“Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer” (post 5): Fiction writer’s superior memory and special “daydream” (commonly called “waking dream”)

Memory

As noted in post 4, memory gaps or lapses of memory in writers are especially remarkable, because their general powers of memory are often superior, as noted by Singer:

“Art generally, and literature specifically, are connected with memory. The real writers have all had good memories, they remember their childhood, while many people don’t…I remember things that happened when I was three years old and I even have proof that I remember things that happened when I was two and a half years old, because we lived in a little village called Leonczyn and we moved out when I was less than three years old. I once spoke to my mother and described this place and the names of the people and she could not believe it. I still see all this as if it happened yesterday” (1, pp. 2-3).

Unusually vivid childhood memories may be the memories of child-aged alternate personalities.

Daydreams

“Yes, I’m a daydreamer. I was a daydreamer when I was a child and in this respect I haven’t changed at all. I’m daydreaming now in the ridiculous way that I did when I was seven or eight years old. In a way, some of my stories grow out of these [day]dreams. While I forget my night dreams, I remember my daydreams more or less because they keep repeating themselves and there is a kind of system in them” (1, p. 4)

NOTE: He does not say that he keeps repeating his daydreams and that he has a kind of system in them. Rather, he says that they keep repeating themselves and there is a kind of system in them, as though the daydreams were not initiated by him, but were provided to him. And he emphasizes the fact that these are not ordinary daydreams when he says that he daydreams in a “ridiculous way.”

Special “daydreams” are one way that behind-the-scenes, storytelling alternate personalities provide imaginative scenarios to the writing personality (who makes appropriate revisions until the stories are ready for publication).

Waking Dream

What Singer refers to as a peculiar kind of daydream may be what fiction writers more commonly refer to as a waking dream. Search “waking dream” for previous discussions.

1. Isaac Bashevis Singer and Richard Burgin. Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer. Garden City N.Y., Doubleday & Company, 1978-1985.