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WORK TITLE: FLY ALREADY
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NATIONALITY: Israeli
LAST VOLUME: CANR 301
http://www.etgarkeret.com/
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PERSONAL
Born August 20, 1967, in Ramat Gan, Israel; son of Efraim and Orna Keret; married Shira Geffen; children: Lev.
EDUCATION:Studied at Tel Aviv University.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, journalist, educator, and filmmaker. Columnist for a weekly newspaper in Jerusalem; comic strip writer for a Tel Aviv, Israel, newspaper; comedy writer for Israeli television; lecturer at Tel Aviv University School of Film, Tel Aviv Israel, and at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be’er Sheva, Israel. Writer-in-residence, University of Iowa International Writing Program, 2001; participant in Sundance Institute Feature Film Program Screenwriters Lab, 2001. Director and actor, including Meduzot, 2007.
MIILITARY:Served in the Israeli Army.
AWARDS:Israeli Motion Picture Academy Award for movie Skin Deep; first prize, Alternative Theatre Festival, Acre, Israel, 1993, for musical Entebbe; Yediot-Acharonot (Israeli newspaper) selection for the fifty most important books written in Hebrew, for Ga’gu’ai le-Kising’er; prizewinner at several international film festivals, including first prize at the Korto Festival in Italy for The Queen of Red Hearts; chosen as an outstanding artist of the Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation, 2006; Cannes Film Festival, Golden Camera Award and the SACD Screenwriting Award, for Meduzot, 2007; Bratislav International Film Festival, Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, and a Special Mention, for Meduzot, 2007; JQ Wingate Prize, 2008, for Missing Kissinger; Chevalier (Knight) Medallion, France’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, 2010; Newman Prize, Bar-Ilan University, 2012; Sapir Prize, 2019, for A Fault at the Edge of the Galaxy; received the (Israel) Book Publishers Association’s Platinum Prize several times; Prime Minister’s Prize; Cinema Prize, Israeli Ministry of Culture.
WRITINGS
Contributor to Tselaliyot: 11 sipurim (stories; title means “Silhouettes: Anthology”), Kineret, Zemorah-Bitan, Devir (Or Yehudah, Israel), 2005.
Keret’s short stories have been adapted as more than forty short films, including one that received an MTV Prize for best animated film in 1998; Kneller’s Happy Campers was adapted for a film, Wristcutters: A Love Story, Halcyon Pictures, 2006.
SIDELIGHTS
Etgar Keret is a best-selling author and filmmaker who is especially popular among Israeli young people and often regarded as a spokesperson for their generation. Well known for his sardonic and irreverent stories, Keret also pens a newspaper column, comic books, television scripts, and screenplays. Although he has been called “Israel’s hippest best-selling young writer today,” some Israeli critics have faulted Keret for avoiding political and ideological themes in his work. Emily Gitter noted in a Forward magazine interview with the author that Keret “disputes the criticism that his stories are simply frivolous.” Keret told Gitter: “I think my writing is ideological. But in Israel, when people talk about ideology or morals, they’re always talking about politics. And I think there’s a lot more to ideology and morals than politics.” Keret admitted that he found it difficult to identify with the characters in Israeli literature. “They always seemed better than me—stronger and more charismatic,” he told Gitter. The American writers John Cheever, Raymond Carver, and Kurt Vonnegut eventually became the strongest influences on Keret’s writing.
The first collection of Keret’s stories to be published in the United States was The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God and Other Stories, which includes selections from his Tsinorot and Ga’gu’ai le-Kising’er and his novella Ha-Kaitanah shel Kneler. The title story of the collection concerns a bus driver who refuses to open the door to latecomers on the grounds that it delays the schedules of other passengers already on the bus. One man is able to chase the bus down at a stoplight and change the driver’s outlook.
Benjamin Anastas, writing in the New York Times Book Review, noted that Keret’s “impromptu, comic-monologue style works best when he engages larger subjects, as in the title story.” Anastas added: “Keret serves us plenty of good laughs, particularly when he targets a monolith.” In his assessment for the Bookreporter.com, Rob Cline observed that Keret “has a razor-sharp voice barbed with sarcastic wit, surprising turns of phrase … [and] a tremendous imagination that allows him to rethink cultural markers and myths.” Booklist contributor John Green commented: “Keret’s stories are brief and powerful linguistic downpours, usually punctuated by uproarious climaxes … smart, insightful, and delightfully hip.” Keret’s stories “juxtapose a casual realism with regular flashes of unabashed absurdity,” wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor, “portraying characters on the brink of adulthood forced to confront life’s chaotic forces—death, justice, love, betrayal—for the first time.” André Alexis, reviewing the book for the Toronto Globe and Mail, took exception to “the overly American idiom” of much of the writing, but found it “a work of fiction in which humour, horror, play and irony are as important as ethical concerns.” Alexis added: “Keret’s characters must deal with the nightmares of the past and the present.”
Keret has also turned his hand to writing for children, as in the 2004 title Dad Runs Away with the Circus, a “fresh and beguiling domestic fantasy,” according to a reviewer for Publishers Weekly, in which a father becomes so enamored with the Big Top that he joins it, leaving his family behind. However, he sends his wife and children postcards from all over the world and then has a most memorable homecoming. The Publishers Weekly contributor concluded that this was a picture book for all ages: “Even those decades away from a mid-life crisis will likely declare this one a winner.” Scott La Counte, writing in School Library Journal, described the same work as “imaginative,” while for a Kirkus Reviews contributor, “the tale has an offhand charm that suits the offbeat premise.”
Also from 2004 is a collaborative effort between Keret and Palestinian author Samir El-Youssef. Gaza Blues: Different Stories is “motivated by a desire to show that literature can bridge political divides,” wrote Peter Whittaker in the New Internationalist. Keret supplied fifteen of his short-short stories for this collection, each of which provides a “glimpse into a surreal world of extreme stress and anxiety,” Whittaker observed.
With the collection The Nimrod Flipout, Keret received wider recognition in the United States. Writing in People, Kyle Smith called the thirty tales in this book “freaky fables,” and went on to observe that the author “can do more with six strange and funny paragraphs than most writers can with 600 pages.” These stories continue in the author’s minimalist pattern: each one is only several pages long. Forward contributor Stephen Marche described the tales as “simple, startling conceits executed with diamond-cutting precision.” Writing in Tikkun, Michael Lukas noted: “In short, uncanny, and often hilarious bursts, Etgar Keret taps into the profound existential absurdity of being Israeli.” The title story concerns three friends who have become obsessed and even haunted with the suicide death of their common friend, Nimrod, from whom they receive an unexpected message via a Ouija board. Other tales blend the quotidian with the surreal. “Baby” is “a haunting tale of love and fidelity,” according to Hartford Courant writer Helen Ubinas. “Fatso,” written as a valentine to Keret’s girlfriend, is about a lover who turns into a man.
Ubinas found many of these tales “precise, raw and at times, poetic” and said that they “stay with you.” Similarly, Hephzibah Anderson, writing in the London Observer, felt the collection “perfectly captures the craziness of life in Israel today.” However, Ray Olson, writing in Booklist, was less impressed: “These aren’t stories, they’re routines!” Olson went on to term the stories “vulgar, sad-sacky stuff, but amusing.”
Other reviewers had more favorable assessments of The Nimrod Flipout. A Kirkus Reviews contributor, for example, called the work a “kaleidoscopic assortment of exact, affecting and richly comic stories” and praised Keret for his “raw, confident and direct” insights and observations. Entertainment Weekly contributor Anat Rosenberg termed the tales “strangely compelling—or compelling in their strangeness,” while a Publishers Weekly contributor found the work “brainteasing” and said that it “peels away the borderlines of normalcy.”
With Jetlag: Five Graphic Novellas, Keret adapts some of his tales to the graphic novel format, working with artists from an Israeli comics collective. Ranging from a story of a man who goes to the circus and falls in love with a monkey to the tale of a passenger on a jet who is involved in an in-flight flirtation and a prearranged crash landing, the pieces in this collection are “brief, surreal fables that set up a witty premise and then end fairly abruptly,” according to a Publishers Weekly contributor. Olson, writing in Booklist, noted that Keret “writes about mundane reality invaded by the fantastic” in this collection. Similarly, Rosie Blau writing in the Financial Times felt that Jetlag “adds to the Israeli author’s reputation for turning the mundane into a surreal storyline.”
Keret’s The Girl on the Fridge is a collection of forty-six short stories that range from a mere one page to as many as eight. The result is a set of focused, intense narratives that make the most of their brief length. Keret engages his readers through a broad range of writing styles, and the resulting works include both humorous and serious stories. He displays a knack for taking seemingly ordinary narratives and familiar scenes and turning them on end, such as in “Hat Trick,” a tale that revolves around a magician who has never aspired to greatness, the standard pulling of the rabbit from his top hat the pinnacle of his performance. So it is with no little irony that Keret depicts the magician as his standard trick, so often anticlimactic, truly becomes the gossip-worthy focus of his act when he manages to pull only the bloody head of a rabbit from the hat one day, instead of the complete animal. In another tale, “Freeze!,” a man with the power to stop the world has no further ambition than to use his talents to pick up women. Reviewers found the collection somewhat uneven overall, with some stories standing out more than others. A contributor to Publishers Weekly remarked that the assortment of stories “demonstrates how the same short form that produces ineffective trifles can also create moments of startling power.”
Keret’s 2012 collection of short stories, Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, was first published in Hebrew in 2010. “If you have room in your heart, wallet or reading list for just one book of short stories this year, make it Etgar Keret’s Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, ” wrote Los Angeles Times Online contributor Carolyn Kellogg, adding: “It’s a superlative collection, one that will easily stand up to all comers.”
Suddenly, a Knock on the Door features thirty-five stories, some only two pages long, reflecting Keret’s affinity for short fiction. In the story “Lieland,” Robbie is a compulsive liar who makes up tragedies as excuses for everything from skipping class as a youth to being AWOL from military duty. One night he has a dream in which his mother takes him to an all-white world called Lieland where all of Robbie’s lies actually take place. So, for example, the bully in the lie he once told his mother about getting beat up and robbed so he could spend her cigarette money on ice cream is real in Lieland. The result is that the bully proceeds to give Robbie a thrashing. Also on hand is the fictional dog who was run over by a car, and the imaginary dog turned real greets Robby happily, causing Robby to feel guilty about causing the dog such a tragic end.
Another tale, “Unzipping,” features a woman who finds that her lover has a zipper under his tongue. Upon opening the zipper, the woman finds another lover inside, who ends up leaving her in the end. She then discovers that she has a zipper under her tongue as well. The woman is hesitant to open it, afraid of what she might find inside, especially concerning what her other self may look like. “Ella wouldn’t be the first human to have vain concerns disrupt her search for true self, and it’s Keret’s sensitivity to how easily such petty fears can derail self-discovery that makes the story poignant,” noted Words without Borders website contributor Andrew Seguin.
Keret begins “Chessus Christ” by presenting a fictional survey that features the dying words of people. Then a man goes to the Cheesus Christ restaurant, which only serves cheeseburgers. When he requests a kosher burger, meaning no cheese, he is stabbed and dies. Then the company’s CEO becomes depressed and resigns. Upon retiring, he goes to Brazil where, while sending an e-mail one day, he touches the wings of a butterfly on his keyboard. The so-called butterfly effect is then depicted as causing an evil wind to blow in a distant land. The entire story takes five pages. “These are stories that repay close reading; that offer more despite their simplicity,” wrote Independent Online contributor Stuart Evers.
The book’s title story finds a writer who must tell a story to the armed guests who hold a gun to his head. At first, the writer quickly makes up a story about his own current predicament, but the guests complain that he is merely reporting the reality of his present situation. They complain that they are trying to escape reality and demand that he be creative, so a new story begins. “As a stylist, Keret specializes in unadorned, mostly expository prose,” wrote Steve Almond in the New York Times Book Review, adding: “He writes to ensure narrative momentum, not to distract the reader with figurative language.” Library Journal contributor Henry Bankhead called the stories in Suddenly, a Knock on the Door “art truly fashioned from words.”
Keret collaborated with Assaf Gavron to edit Tel Aviv Noir, a collection of stories from Israeli authors set in the country’s capital city. Among the contributors to the book are Lavie Tidhar, Matan Hermoni, Shimon Adaf, Antonio Ungar, and Gai Ad.
“This consistently strong collection showcases a group of Israeli writers who are not well known in the U.S.,” wrote Barbara Bibel in Booklist. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews commented: “Editors Keret and Gavron stress not what makes Tel Aviv unique but what it has in common with other cities.” David Keymer declared in Library Journal: “The genre is hot, Tel Aviv is exotic, and this volume is outstanding. What’s not to like?”
The Seven Good Years: A Memoir contains stories in a loosely chronological order that document the years between Keret’s son’s birth and his father’s death. Among the topics in the book are the day of his son’s birth, terrorist attacks, his parents’ relationship, and his childhood. In an interview with Maya Sela for Haaretz Online, Keret explained how he became inspired to write the book: “I got the idea for this book when my father died. I had a kind of need—like a millionaire’s need to name a building in Tel Aviv University, or the cafeteria, after someone he loved. A kind of commemoration, but different. Writing was my way to distinguish between what I felt and how I would tell the story?” Keret discussed the development of his autobiographical prose in an interview with Meakin Armstrong for Guernica: “When my son was born, the day he was born was the first time I wrote this kind of personal piece. I think it came out because I felt very emotional, but I couldn’t really figure out what I was feeling. I thought it would be a good way to sort out my emotions. And I always had this kind of notion that, when my son is a hundred years old, he’d find it and maybe it’d be helpful for him or something. So I wrote those pieces and published them—usually not in Israel, because I find them too personal. I never thought about them as a book until my father became ill. Then suddenly I had this strong urge to put something out there, to make a statue or something.”
Kellogg stated in Los Angeles Times Online review: “The writing here reveals that some of the strangeness Keret works into his fiction comes from the unique way he sees the real world: a little bent, exasperated, amused and yet also with deep wells of kindness.” “Keret’s writing exudes an intimate friendliness, as though he’s bantering with you, one-on-one,” commented Daneet Steffens on the Boston Globe website. Steffens continued: “It’s an easy intimacy that he maintains whether he is addressing Israel’s political, ethical, and moral challenges.” “Fans of Keret’s prose will not be disappointed,” stated Lorraine Ravis in Library Journal. A Publishers Weekly reviewer asserted: “Keret’s lovely memoir retains its essential human warmth, demonstrating that with memoirs, less can often be more.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews noted that the book contains “gentle reflections on love, family, and heritage.”
Keret published the short story collection Fly Already in English in 2019. Children feature prominently in several of the stories. In “Dad with Mashed Potatoes,” three kids believe their father has turned into a rabbit; with “To the Moon and Back,” a child tests his father’s promise to give him anything he wants in a candy story by demanding the cash register; and with “Fly Already,” a father is trying to prevent a suicide while his toddler persistently demands to eat ice cream. Other stories, however, have a darker view, such as “Tabula Rasa” with its idea of cloning the enemy for the purpose of allowing the victim to punish and hurt him. “Ladder” speculates on how the angels will manage heaven after God’s death.
A Kirkus Reviews contributor noticed that a few stories “have flat jokes or weak concepts, but every piece demonstrates Keret’s admirable effort to play with structure and gleefully refuse to be polite about family, faith, and country.” A contributor to Bookspoils took note of Keret’s “obvious need to appeal to the masses and acquire more international readers by presenting numerous stories set in the West to make it easier for his translators to adapt.” The reviewer confessed: “I personally would’ve appreciated stories that remained close to his roots since those are where he shines best.” Nevertheless, the same Bookspoils reviewer commented that “the writer’s clever awareness of his surroundings hooked me in from the start.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, October 15, 2001, John Green, review of The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God and Other Stories, p. 382; December 15, 2005, Ray Olson, review of Jetlag: Five Graphic Novellas, p. 32; March 1, 2006, Ray Olson, review of The Nimrod Flipout, p. 65; October 15, 2014, Barbara Bibel, review of Tel Aviv Noir, p. 23.
Entertainment Weekly, February 10, 2006, review of Jetlag, p. 139; April 7, 2006, Anat Rosenberg, review of The Nimrod Flipout, p. 66; March 15, 2012, Donna Seaman, review of Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, p. 20.
Financial Times (London, England), February 4, 2006, Rosie Blau, review of Jetlag, p. 33.
Forward, October 26, 2001, Emily Gitter, “Carving a ‘Hip’ Niche in an Epic Land;” May 5, 2006, Stephen Marche, review of The Nimrod Flipout.
Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), June 15, 2002, André Alexis, “Israel Meets America: The Mythic and the Modern.”
Guardian (London, England), March 26, 2005, review of The Nimrod Flipout, p. 26.
Hartford Courant (Hartford, CT), June 25, 2006, Helen Ubinas, review of The Nimrod Flipout.
Jerusalem Post, January 21, 2019, Amy Spiro, “Author Etgar Keret’s ‘A Fault at the Edge of the Galaxy’ Wins Sapir Prize.”
Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2001, review of The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God and Other Stories, p. 1053; September 1, 2004, review of Dad Runs Away with the Circus, p. 868; January 1, 2006, review of The Nimrod Flipout, p. 11; March 15, 2012, review of Suddenly, a Knock on the Door; October 1, 2014, review of Tel Aviv Noir; April 15, 2015, review of The Seven Good Years: A Memoir; July 1, 2019, review of Fly Already.
Library Journal, April 1, 2012, Henry Bankhead, review of Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, p. 76; September 1, 2014, David Keymer, review of Tel Aviv Noir, p. 96; June 15, 2015, Lorraine Ravis, review of The Seven Good Years, p. 95.
Metro Times (Detroit, MI), March 6, 2002, Sean Bieri, “When Words Collide.”
New Internationalist, November 1, 2004, Peter Whittaker, review of Gaza Blues: Different Stories, p. 30.
New York Times Book Review, October 28, 2001, Benjamin Anastas, “No Moral, Please,” review of The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God and Other Stories, p. 33; April 15, 2012, Steve Almond, “Who’s There?,” review of Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, p. 12.
Observer (London, England), February 13, 2005, Hephzibah Anderson, “Parables of Anarchy,” p. 16.
People, April 10, 2006, Kyle Smith, review of The Nimrod Flipout, p. 45.
Publishers Weekly, September 17, 2001, review of The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God and Other Stories, p. 53; October 25, 2004, review of Dad Runs Away with the Circus, p. 47; December 12, 2005, review of Jetlag, p. 44; January 30, 2006, review of The Nimrod Flipout, p. 38; January 21, 2008, review of The Girl on the Fridge, p. 149; February 13, 2012, review of Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, p. 31; August 25, 2014, review of Tel Aviv Noir, p. 81; April 20, 2015, review of The Seven Good Years, p. 69.
School Library Journal, December 1, 2004, Scott La Counte, review of Dad Runs Away with the Circus, p. 112.
Shofar, June 22, 2003, Stacy N. Beckwith, review of The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God and Other Stories, p. 166.
Tikkun, September 1, 2005, Ben Naparstek, “Interview with Etgar Keret,” p. 70; September 1, 2006, Michael Lukas, review of The Nimrod Flipout, p. 74.
Times Literary Supplement, July 16, 2004, Eleanor Birne, review of Gaza Blues, p. 22.
Washington Post Book World, June 25, 2006, Alana Newhouse, review of The Nimrod Flipout, p. 15.
World Literature Today, March 22, 1999, Yair Mazor, review of Ha-Kaitanah shel Kneler, p. 383; March 22, 2002, Leslie Cohen, review of The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God and Other Stories, p. 245.
ONLINE
Believer, http://www.believermag.com/ (November 20, 2006), Ben Ehrenreich, “Etgar Keret.”
Bookreporter.com, http://www.bookreporter.com/ (November 30, 2006), Rob Cline, review of The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God and Other Stories.
Bookspoils, https://bookspoils.com/ (July 29, 2018), review of Fly Already.
Boston Globe, http://www.bostonglobe.com/ (July 10, 2015), Daneet Steffens, review of The Seven Good Years.
Dutch News, https://www.dutchnews.nl/ (November 1, 2018), author profile.
Etgar Keret, http://www.etgarkeret.com (August 21, 2019).
Eyeweekly.com, http://www.eyeweekly.com/ (October 18, 2001), Jason Anderson, “Keret Tops.”
Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/ (February 23, 2012), Ian Sansom, review of Suddenly, a Knock on the Door.
Guerica, http://www.guernicamag.com/ (August 17, 2015), Meakin Armstrong, author interview.
Haaretz, http://www.haaretz.com/ (July 25, 2014), Maya Sela, author interview; June 10, 2018, Maya Sela, “Etgar Keret’s New Book: As Witty as a Good Holocaust Joke.”
Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/ (February 17, 2012), Stuart Evers, review of Suddenly, a Knock on the Door; (July 10, 2015), Boyd Tonkin, review of The Seven Good Years.
Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature, http://www.ithl.org.il/ (November 20, 2006), “Etgar Keret.”
Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/ (November 17, 2012), author’s filmography.
Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com/ (April 8, 2012), Carolyn Kellogg, review of Suddenly, a Knock on the Door; (June 25, 2015), Carolyn Kellogg, review of The Seven Good Years.
Nextbook.org, http://www.nextbook.org/ (November 20, 2006), Sara Ivry, “Beach Reading.”
OpenDemocracy.net, http://www.opendemocracy.net/ (November 20, 2006), “Etgar Keret.”
PEN American Center, http://www.pen.org/ (November 20, 2006), “Etgar Keret.”
Toronto Star, http://www.thestar.com/ (April 21, 2012), Stephen Finucan, review of Suddenly, a Knock on the Door.
Words without Borders, http://wordswithoutborders.org/ (November 17, 2012), Andrew Seguin, review of Suddenly, a Knock on the Door.
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Etgar Keret
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Etgar Keret
Etgar Keret, 2016
Born
אתגר קרת
August 20, 1967 (age 51)
Ramat Gan, Israel
Language
Hebrew
Nationality
Israeli / Polish
Alma mater
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev,
Tel Aviv University
Genre
short stories,
graphic novels,
screenwriting
Notable awards
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
Spouse
Shira Geffen
Signature
Website
www.etgarkeret.com
Etgar Keret (Hebrew: אתגר קרת, born August 20, 1967) is an Israeli writer known for his short stories, graphic novels, and scriptwriting for film and television.
Contents
1
Personal life
2
Literary career
3
Other media
4
Writing style
5
Awards
6
Inspirations
7
Criticism
8
Bibliography
8.1
Short fiction
8.2
Comics
8.3
Children's books
8.4
Memoirs
9
See also
10
References
11
External links
11.1
Biography
11.2
Interviews
11.3
Works
11.4
Articles and reviews
11.5
Related sites
Personal life[edit]
Etgar Keret in 2005
Keret was born in Ramat Gan, Israel in 1967.[1] He is a third child to parents who survived the Holocaust.[2] Both of his parents are from Poland.[3] He studied at Ohel Shem high school, and at the Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Programme for Outstanding Students of Tel Aviv University. He lives in Tel Aviv with his wife, Shira Geffen, and their son, Lev. He is a lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva, and at Tel Aviv University. He holds dual Israeli and Polish citizenship.
Literary career[edit]
Keret's first published work was Pipelines (צינורות, Tzinorot, 1992), a collection of short stories which was largely ignored when it came out. His second book, Missing Kissinger (געגועיי לקיסינג'ר, Ga'agu'ai le-Kissinger, 1994), a collection of fifty very short stories, caught the attention of the general public. The short story "Siren", which deals with the paradoxes of modern Israeli society, is included in the curriculum for the Israeli matriculation exam in literature.
Keret has co-authored several comic books, among them Nobody Said It Was Going to Be Fun (לא באנו ליהנות, Lo banu leihanot, 1996) with Rutu Modan and Streets of Fury (סמטאות הזעם, Simtaot Haza'am, 1997) with Asaf Hanuka. In 1999, five of his stories were translated into English, and adapted into "graphic novellas" under the joint title Jetlag. The illustrators were the five members of the Actus Tragicus collective.
In 1998, Keret published Kneller's Happy Campers (הקייטנה של קנלר, Hakaytana Shel Kneller), a collection of short stories. The title story, the longest in the collection, follows a young man who commits suicide and goes on a quest for love in the afterlife. It appears in the English language collection of Keret's stories The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories (2004) and was adapted into the graphic novel Pizzeria Kamikaze (2006), with illustrations by Asaf Hanuka. Keret's latest short story collections are Anihu (אניהו, literally I-am-him, 2002; translated into English as Cheap Moon, after one of the other stories in the collection) and Pitom Defikah Ba-delet (פתאום דפיקה בדלת, translated into English as Suddenly a Knock at the Door).
Keret also wrote a children's book Dad Runs Away with the Circus (2004), illustrated by Rutu Modan.
Keret publishes some of his works on the Hebrew-language web site "Bimah Hadashah" (New Stage).
Other media[edit]
Keret has worked in Israeli television and film, including three seasons as a writer for the popular sketch show The Cameri Quintet. He also wrote the story for the 2001 TV movie Aball'e starring Shmil Ben Ari.
In 2006, Wristcutters: A Love Story, a dark comedy/love story based on Keret's novella Kneller's Happy Campers, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The story was adapted by director Goran Dukić into a film starring Patrick Fugit, Shannyn Sossamon, Tom Waits and Will Arnett.
Etgar and his wife Shira directed the 2007 film Jellyfish, based on a story written by Shira.
$9.99, a stop motion animated feature film, was released in 2009. Written by Keret and directed by Tatia Rosenthal, it is an Israeli/Australian co-production featuring the voices of Geoffrey Rush, Anthony LaPaglia and other leading Australian actors.[4]
In 2010 a short feature film based on Keret's story was released. An Exclusive novella was adapted and directed by the young Polish director Krzysztof Szot. The film, also known as Wyłączność (An Exclusive), was presented at the Cannes Film Festival 2010 in the Short Film Corner section.
Keret's work is frequently featured on the National Public Radio program This American Life, which has presented readings of eight of his stories.[5]
In October 2011 the public radio show Selected Shorts devoted an entire show to live readings of Keret's stories, including “Suddenly a Knock at the Door,” “Halibut," “Lieland”, and “Fatso.”[6] Keret himself introduced several of the stories.[7]
In August 2012, the short film Glue [8] based on Etgar Keret's short story "Crazy Glue", participated in the Rhode Island International Film Festival.
In May 2013, the short film LieLand,[9] adapted and directed by Silvia Grossmann, a Brazilian/American filmmaker, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
Writing style[edit]
Autograph on Keret's book, Jerusalem, 2010, writers' conference
Keret's writing style is lean, using everyday language, slang, and dialect. Often his stories are surreal, but believably so, leaving you in a curious world much like yours, where the boundaries of possibility are easily changing. His work has influenced many writers of his generation,[citation needed] as well as bringing a renewed surge in popularity for the short story form in Israel in the second half of the 1990s.[citation needed][10]
Awards[edit]
Keret has received the Prime Minister's award for literature, as well as the Ministry of Culture's Cinema Prize. In 2006 he was chosen as an outstanding artist of the prestigious Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation.
In 1993 he won the first prize in the Alternative Theater Festival in Akko for Entebbe: A Musical, which he wrote with Jonathan Bar Giora.
The short film Malka Lev Adom (Skin Deep, 1996), which Keret wrote and directed with Ran Tal, won an Israel Film Academy award and first place in the Munich International Festival of Film Schools. The film Jellyfish, a joint venture for Keret and his wife received the Camera d'Or prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Missing Kissinger won the 2008 JQ Wingate Prize.
Keret was on the jury for the 2010 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.[11]
In 2010, Keret received the Chevalier (Knight) Medallion of France's Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. [12]
He has received the Charles Bronfman Prize for 2016[13].
Inspirations[edit]
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Miller's Crossing by the Coen brothers
Twelve Monkeys by Terry Gilliam [2]
Criticism[edit]
A review of Missing Kissinger by Todd McEwen describes Etgar Keret's locale as that of "male confusion, loneliness, blundering, bellowing and, above all, stasis. His narrator is trapped in an angry masculine wistfulness which is awful to behold in its masturbatory disconnection from the world's real possibilities and pleasures." Etgar is "not much of a stylist - you get the impression that he throws three or four of these stories off on the bus to work every morning," and his "wild, blackly inventive pieces...might have been dreamed up by a mad scientist rather than a writer."[14]
Bibliography[edit]
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Short fiction[edit]
Collections
The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories, New York: Toby Press, 2004, ISBN 1-59264-105-9 (paperback).
Includes "Kneller's Happy Campers" and other stories.
Gaza Blues with Samir El-Youssef, London: David Paul, 2004, ISBN 0-9540542-4-5.
15 short stories by Keret and a novella by El-Youssef.
The Nimrod Flipout, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006, ISBN 0-374-22243-6 (paperback).
Selections from Keret's four short-story collections.
Missing Kissinger, Vintage Books, 2008, ISBN 0-09-949816-2 (paperback).
The Girl On The Fridge, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, ISBN 0-374-53105-6 (paperback).
Includes "Crazy Glue" and other short stories from Keret's first collections.
Four Stories, Syracuse University Press, 2010, ISBN 0-8156-8156-9 (paperback).
A Moonless Night (Am Oved Publishers Ltdd., 2010) with Shira Geffen and David Polonsky
Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012, ISBN 978-0-374-53333-5 (paperback).
Fly Already, Granta Books, 2019, ISBN 978-1783780495 [15]
Stories[16]
Title
Year
First published
Reprinted/collected
Notes
Creative writing
2012
"Creative writing". The New Yorker. 87 (42): 66–68. January 2, 2012.
Comics[edit]
Jetlag, Tel Aviv, Actus Tragicus, 1998; Top Shelf Productions, 1999, ISBN 965-90221-0-7.
Pizzeria Kamikaze, illustrated by Asaf Hanuka, Alternative Comics, 2005, ISBN 1-891867-90-3.
Children's books[edit]
Dad Runs Away With The Circus, Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2004, ISBN 0-7636-2247-8.
Memoirs[edit]
Seven good years : a memoir. New York: Riverhead Books. 2015.
Etgar Keret's New Book: As Witty as a Good Holocaust Joke
In the writer’s latest book, now available in Hebrew, the world remains the same gloomy and absurd place – and the laughter is even less present than before
By Maya Sela Jun 10, 2018
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Israeli author Etgar Keret wants to change how you relate to literature
In Etgar Keret's memoir, a psychic map of modern Israel
Etgar Keret: Why I will never leave Israel, despite it all
In many ways, Etgar Keret is the writer of my generation. We were born into the same world, we rode the same roads, we watched the same TV shows. When his first two books came out – “Pipelines” in 1992 and “Missing Kissinger” in 1994 – it was the first time that a writer from our generation wrote in our language.
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People called it lean language, but I’m not sure this was an apt description. The language was devoid of flowery rhetoric and gave voice to a generation that scorned poetical writing and no longer believed in it.
Etgar Keret's Hebrew-language collection of stories 'A Glitch at the Edge of the Galaxy,' 2018. Kinnert Zmora-Biton Dvir
We understood Keret and the path he was taking, outside the mainstream that was captivated by lofty words and “important” literature that dealt with Zionism and the pain of the shooters and criers, and spoke at such a high level when we knew we were really so small. We hated yuppies and their early SUVs, we weren’t about to commit to anything – certainly not to talk seriously or pretend that we were important and that anything we said mattered.
Twenty-six years have gone by. Keret became an international star, a little matter that keeps a lot of Israelis up at night, for we can’t stand people who are successful. Actually, we already hated successful types 26 years ago, because, as we saw it then, successful folks were also the ones writing important things, maintaining a serious expression, speaking on behalf of the tribe or the generation.
But the way Keret wrote was different – short, absurd, with sorrow buried deep inside and not named aloud because to do so would instantly render it fake. He was funny, but the way that Holocaust jokes are funny. We liked it, though I’m not sure we understood that these were Holocaust jokes, even if we didn’t miss the horror that was in there. The horror was always there, but there was also a perspective, an understanding of the little things, a distancing from the drama. That’s still the same. In that, he hasn’t changed.
The title of his latest Hebrew-language collection – which translates as “A Glitch at the Edge of the Galaxy” – nudges us to acknowledge that there’s a galaxy and we’re minuscule stars that are burning out in it. Any kind of serious talk, therefore, betrays a lack of awareness. We’re pathetic, small, hurting and smoking weed sometimes to help us bear this existential truth. Such are Keret’s protagonists, walking around in the world while a past or future little catastrophe lurks in the background.
Etgar Keret. Has been translated into about 40 languages
Years ago I met an American writer at the International Writers Festival at Mishkenot Sha’ananim in Jerusalem. We were chatting, I don’t recall about what, and I said something about Holocaust jokes. He froze and then slowly repeated my words back to me: “Ho-lo-caust jokes? Ho-lo-caust jokes?” What’s a Holocaust joke, he asked, completely stunned. And it hit me that Holocaust jokes are a dirty little secret that I’d unwittingly revealed. I declined to tell him. I come from a family in which people take their secrets to the grave.
But he was charming and eventually persuaded me to tell, and he was also Jewish so I thought it might do him good to know about his people’s rich and secret body of knowledge, and I assessed that he was old enough to enter this orchard. So I told him my favorite Holocaust joke. I was wary of what his reaction would be, but to my surprise, he roared with laughter. It sounded like a laugh that was letting go of 2,000 years of exile, and it occurred to me that maybe this is what Keret does in his work.
This kind of thing used to be done in Hebrew literature, before Zionism came and surgically removed our sense of humor. Now we’re very serious and a very threatened people. The first thing people tend to say about Keret is that he’s funny, and it’s true, but he’s funny in precisely this way, with a grim laugh in the face of horror.
When he published his first book and spoke in a language we understood, the idea was to deflate all the balloons and never blow them up again. As the years went by, he and his contemporaries were criticized for this – for not being ready to assume the portentous role of observer of the House of Israel.
An escape room in Tel Aviv. Ilia Kitov
But Keret didn’t give in, and despite the passage of time, all the success and the translation of his books into more than 40 languages, he still writes short stories that sometimes make the reader laugh while getting him a little choked up. It’s sort of like all those anarchist ladies and gentlemen who dare take out a cellophane-wrapped candy at the theater. The rustling of the wrapper causes the stern-faced person beside them to shift uncomfortably in his seat, as if the disturbance came from the unwrapping of a cyanide pill.
Cloning Hitler
What’s in Keret’s new story collection? One thing you notice is that the stories come from somebody who’s out there in the world and no longer chained to names like Devora and Yosef. His protagonists might be called Pete-Pete and Todd, and they work in the cafeteria at Lincoln High, but sometimes they’re called Lidor or Zvi and they’re looking for an escape room to take their grandmother to on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The world is the same dark, absurd and uncompromising world where the kids and teens have become grown-ups who still don’t know how to save themselves and their children from the horror; the parents are absent. Sometimes mothers die, sometimes fathers. Keret’s world is that same world that lacks an organizing principle. Though maybe what’s changed is that now one could possibly point to a single overriding principle: the principle of orphanhood.
In the opening story, “The Second-to-Last Time I was Shot Out of a Cannon,” Esteban the human cannonball is too drunk to perform and a replacement must be found. When it’s suggested to the narrator that he take his place, he begs off, saying he has no experience. The circus manager begs to differ, pointing out that he has been shot out of a cannon before, and not just once but many times – for example, when his wife left him, or when his son called him a loser and said he never wanted to see him again.
In the next story – “Don’t Do It!” – a father and son notice a man standing on a rooftop and getting ready to jump, but each of them perceives the situation differently. The father wants to save the man while the son shouts encouragement, not yet aware of the possibility that someone could take his own life. He yells to the man to jump because he wants to see him fly – it’s not every day that you get to meet a real superhero.
In the story “Todd,” Todd asks his writer friend to write a story that will help him get girls to go to bed with him. The writer explains what a story is: “A story is not a magical incantation or hypnotherapy, a story is essentially a way to share with people something that you feel, something intimate, sometimes it’s even embarrassing that” – here the friend cuts him off. A story is just a story, Keret is telling us, still committed not to inflate any balloons.
In many of the stories, the father or mother is missing, having either run away or died or run away and died. Sometimes they’re just divorced, with wrecked families, single-parent families, orphaned children. In “Car Concentrate,” a 46-year-old man keeps a piece of compressed metal in his living room. It was once part of his father’s Mustang that got mixed up in a deadly accident. Sometimes the kids in Keret’s stories are small, and sometimes they’re 46-year-olds.
“What does your daughter do?,” the mother in “Crumb Cake” asks Charlie in Charlie’s Diner. The woman is there with her son to celebrate her 50th birthday. Charlie is impressed that, at his age, the son still wants to go out with his mother for her birthday. In answering her question, he says he doesn’t know exactly, something high-tech. And the mother replies: “My son is fat and unemployed, so don’t be too quick to be jealous.”
In “Rabbit on My Father’s Side,” fathers leave home and return to their young children in the form of real white rabbits that can be petted behind the ear. And there are also stories about clones. In “Tabula Rasa,” Hitler is cloned so that a Holocaust survivor can kill him. Hitler doesn’t know that he’s a clone or that he’s Hitler. He is raised in harsh conditions, in captivity, and dreams of the day when he’ll be free. Does killing a clone count as murder? And what about murdering a Hitler who doesn’t know that he’s Hitler and has yet to harm anyone?
Edward Hopper's 'Nighthawks,' 1942 Reuters
In “Yad Vashem,” a clear glass divider separates an exhibit about European Jewry before the Nazis came to power and one about Kristallnacht. A tourist named Eugene accidentally bumps into it. Blood drips from his nose as he views the exhibit with his wife Rachel. They’re going through a hard time, but not because of the Holocaust.
Interspersed with the stories is correspondence about the use of an escape room called “A Glitch at the Edge of the Galaxy” that a man named Michael Warshavsky wants to bring his mother to on Holocaust Remembrance Day. He’s informed in a letter from the place’s manager that the escape room is closed that day.
Undeterred, Warshavsky writes back that he’s trying “to find an appropriate activity for this sad and awful day,” adding that “the escape room has to do with the heavenly bodies, and, to the best of my knowledge, these did not deviate from their orbits even as 6 million Jews were sent to their deaths.” Which may have been why I thought about Holocaust jokes, and the joke I told to that American writer: A Jew arrives at the concentration camp and in the selection the Nazi orders him to go to the left, so the Jew asks – my left or yours?
A shattered culture
It will be interesting to see how Keret is perceived today by young readers, the ones for whom career isn’t a dirty word; for those who can afford it, a yuppie’s SUV is the natural choice. Keret still writes about people outside the bourgeois circle, about people whose lives have shot them out of a cannon. He doesn’t write beautifully, he’s not making love to the language, he doesn’t know what’s right and what’s good and how it’s supposed to be. Despite all his success, he remains faithful to his generation and in this sense he hasn’t changed; some would say that he hasn’t grown up – compared to the rest of us who’ve betrayed all we used to be and can now be found spouting gibberish on Facebook and at Botox parties.
Keret doesn’t preach, he doesn’t judge, he just tells a story. Some people might think this is just more of the same, but what’s this thing that’s the same and has it really not changed? Keret has the ability to see things both from a bird’s-eye view and from the vantage point of the refrigerator. He knows what’s in the single guy’s fridge and the married couple’s fridge. He also knows what’s in the war’s fridge, the family’s fridge, the parents’ fridge and the orphan’s fridge. He knows the farewell fridge and the compromise fridge.
Maybe a story is just a story, but a story is also a cunning act, certainly when it comes to Keret. It seems to me that since his first books, the laughter has changed and sometimes vanished completely. The story that concludes the collection, “The Evolution of Separation,” describes a cell that becomes a pepper that becomes a fish that becomes a lizard that becomes a creature that walks upright that becomes a loving couple laughing and watching television together. And then their parents die and they have a child who grows up and goes off to college and they’re left alone and grow nasty to each other and cheat on each other and find replacements for each other. And then they break down and crash, and the man notices that he’s speaking in the plural when he’s all alone.
Here we have a story that’s not just about the evolution of separation between people, but also a depiction of the evolution of a culture still crushed and trampled on, and here Keret offers no words of comfort or the merest hint of a joke. And that’s what has changed.
Emmy for Dutch production about Israeli storyteller Etgar Keret Tech & Media November 20, 2018 A still from the winning productionThe American International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has awarded an International Emmy to a Dutch public television production at Monday night’s gala in New York.In Etgar Keret – Een waargebeurd verhaal (Etgar Keret – A true story), which was entered in the Arts Programme category, director Stephane Kaas explores what makes Israeli author Etgar such a compelling storyteller.Kaas was given the award by Madam Secretary actor Erich Bergen. ‘It came as such a surprise that I was in a bit of a daze for the rest of the evening,’ Kaas told NU.nl.Another Dutch nomination, an EO entry for best documentary, lost out to the BBC’s Goodbye Aleppo. Gert-Jan de Vries, whose daughter Puck is severely disabled, recorded the ups and downs of his family for the last 20 years.It is not the first time a Dutch television production wins an Emmy. Youth film Alles Mag (Anything goes) was given the prestigious prize in 2015.
Author Etgar Keret's 'A Fault at the Edge of the Galaxy' wins Sapir Prize
Keret beat out the other four finalists on the shortlist for the prize, including Meirav Naker-Sadi, Yael Neeman, Ala Hlehel and Nir Baram.
By Amy Spiro January 21, 2019 23:54
2 minute read.
Etgar Keret holds his Sapir Prize at the ceremony on Monday night.. (photo credit: SHUKA COHEN)
Author Etgar Keret was awarded the Sapir Prize, one of Israel’s highest literary honors, on Monday evening for his latest work, A Fault at the Edge of the Galaxy.
The top prize includes NIS 150,000 and translation of the book into Arabic and into another language of the author’s choosing. All of the other finalists receive NIS 40,000, all funded by Mifal Hapayis.
Keret beat out the other four finalists on the shortlist for the prize, including Meirav Naker-Sadi, Yael Neeman, Ala Hlehel and Nir Baram.
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Keret is best known in Israel for his colorful, surreal short stories. A Fault at the Edge of the Galaxy is his sixth collection of short stories, and keeps up his fantastical, fast-paced style.
Upon accepting the prize, Keret said his win “really surprised me. I’m not used to winning Israeli literary prizes. The other books on the list were really incredible and therefore I’m very moved and flattered.”
The judging panel for the prize praised Keret’s use of language and imagination.
“The book, A Fault at the Edge of the Galaxy, touches the heart of the experience of global disruption,” wrote the judging panel. “The existence of Israel becomes a crumb of being in a world without hierarchies that has no single center, and has no controlling point of view. Through the language and seeming lightheartedness of Etgar Keret, emerges a very deep sadness. The different characters are connected to each other through alienation, loneliness, and a strong feeling of abandonment in the world,” the judges added. “Keret has turned the genre of short stories into the refined and necessary literary expression of this time.”
President Reuven Rivlin congratulated Keret on his win.
“My dear Etgar, the man with the narrowest house in the world and the widest imagination in the world,” Rivlin said. “The one who taught us that a literary world that breaks boundaries lives in our most day-to-day language, and that a minimum of words, and a maximum of heart can live in harmony in the same person.”
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Many of Keret’s works have been translated into English, including The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God, Missing Kissinger and Suddenly, a Knock on the Door.
In 1996, Keret won the Prime Minister’s Award for Literature, in 2010 he was honored with the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France and in 2012 he received the Newman Prize from Bar-Ilan University.
But this was the first time Keret appeared on the shortlist for the Sapir Prize; he previously was nominated but fell short in 2010. Despite his immense popularity abroad, Keret’s work has not been greatly recognized by Israel’s various literary awards.
Keret, Etgar FLY ALREADY Riverhead (Adult Fiction) $27.00 9, 3 ISBN: 978-1-59463-327-0
The Israeli short story writer once again displays his knack for comic, absurd, occasionally dystopian observations.
In 2004, Keret (The Seven Good Years, 2015, etc.) wrote a children's book called Dad Runs Away With the Circus, a sly tale about a father chafing at the binds of domesticity. He's still exploring the theme a decade and a half later: The narrator of the title story is trying to save a potential suicide on a nearby rooftop, but his toddler son is clamoring for ice cream while the dad in "To the Moon and Back" promises anything in a candy shop to his son--who then petulantly demands the cash register. (The kids aren't such great fans of conventional families either: In the gently Kafkaesque "Dad With Mashed Potatoes," three children are happily convinced their father has shape-shifted into a rabbit.) Keret, who earlier in his career worked more often in flash-fiction mode, benefits from a wider canvas here, particularly in Saunders-esque speculative stories like "Tabula Rasa," a fable about cloning, or "Ladder," about the angels left to maintain heaven after God dies. And though Keret has typically eschewed directly addressing tensions in his home country, a number of these stories display the sharp spikes of good political satire, like "Arctic Lizard," which imagines teenagers recruited for war duty during Trump's third term. Better still is an untitled story constructed of emails between the director of an escape room who refuses to open his doors on Holocaust Remembrance Day and a stubborn would-be patron; their cartoonishly escalating squabble exemplifies the scramble for the moral high ground that characterizes diplomatic rhetoric. A handful of pieces have flat jokes or weak concepts, but every piece demonstrates Keret's admirable effort to play with structure and gleefully refuse to be polite about family, faith, and country.
An irreverent storyteller who has yet to run out of social norms to skewer.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Keret, Etgar: FLY ALREADY." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2019. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A591279176/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e705e6c6. Accessed 10 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A591279176
Review: Fly Already by Etgar Keret
Posted on July 29, 2018 by bookspoils
My first fully completed Etgar Keret collection read in Hebrew, courtesy of the lovely librarian at my local library! (Previously read in English: The Seven Good Years, Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, & The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God.) Fly Already contains twenty-two character-driven short stories, circling different introspections on our thoughts through daily-life observations and reflection.
I took quite the journey for this latest Etgar Keret book to land in my hands, but here I am after having had quite a blast reading through the pages. The writer’s clever awareness of his surroundings hooked me in from the start. It’s present, in particular, with stories such as, “GooDeed” (which challenges economic privileges), “Pineapple Crush” (which shows the subtle importance of human connection and an ode to beautiful sunsets), “Pitriyah” (which breaks the fourth wall by voicing exactly my thoughts upon reading certain reveals) & “Don’t Do It!” (which brings a man’s journey full circle).
Everything was flowing all nice and dainty, until I came across the story “Tabula Rasa,” that pretty much made all the author’s hard work go down the drain, for me…
The book stooped so low so to manipulate the reader into emotionally identifying with a character presented as “A” and his situation of being locked up in an institution, when all he wants is to escape with his friend, Nadia. It all comes down to this: only to settle for the hurried reveal that “A” was bred and cloned to give a Holocaust survivor a sliver of peace by avenging his family murdered by Hitler’s Nazis. “A” then, of course, stands for Adolf Hitler, who in the meantime has been given a uniform and facial trim to match… Truly, what a cheap, distasteful joke to make of a ruthless dictator responsible for the deaths of millions. The writer makes a complete joke out of the survivor (what even was the look of making him practically beg “A” to be fearful of meeting his end) by sending the message that trying to chase after Hitler to avenge your family perished in the Holocaust is not worth it; move on, already. The audacity it takes to reverberate this mockery to thousands of readers worldwide makes me want to shout, which is why I’m writing this review.
“The world needed to be reminded that monsters were still at large.” x
I still can’t wrap my head around this ridicule. How can someone write such an intensely sensitive piece of writing just a few pages ago, only to now write about Hitler through manipulatively hidden clues to make us actually feel sorry for him in the end? This warped mindset, especially from a Jew whose parents are survivors, gave me heebie-jeebies.
It’s textbook Stockholm syndrome that makes victims want to grow close into the confines of the enemy as a defense mechanism, so that in another lifetime they won’t be abolished: Keret’s ending came across as “if I show Hitler (imah shmo) in an emphatic light then surely he wouldn’t have hunted down and annihilated my nation.” It’s the same syndrome that led another Israeli-Jew to recklessly exhibit Hitler’s paintings at Haifa’s gallery ‘Pyramida’, which is funded by the Ministry of Education, aka making tax-paying Israeli-Jews (which, incidentally, homes more or less 200,000 Holocaust survivors) pay for showing the devil’s work.
The way these syndrome victims move on is to befriend the enemy and forgo all moral values in the process, and it’s a powerful statement to the horrors of Stockholm syndrome. If you find something (a painting, a book, a statue) more important than human morality, it’s a sign that you’re taking a part in this virus; when brilliancy trumps harmfulness to society, you’re in danger.
For my Hebrew-speaking readers: Listen to this eye-opening lesson on Stockholm syndrome. For my English-speaking readers: Listen to this equally game-changing lesson on Jewish Philosophy: Stockholm Syndrome.
Another point that hit me repeatedly throughout the collection was the author’s quite obvious need to appeal to the masses and acquire more international readers by presenting numerous stories set in the West to make it easier for his translators to adapt. I’m pretty sure that the only readers that care to repeatedly venture into his work are either Jews, Israelis, or both… so I personally would’ve appreciated stories that remained close to his roots since those are where he shines best.
(What even were the redeeming qualities? Scrolls back to first paragraph