Writing Hebrew, living English

Writer Maya Arad has been living abroad for 16 years. After moving to London in 1994 she settled near Stanford University, in California where her husband, Reviel Netz, is a professor in the Classics Department.

Arad has a Ph.D. in linguistics and taught at Stanford for several years, but is happy to have left that behind. In a telephone interview from Stanford, Arad told Haaretz about her new position as writer-in-residence at the Taube Center for Jewish Studies: "Of all the jobs I've had this is the one that suits me the most and is the most agreeable." When asked whether she liked teaching, she says that now she can now admit that she did not. As soon as she began her current job, she says, "I stopped feeling like the egg who tried to disguise himself as something else," (alluding to the Israeli children's book by Dan Pagis).

Arad, who was born in 1971, is an especially odd duck in the birdcage that is Hebrew literature. Her first book, "Another Place, a Foreign City: a novel in rhyme" (Xargol) was published in 2003 and inspired by Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin." It is original, serious, knowledgeable, witty, virtuosic and funny too. In 2005 she published a play in rhyme, "The Righteous Forsaken" (Ahuzat Bayit), in 2006 a comic novel in prose ("Seven Moral Failings," Xargol), and in 2008 three novellas in "Family Pictures" (Xargol & Am Oved). In addition, she co-published, with Netz, a book of essays on Israeli literature, "Positions of Stress" (Ahuzat Bayit). All of the books are in Hebrew only.

"The Short Story Artist" (Xargol & Am Oved), her latest, has just been released. It is a brilliant novel, complex, funny and serious, whose hero, Adam Tehar-zahav ("pure gold" in Hebrew) is a short-story writer in a world where the genre has gone out of fashion.

Tehar-zahav's stories about his failed love life are scattered throughout the novel, in which Hebrew literature itself is also a protagonist. Arad writes wonderful parodies about well-known figures from the worlds of literature, academia and literary criticism and the relationships between them. The book also addresses topics such as the literary canon, writing workshops, bored and boring students and intimate writing by women, for which Tehar-zahav is filled with great contempt.

Arad says that when she began her first book it was important for her that people realize that it was not about her. "Bit by bit I've come quite a ways," she explains. "In 'Seven Moral Failings' I used real-life events and in the new book I've got even closer because I wrote about a writer whose dilemmas resemble mine. At the beginning of the book he says that only graphomaniacs write about themselves, [but] at the end he is prepared to tell his own story. This book contains more of me than the others."

To be an author is masculine

Why then did she choose a male rather than a female writer as her protagonist? "There are many people like Adam," Arad says. "He's in his 40s, still a bit immature, living the life of a young man; he doesn't realize that he's an adult. Because of the way things are a woman this age would not be able to deny nature, her biological clock; it would have to be an issue that occupies her. Also I wanted to separate my voice from his, which is the voice of someone else. Gender is part of this."

She says that it was only after she finished writing that she noticed that there were many women central to the story: "There is a woman who wrote a book about a male writer, and a male writer whose stories feature women protagonists. When I finished writing I understood that the gender issue is also present. Adam Tehar-zahav lives in two worlds when it comes to writing. To be an author is masculine, but writing itself is feminine, a kind of scribbling. That's what the book says, but who wrote it? Me."

The novel was born of an idea that Arad had for a short story: "I thought it was a good idea but then I thought I should use it in a novel. Somehow it was clear to me that I wouldn't write a short story. After thinking a little more I saw that maybe I was capable of writing a short story, but what would I do with it afterward? There's no way that I would publish a book of short stories. And so I found myself wondering why, as a matter of fact, and I answered myself that no one takes short stories seriously. Nothing can be done about it; that's the situation - neither critics nor readers pay attention to short story collections. And so I began thinking, first about the short-story situation and then about the germ of an idea about a writer who writes only short stories and is frustrated by this."

About the fact that the book contains stories written by the hero, Arad says: "I was always interested in books about writers, and it always bothered me that we are supposed to believe the author of a book that his protagonist is a great writer, or mediocre, when all we know is the information the author supplies secondhand, or at the most a paragraph from a book or a stanza of a poem. It seemed an interesting challenge to invent a writer along with his work, to create one thematic and chronological whole."

Tehar-zahav's first short story in the novel is set in the army. Arad says that one of the challenges in writing the book was "to create a story that was apparently written by a talented but still somewhat immature writer. I wanted the readers to derive sufficient enjoyment from Adam's story in order to judge his writing without my intervention, and still to leave space for me as an author. The main challenge was to find Adam's voice, to separate it from my voice and still keep my hands on the reins, so that it's clear I am writing both the novel and the stories. The main joy was writing the stories in someone else's name. It seems that if you are a writer you can be anyone you want, but in practice you are always writing in your own name. I found it liberating to write as someone else. I couldn't have written the short stories in the novel as myself."

American manners

Arad's daughters, aged five and two, were born in the United States. As someone who is involved in the Hebrew language and with literature, does it bother her that they will be far from Hebrew, that they will be Americans? Arad says she doesn't understand the arrogance of some Israelis toward America. "If we are talking about children, there is zero tolerance here for verbal and physical violence; education from nursery school on places a value on respecting the other, cooperating, etc., which one may only dream about in Israel. Not to mention the richness of being bilingual, all the songs and stories in a second language that my daughters would never be exposed to if they were in Israel."

She herself, she says, has become more American over the years, "and there's nothing wrong with that in my eyes. A few days ago someone made a suggestion to me. My Israeli gut reaction was to cut him off with 'Forget it, what a shitty idea.' Instead, I let him talk until he was finished and said, 'Listen, it sounds great but I am not convinced it will work.' In the local code, that's a direct way to say exactly the same thing. Many Israelis call this American hypocrisy, but it's just different manners."

Arad has perfect pitch when it comes to subtlety and fakery. In her latest book she has created an amusing symphony of Hebrew literature's failings and folly. How does she manage to remain connected to Hebrew literature?

"Internet and the Stanford library, which receives all published Hebrew books," she says.

When asked to define how the field of literature in Israel is similar to or different from the rest of the world, Arad says that her ears are monolingual, and "I wouldn't want to commit myself regarding the rest of the world. From the little I've seen, people are the same all over. In Israel and in Europe and in America there are doctoral students who are full of themselves and very confident, or mothers who try to prove to you that their children are smarter than yours. The labels are the same, it's just the way the culture processes them that's different."

Much of "The Short Story Artist" deals with the terrible need of the artist to be seen from the outside, the awful dependence on the eyes of critics, of academia, an incessant humiliation, like an audition that never ends. Arad says that like many authors Adam Tehar-zahav feels that he is always measured by his most recent book.

"Somehow past achievements, even if they are important, are erased the moment the new book arrives. And if you haven't published in five years you're completely erased from memory. It might be the case in other areas, too, and that writers and artists are no different. But if we compare it to academia, the only area I know well, you always have your job, your office and the title 'professor.' Writers don't have titles, jobs and offices. All they have are their books and their names."

Arad says that this may be connected to the situation in Israel and what she says is the fact that it's impossible to find books published more than five years ago in stores and that writers have almost no way to earn a living outside literature.

"But it might be something universal. If you think about it, often when times we 'discover' a new author, assuming we are talking about someone who is still alive and writing, we say 'Wow, great, we'll wait for the next book,' and not 'Wow, great, let's go find all their previous books.' Apparently we're all programmed to look to the future."

Asked to explain feeling as if she's in an eternal audition, Arad says: "Part of my life as an author is my reception by readers. There is no such thing as [writing for] the drawer. If writing is in a drawer, it doesn't exist. And if it is published and sank like a stone, it's the same. This is difficult for writers to think about, but it's a fact. My solution is to work constantly on some manuscript so that I always have something to go back to if a book fails. This is also a kind of looking forward."

In her opinion, writing and Adam's love life are at the forefront of the novel, and Hebrew literature is in the background.

When asked whether she agrees with Meital Einav, a literature scholar whom Adam falls in love with and who claims that Hebrew literature is dead, Arad says that this opinion belongs solely to the character. "Meital is a colorful character who can voice serious intellectual ideas and nonsense in the same sentence. It's wrong to identify her ideas with mine, although I agree with a lot of them. And of course it is also wrong to identify me with the harsh literary judgments she throws around with ease, and the grades she bestows on the world."

After these obligatory reservations, Arad adds: "My personal opinion is of course that Hebrew literature is not dead, it is alive and vital and fascinating, but something in its construction or that of the culture has changed. Meital thinks it's a result of despair for the future. I believe there are many factors, not all of which I can define, and even if I try I am not sure the result would be more than the customary cliche: the book market and the publishers, the erosion of reading by television and so on. What is clear is that literature is already no longer at the forefront of Hebrew culture, so involvement with it is much less central. As Meital says, it's not that there is no canon, it's that no one can be bothered to look for it. No one is occupied by the questions of 'What is literature?' or 'What is the future of literature?'"