrator’s poor wages, long hours, lack of respect–she doesn’t even have a desk in the newspaper office on which to write her novels and editorials! Karpilove does all this through snappy dialogue and sardonic humor, deflating readers’ lofty expectations about the writing life with a dose of reality and a dose of hilarity. Think The Office set in at a Yiddish newspaper in Boston.

Miriam Karpilove knew what she was talking about. She was a prolific Yiddish writer whose work focused attention on women’s lives and the inequality they experienced in the workplace and in romantic relationships. She wrote hundreds of short stories, plays, and novels, most of which were published in New York-based Yiddish newspapers. As the newspaper Der tog wrote when advertising one of her novels in 1925, “her name is a guarantee that the novel will be captivating.” Her enormous output spanned decades, and in “A Provincial Newspaper” she gives a somewhat bitter inside peek at what her work life might have sometimes felt like, behind the scenes.

In addition to the title story, this collection includes several chapters of the writer’s unpublished memoir about her journey to Palestine in 1926 (where she lived for two years before returning to New York). These chapters focus largely on her arrival and first impressions, as well as her observations of her travel companions. They are an intriguing historical record told with Karpilove’s signature attention to humorous detail.

The third section of the collection includes 19 of the short stories that made up the bread-and-butter of this prolific writer’s output as a staff writer for the Yiddish newspaper Forverts in the 1930s. These stories, written to be read around kitchen tables, reflected the daily lives and interests of Yiddish newspaper readers.

This collection is an excellent introduction to the pioneering Yiddish newspaperwoman and her world.

Karpilove began publishing in the Yiddish press in 1906 and continued through the mid-1940s. She was among the only women Yiddish writers to support herself through her writing. Her work appeared in a variety of Yiddish periodicals such as Forverts, Der Tog, Fraye Arbeter Shtime, and Gerekhtikayt. Several of her works appeared in book form. Of these, two have been recently translated: Judith (1911) and Diary of a Lonely Girl, or the Battle against Free Love (1918).