I also find Der Nister, as a narrator, to be a very humane fellow who knows how to draw out both the seamy and the sympathetic sides of life. Take for example this moment of authorial intrusion when he introduces Alter, a member of the Mashber Family who so happens to be mentally handicapped:

It may be said that this is not the place for [Alter], and it may be that generally speaking there ought not to be a place here for someone like him who does not–who cannot–take an active part in the narrative, and we might simply have passed him over or mentioned him only occasionally here and there. But we have not done that, and after much consideration we have introduced him here and we mean to occupy ourselves with him for a little while longer because, though he does not play an active role, still, it is a role, if only because he existed and because he existed in the household about which we have been speaking, and since blood is thicker than water, and because we have in mind the researcher who two or three generations from now may find in later members of the family a tiny kernel of that sickly inheritance which in the generation being discussed here was unhappily Alter’s portion.

Der Nister uses authorial intrusion for a useful purpose here, to engage in meaningful dialogue with the reader, and to call attention to the fact that he aims to fully characterize Alter rather than have him be a background character due to his disability. It’s an authorial nod to the idea of realism: bringing forth aspects of reality which it is customary for a romantic mindset to either caricature or ignore.

As a Soviet writer, Der Nister wants to call attention to the variety of experiences in the society of Ukrainian Jewry he is depicting: the rich and the poor, the religious in-group and the religious outcasts; the upstanding citizens and the thieves and the outlaws, and this variety of description adds a lot of interest to the book for someone like me, who has some roots in this cultural milieu.