His early works, including the novel Copilăria unui netrebnic ("The Childhood of a Ne'er-do-well"), bring together elements of Social Realism, Surrealism and Expressionism over a conventional narrative line based on oral tradition and the classics of Romanian literature.

During this final period of his career, he wrote the controversial novel Oțel și pîine ("Steel and Bread"), an epic of industrialization, widely seen as one of the most representative samples of politicized literature to have seen print in 1950s Romania.

[6] Researcher Paul Cernat also noted that Călugăru, like his future Surrealist colleague Benjamin Fondane, illustrated the Jewish section of the Romanian avant-garde and its connections with the local Hasidic tradition.

[16][17] In 1932 however, Călugăru was, with poet N. Davidescu, novelist Sergiu Dan, journalists Nicolae Carandino and Henric Streitman, and writer-director Sandu Eliad [ro], a member of the editorial staff for Vinea's daily Facla.

[16] The leftist politicization of Romania's avant-garde and its connections with a banned party soon alarmed the political establishment: like other members of the unu faction, Călugăru was constantly monitored and informed upon by the Romanian Kingdom's secret service, Siguranța Statului.

[25] In joining the common effort of Integral writers, Călugăru threw his support behind a literary movement that viewed itself as both urban and innovative, theorizing connections between the creative human and the modern rhythms of technology.

[33] While Cernat rates such contributions as among the "most philosoviet" in Integral's pages, he also finds that they show the manner in which Călugăru blended his communist sympathies with political ideas from opposite sources: the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and the syndicalist doctrines of Georges Sorel.

Commenting on this testimony, cultural historian Z. Ornea concludes that, even though the Iron Guard activist Vasile Marin was then made a member of the editorial staff, "nobody left, perhaps thinking that this was a temporary tactic".

[49] Eliade, who saw the opportunity of turning Cuvântul into a venue for dialogue between far right and Marxist intellectuals, also befriended the PCR member (and suspected Siguranța double agent) Belu Zilber, who was by then a friend of Călugăru's.

"[45] By 1936, the fascization of the Romanian national press made such contacts highly improbable: in early 1936, Vremea dropped its left-wing agenda and sacked its Jewish contributors, Călugăru included, and embraced Iron Guard politics.

[1] Sponsored in part with money from the Literary Fund of the Writers' Union,[62] Oțel și pîine earned Călugăru the annual State Prize, granted by the political and cultural leadership of the time to works seen as outstanding in ideological terms.

[1][63] By April 1952, the volume had also been included on a shortlist of recent communist literature, which became required reading for industrial workers at various locations in Romania, and the pretext for politically maneuvered "enlightenment" (lămurire) meetings between public and authors.

[3][66] Literary historian Henri Zalis, who comments on the books' mix of grotesque, comedic and tragic elements, also notes their ethnographic character: "The narrator composes a veritable spiritual census [...] of ceremonies—births, weddings, [...] Kol Nidre, Purim, Pesach and so on, that are perfectly distinguished.

This initiative grants the author a first-rate role for whoever shall wish to find out how the Jews of these places were living decades ago, in most communities that were attractive in ethnographic, social and sacrificial terms, thereafter exposed to Antonescu-ordered extermination, and, during the repressive communist regime, to a massive uprooting.

[68] According to Paul Cernat, both Călugăru and Fondane had participated in creating "a true cult" for Tudor Arghezi, who similarly mixed traditionalist and modernist influences, and who significantly affected their stylistic choices.

"[68] Shortly after being published, the narratives were positively reviewed by Călugăru's mentors and Contimporanul colleagues Ion Vinea and Fondane, who found them compliant with their ideal of authenticity, and who praised their return to originality through the mechanisms of naïve art and primitivism.

[25] Such works introduce motifs related to social alienation, and were described by George Călinescu as "tiny biographies of the interior man", with a type of "sarcasm" that echoed the novels of Călugăru's modernist contemporary, Aderca.

[81] Călinescu assessed: "When he moves on to [writing about] the urban society, Ion Călugăru no longer maintains the same density of vision, being stalked about by that sort of cosmopolitanism than one notices in all Jews who are not tied down to a certain specificity.

Some such aspects relate specifically to the minute characteristics of Judaism as practiced in a provincial community: the yeshiva is disrupted by the intrusion of a cow,[84] while synagogue life is interrupted by what George Călinescu refers to as "the tiny comedies of bigotry".

[84] In one chapter, whose symbolism is seen by Călinescu as pointing to "the universality of faith", Mihalache, the local Christian tasked with supervising the burning candles after service in the temple, finds himself thrilled by the spectacle they offer, and marks a Sign of the Cross.

[66] Such details, Crohmălniceanu notes, are completed by Călugăru's recourse to linguistic resourcefulness in authentically rendering his characters' speech patterns: an accumulation of proverbs, idiotisms and execrations, sourced from a common oral culture and together reflecting "a bitter life experience".

[87] Reviewing Copilăria unui netrebnic's "ethnographic aspects", and judging them to be "often remarkable", Manolescu added: "Unfortunately, Ion Călugăru does not know how to extract from the specificity of the race and location that human universality that we find in genius writers like Joseph Roth or Bashevis-Singer.

[88] The latter event marks an important step in the spiritual evolution of Buiumaș, who, like the author himself, is a supporter of proletarian revolution, and, according to Crohmălniceanu, expresses this by showing sympathy toward Moișă Lungu or other "déclassé figures with rebellious impulses".

was, together with Alexandru Sahia's Șomaj fără rasă ("Unemployment Regardless of Race"), one of only two such pieces ever to be published by the pro-communist Era Nouă, which also recommended Copilăria unui netrebnic, together with works by George Mihail Zamfirescu and Stoian Gh.

In one such situation, he argued that Liviu Rebreanu "was no genius, and his books are far from reaching the value of those by [Soviet author] Mikhail Sholokhov"—a claim retrospectively described by Al. Săndulescu [ro] as "an enormity" in terms of "servility and philosovietism".

[1] The author also confesses his dislike for hypocrisy in official discourse and the press, commenting on the "girlish sincerity" of dispatches from the Soviet Union, the PCR's tiny membership in 1944, on the "voluntary work" demanded by communist leaders and its transformation into a "corvée", and on intellectuals "who say something other than what they think.

Expressing fears that he was being tricked by more senior communists, Călugăru accused his Scînteia colleagues (Silviu Brucan, Traian Șelmaru, Sorin Toma) of not publishing his contributions so that they could later attack him for a displaying lack of motivation.

Frunză's official report, formed around Malenkov's theories about literary types and naturalness in Socialist Realist literature, argued: "The reader of Ion Călugăru's book Oțel și pîine was for sure able to note that the author is able to individualize certain negative characters.

[97] Similar criticism had been voiced a year earlier by communist politician and literary chronicler George Macovescu, in reference to Călugăru's contributions in the reportage genre, particularly his initial piece on the Hunedoara Steel Foundry.

Critic Simona Vasilache notes that such fragments revolve around the author's subjective perception of the world: "Not all the phrases make sense, not all the scenes have depth, that being because Călugăru's search is not one for clarity but, quite the contrary, for the vapor.