Although I didn't write about my experiences here very much (save one proper post about one of the books I really loved--though my not having written about the others is in no way a reflection on the books, only a lack of time to fit them all in), I thoroughly enjoyed the class I audited last semester and decided I needed to continue in my reading of Israeli Literature. I think of the fifteen or so books I read in translation last year, Hebrew was the original language most often translated from. If I can keep up with the reading this semester I suspect that number will be rivaled or even surpassed this year.
I'm once again auditing a literature class. The subject is Contemporary Israeli Stories with a focus on fiction and film from the last decade or so. I have the same teacher, but the class is being offered at a different location with a very different group of students, so the dynamics should be quite different. While last semester's class was cross-listed across several different disciplines, this is a straightforward literature class. We had some really good discussions last time around, but I think this semester will be even better as everyone in class is interested in the works not from a historical or international studies perspective, but purely a literary one.
This semester I am hoping to write about our readings each week. Just as a teaser the authors we'll be studying include: Etgar Keret, Ron Leshem, Shani Boianjiu, Ari Folman, Sayed Kashua, Orly Kastel-Blum, Alex Epstein, Dror Mishani, Yoav Katz, Matan Hermoni, Eshkol Nevo and Assaf Gavron. If you're unfamiliar with these names (and to be honest many of them were unknown to me before last fall), you'll have a little introduction to them here. Last semester's class opened up a whole new world of fiction for me as well as a part of the world I didn't know very much (very remiss of me all things considered) about. We'll be crossing a number of genres and our reading will be supplemented with films, too. Some of my favorite reads of last year were thanks to last semester's introduction to these writers, and I hope to find more authors and books to love this semester.
The first class (there should be about thirteen total) began with an introduction to one of Israel's most popular and most important authors of this generation, Etgar Keret. If you recall one of Keret's short stories appeared in the New Yorker last fall. You know I love a good short story, right? Keret is primarily a short story writer, though he has written a novella, film scripts, graphic novels and directed films. His work has been read on This American Life (However did I miss this show? I am not a radio-listener to be honest, but I will be checking in here whenever I can now that I know . . .). He has apparently been criticized for not expanding into novel writing, which I always find a little short-sighted and disappointing. It somehow belittles the short story format, which I think is not easy to do really well. I think I've read that authors sometimes find it harder to write a short story than write a novel. A really good short story can convey a whole world, a whole life into just a few pages, which is no easy task.
As for Etgar Keret, he seems quite quirky, but funny and satirical, too. Beneath an unassuming surface, one that seems quite playful, Keret slips in some rather heavy ideas, too. Sometimes a little melancholic or tragic even and sometimes a little absurd. You don't realize just where you're going until you've got there so painlessly is the journey. The stories are very much on the short side. If you let yourself you could consume them one after another like a bowl of potato chips, but to do so is to not appreciate the flavor and ends in pure gluttony. I never like to read a whole collection in one sitting, or even in just one week, no matter how slender the book.
Suddenly, a Knock on the Door is made up of nearly three dozen stories, some only a page or two long that are like quick bursts of action and emotion. We read the title story, and not knowing anything about Keret, his writing style or subjects he tends to write about, my first thought was the knock on the door was a foreshadow of awful things to come. But Keret had something else entirely on his mind. Maybe the inspiration was the criticism leveled at him--the not having moved on to novel writing and telling 'real stories'. A bearded man sits in the 'author's' living room and says, "tell me a story". Not something he can do on demand he replies . . . "I'm someone who writes stories, not someone who tells them." And then the bearded man pulls out a pistol. And so the narrator tries, "suddenly there's a knock on the door".
And then the story takes on a life of its own, since suddenly there is a knock on the door. And then that is when the absurd takes over. But beneath the playful inventiveness of the storytelling, Keret has a little something else to say about life in Israel, or maybe life anywhere really since it is as much about the human condition, or about the desire to tell a story about the human condition. Since, you see, the crux of the story is about telling stories, and stories are what makes up our world, that help explain it to us. Had I encountered Keret on my own I think I would have been amused by him, but there is so much more there that I am sure would have floated over my head, like the references to Society and politics, or who gets sent to Lebanon. And if you don't know the references I'd say it's okay and you'll still enjoy the story, but this is why I love taking a class where I can get insight into all the things swirling around in a story.
And to expand a little more on Keret's work we watched the film $9.99 which is based on a number of Keret's stories very creatively interlinked by setting them in an apartment complex, so each one crosses paths and intersects with the others. Interestingly the film was a stop-motion animated, which initially seemed sort of an odd choice, but now, knowing a tiny bit of what Keret's stories are like and seeing how it all jelled together I found it oddly compelling and couldn't imagine it having been made with real actors.
I'll keep going in this collection, reading a story or two a day or every few days. There is no rush. Next week we'll be reading (the class is designed as a sort of sampler, so we are only assigned excerpts, chapters that give a taste of the different books, but I do hope to read as many as I can) Ron Leshem's Beaufort, which I read for last semester's class. Since I''ll be reading excerpts it will be a refresher and maybe I can write about it properly next week (finally).