Subscribe to Print Edition | Wed., June 11, 2008 Sivan 8, 5768 | | Israel Time: 21:33 (EST+7) web haaretz.com   Back to Homepage Rosner's Domain Diplomacy Defense Jewish World Opinion National Print Edition Car Rental Books Peres Conference Business Real Estate Easy Start Travel Week's End Anglo File

Last update - 21:30 11/06/2008 Fiction A spoonful of bizarre in every story By Jeremy Dauber Tags: translations, Etgar Keret  The key to reading Etgar Keret is to accept, not overanalyze, the string of inexplicable, beautiful moments presented in his indelible style The Girl on the Fridge by Etgar Keret (translated from Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger and Sondra Silverston) Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 175 pages, $12 (paper) It seems somehow inapposite to write a review of Etgar Keret's new English-language collection longer than many of the stories constituting it; Keret, Israel's modern master of what the slicks used to call the "short-short" (and not only Israel's), has achieved his deserved celebrity in no small part by writing stories that take up no more than a page or two -- with big margins. In addition, the usual sobriety attendant on the typical review of much Israeli fiction -- the solemn attempt to grapple with matters of social and political import, the grave efforts to find the work's relevance to "where Israel is now" -- seems sharply at odds with the loopy, giddy energy that sloshes its way through the best of this absorbing collection. A writer so obviously off center (not politically speaking, though perhaps that too) deserves, if not demands, a like response; and so, without further ado, 10 and a half brief statements about Keret's newest collection, and, perhaps, the Keret phenomenon writ large. 1. First, caveat emptor. This newest collection of stories isn't actually that new. Keret's previous English-language collections, "The Nimrod Flipout" and "The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God," boasted stories written after most of those in "The Girl on the Fridge," which are taken in large part from Keret's earliest published works. It seems no disrespect, then, to suggest that some of these stories seem less polished, subtle, than their earlier/later counterparts; on the other hand, readers who want to know what makes Keret tick -- and want the untrammeled, enormous energy of a dazzling debut -- won't be disappointed. 2. Unless they're looking for plot. Not a plot man, Keret. More a mood man. If you prefer your stories to boast a neat why and wherefore, an explanatory conclusion, or much of a conclusion at all, you're often out of luck. Which isn't to say that they don't feel emotionally coherent and satisfying nonetheless. We'll get back to this. 3. But while we're speaking of tone. People curse a lot in Keret's stories. A lot. They also have sex, urinate and defecate. But not in those words. Turning the air blue with profanity, as Keret well knows, doesn't mean a greater degree of realism; it just substitutes one form of stylization for another. This is known, for those familiar with the recent scatologically notorious television series, as the "Deadwood effect." But make no mistake, Keret is a master of the low register, of the vernacular, of what the critics used to call the demotic: or, at least, so one can certainly be led to believe on the evidence of the translators, Miriam Shlesinger and Sondra Silverston, who have rendered Keret's tonal shifts, his pyrotechnic switchbacks of person, point of view, form and genre with elegant gusto, if an impossibility be permitted. And why not? We're in a world where a man vacuum-seals himself inside a bag (or so we might believe). Those, however, for whom the story's comparison of the vacuum seal to a particular part of a woman's anatomy, referred to by a well-known but exceedingly impolite colloquialism, is a bit much, should probably move on. Again, caveat emptor. 4. Don't be fooled by the sex and cursing into thinking of Keret as a literary lightweight. Philip Roth once said, answering a question about whether he was influenced by the "sick" stand-up comics of his day in writing "Portnoy's Complaint," that he was actually most inspired by a very funny sit-down comic named Franz Kafka. Keret, for all his pop-culture cartoonish surface, plays a mean game of high-low, culturally speaking: he occasionally name-checks some great writers ("Swift in Icelandic") and draws on others without attribution (that same story could have been by Borges, if the great Argentinian had just loosened up a little stylistically). Sly readers will have a good time playing their own literary guessing games. (My own guess is that one ingredient in the stew of influences is the early Italo Calvino -- especially in "Quanta," the story of Einstein and the animate subatomic articles -- but who knows, really.) Influence, though, is just what you rob on the way to creating your own indelible style, and Keret simply doesn't write like anyone else. 5. A case in point. Check out the children. Keret is one of the most acute observers of childhood this side of Henry Roth -- but no portraits of the artist as a young man here, either, unless the artist in question is Stephen King. Keret's children will hang a cat by the neck to see if it swells up ("A Bet"); they'll confront their mother's lover with truth serum ("Boomerang"); in sum, they're insatiably curious, venal, selfish, obsessive, often nasty little creatures, and as such utterly recognizable to us, particularly as the progenitors of what I'll call homo Kereticus, the typical hero of Keret's stories. 6. Homo Kereticus. male (mostly, except when he metamorphoses into a woman), impotent (generally, either physiologically or metaphorically), alienated (always), and, as Woody Allen once famously had it, at two with nature. Keret plays cocked dice with his universes, designing them so as to always make matters worse for their inhabitants -- and with Keret's monstrous imagination and canvas unrestrained by reality, that can get pretty bad. Even the man given power to stop time -- which he then uses to have sex with hot women against their will ("Freeze!") -- ends up, in the end, the worse for it. Ray of optimism 7. But. There's an occasional ray of sunshine. When individuals can truly, romantically, idealistically, see each other for the damaged, scarred (again, both literally and metaphorically) human beings that they are. If a girl will never get undressed ("One Hundred Percent"), or superglues every part of herself so that she sticks to the ceiling ("Crazy Glue"), or may not be willing to descend from atop the refrigerator ("The Girl on the Fridge," if you hadn't guessed), usually, though not always, accepting the bizarre is the best way to get things to work out -- for character and reader alike. 8. Which is, of course, the key to reading Keret in the first place. Overanalysis is deadly -- just as it is, for example, in thinking about "Meduzot" (Jellyfish), the movie he co-directed with his wife, Shira Geffen, that won the Camera d'Or for Best Debut Feature at Cannes last year. Strong on tone, less on plot; with beautiful moments about alienated souls attempting connection (mostly women, interestingly; this might be Geffen's leavening touch, as she's the credited writer on the film). Keret's deft directorial touch presents consciously inexplicable moments that are best felt, not broken down into theses. 9. In fact, the Keret stories ostensibly most ripe for interpretation somehow manage -- in a twist worthy of his magician who, expecting to pull a rabbit out of his hat, ends up with a dead baby ("Hat Trick") -- to be the very opposite of allegorical. That is, while numerous Israeli authors (A.B. Yehoshua springs first to mind) write stories immediately read, whether desirably or not, as transcending their quotidian settings to speak to contemporary geopolitical questions, Keret throws stories into the collection explicitly featuring soldiers, or military imagery, but which manage to give the reader the feeling he's not really talking about that at all. A neat trick, indeed. 10. Still, like a lot of postmodern fiction, you're never sure if the joke's on you or on Keret when he undercuts the emotionally battering, powerful stories he can indeed tell that might have had those allegorical overtones. "Not Human Beings," for example, is nothing less than the classic S. Yizhar story "The Prisoner" for a new generation -- until the Arab prisoner in question is turned by Keret into a literal, not metaphorical, human pinata: "The officer cut the stomach in two, and rolled-up flags, flyers, candy, and phone tokens came spilling out of it." A fable about the other? An honest desire to avoid the infernal consequences of the story's logic? A punishment for the reader's emotional investment in the story? Or just a surreal visual joke, not meant to be taken too deeply? And, if the latter, who's to blame for expecting anything more, Keret or us? 10½. This effect is particularly pronounced when you read the stories in one gulp, which you are hereby warned not to do. But you will. Because they're that absorbing, that interesting, that different, that good. And then you'll look to see what Keret will do next -- which, in a twist worthy of the author, is to read what he's done before. Jeremy Dauber is the Atran Associate Professor of Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture at Columbia University and the co-editor of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Marketing ploy Israeli satellite TV has a new star - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Through her lens Madonna's next project: documentary about the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Read & React Palestinians: IDF kills girl, gunman in Gaza; Negev man wounded by mortar Responses: 97 Editorial: No good reason for broad IDF Gaza operation Responses: 42 Haniyeh aide: Hamas expects gesture in exchange for Shalit letter Responses: 57 TV: IDF reservists complain their service consists of babysitting young settlers Responses: 28 Alexander Yakobson: Religious rites not needed to join the Jewish people Responses: 30 Rosner's Domain The UN's Complicity With Evil Lieberman for VP? Only 18% want it (WTR) Threatening Iran is wrong (WTR) Poll: Philip Roth, Victor Frankl or Leon Uris? On a par with the policies of President Bush More Headlines 21:04 Man killed in T.A. car blast believed to be top lawyer 21:13 Olmert tells Kadima: Get ready for party primaries 20:47 Diplomats: EU not ready for major upgrade of Israel ties 17:14 Israel: No Gaza raid, we'll give truce talks a chance 17:24 Lebanon: Israel must quit Shaba Farms if it wants peace talks 17:09 Livni: Future Palestinian state must fit Israel's security needs 13:48 U.S. kosher meat prices likely to soar after raid on Iowa plant 20:57 Palestinians: IDF kills 4 in Gaza; Negev man wounded by mortar 15:08 Ahmadinejad: West failing to halt our nuclear victory 20:40 Histadrut: We'll declare strike unless Treasury backtracks on tax cuts 14:35 Self-defense bill for homeowners passes two readings in Knesset 16:41 Border policeman lightly hurt by rock thrower at anti-fence rally 18:40 Sderot protest draws small crowd, but community leaders not deterred 14:29 Report: Stalker sends sexually explicit letters to woman MKs Previous Editions Select Day 10 jun 09 jun 08 jun 06 jun 05 jun 04 jun 03 jun 02 jun 01 jun 30 may 29 may 28 may

Special Offers Advertisement Jerusalem of Gold Luxury apartments in Jerusalem's finest location Your vacation starts here Israel Travel Center Guaranteed Lowest Rates Istudy Learn Hebrew in 3 months The Terraces Your Ultimate Coastal Address On Nitza Boulevard, North Netanya Pardes Institute Summer Sessions http://www.pardes.org.il/ Free the Palestinians from: Corrupt Kleptocracy, Tyrannical Theocracy, Abysmal Anarchy Fattal Hotel Chain Perfectly located hotels on best resorts of Israel. ISRAEL BONDS Build Israel Israel bonds - a multi-purpose way to celebrate Israel's 60th Eldan Rent a Car Israel's leading car rental company offers you a 20% discount on all online reservations Junkyard Junk a car - get free towing nationwide and a tax-deductible receipt

Home | TV | Print Edition | Diplomacy | Opinion | Arts & Leisure | Sports | Jewish World | Underground | Site rules |

Real Estate in Israel | Travel to Israel with Haaretz | Hotels Israel | Restaurants Israel | Tourist attractions Israel | Shops Israel

birthright Israel

Haaretz.com, the online edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, offers real-time breaking news, opinions and analysis from Israel and the Middle East. Haaretz.com provides extensive and in-depth coverage of Israel, the Jewish World and the Middle East, including defense, diplomacy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the peace process, Israeli politics, Jerusalem affairs, international relations, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli business world and Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora.

© Copyright  Haaretz. All rights reserved