In this respect Sholom Aleichem and Peretz are more like Kafka than any of the three are like most modern writers. The Yiddish masters are largely unconcerned with the psychology of individual difference; Kafka consciously puts it aside. Whether Kafka was greatly influenced by the Yiddish tradition remains an unsettled question, though the similarities between his stories and some of the Hasidic tales me are remarkable. But he is akin to the Yiddish writers in that he deals not with psychological arithmetic, the numbers of individual configuration, but with the algebra of situation and emotion. That is why you cannot find in Kafka, as you cannot find in Peretz, those delicately modeled and infinitely subtle character studies we associate with James and Proust.
–Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg, Introduction, A Treasury of Yiddish Stories
