By Rabbi Phillip Graubart

jewish reader

Old and wise vs. young and clever

A Tale of Love and Darkness
By Amos Oz
Harcourt, 2004, 544 pages

The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories
By Etgar Keret
Toby Press, 2004, 130 pages

  On a recent trip to Israel, I read an article in the Jerusalem Post by Matt Nesvisky comparing two generations of Israeli writers. Nesvisky claimed that the older generation – writers like Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and David Grossman – carry the burden of Jewish history and Israeli identity in their writing. They tackle the “big” subjects, like the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, the Holocaust or the traumas and delights of modern Jewish identity. The younger writers, on the other hand, compose fiercely personal books – stories that could have been written anywhere, stories that avoid broad historical themes and ignore distinctively Jewish burdens. After reading two books by representatives of the older and younger generation – Amos Oz and Etgar Keret – I see Nesvisky’s point. But it’s not quite that simple.

   Amos Oz’s memoir “A Tale of Love and Darkness” appeared two years ago in Israel, but Nicholas de Lange’s lovely, fluid English translation was published in November of last year. The book blends the personal and the political in a rich literary stew. Much of the memoir concerns the suicide of Oz’s mother, a subject he’s never written about before. In passages almost too painful to read, Oz describes himself as a 10-year-old boy, sleeping in his mother’s bed and trying to stop her crying, or listening to her horrifying, inappropriate stories, or, later, mourning with his father in a room full of garbage which neither was willing to pick up.

   But Oz also lived through the siege of Jerusalem in 1947-48, so he describes, from a child’s point of view, the war that gave birth to the state of Israel. He reviews all the controversies over Palestinian refugees, socialism versus capitalism and the ultimate content of Jewish culture. And, by telling the stories of his parents and grandparents, he reflects on the legacies of Russian anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.

   His disenchantment with the Likud (Oz’s father, grandfather and uncle were fervent Likudnicks) begins when Oz, as a 12-year-old, breaks out laughing at a Likud rally after Menahem Begin makes a hilarious mistake with his Hebrew. Oz reflects on the refugee crisis by wondering what happened to a childhood friend who fled her house during the war. “Where did Aisha go?” he asks. “To Nablus? Damascus? London? Or to the refugee camp at Deheisa? Today, if she is still alive, Aisha is a woman of sixty-five. And her little brother, whose foot I may have smashed, would be nearly sixty now. Perhaps I could set out to find them?” Oz’s personal pain informs his larger political views and his politics leads him back to the personal. The result is an extraordinarily satisfying book, with many passages almost too rich to read at one sitting.

   Although Amos Oz is Israel’s most famous writer, 36-year-old Etgar Keret’s last two books have outsold all 20 of Amos Oz’s books combined. Keret has also written and directed several Israeli films. His first book to be translated into English is an amusing, whimsical, odd collection of stories called “The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God and Other Stories.”

   The book probably works better in Hebrew than English. Many of the stories rely on humor and wordplay, which lose a lot in translation. Further, Keret uses different translators for each of the stories, so the reader never gets a good sense of Keret’s style.

   And Nesvisky is right: Many of Keret’s stories could take place anywhere. The title story is about a bus driver who interrupts his regular route to help a hapless teenager win over the girl he loves. Another story, “Goodman,” tells of a young man who discovers his closest childhood friend has ended up on death row in Texas. “The Flying Santinis” tells the classic tale of boy running away with the circus. There’s nothing Jewish or Israeli about any of these stories; even the names of the characters (Luigi, Edward, Patrick) are determinedly not Jewish.

   On the other hand, several stories speak, at least obliquely, to the broad Israeli condition. “Rabin’s Dead,” about a dog named Rabin, explores (with a great deal of whimsy) the melancholy that haunted Tel Aviv after the Prime Minister’s assassination. “Shoes,” about a boy who’s proud he’s the only Ashkenazi in his grade and therefore the only one whose family suffered in the Holocaust, considers how victimization defines the Israeli character.

   Several of Keret’s stories feature the afterlife, mostly hell. Two or three of these are not much more than extended jokes, but the final and lengthiest story, “Kneller’s Happy Campers,” takes place in an afterlife reserved for those who committed suicide. Here Kneller appears to be making a larger point, but it’s hard to know exactly what. The post-suicide afterlife is very much like Earth, only drearier, more filled with routine and more pointless. Keret may be saying that hell is life without purpose or adventure, but that’s not exactly an original or complex idea. And that’s the main problem with this collection: The stories are clever but don’t present original ideas, nor are they particularly thought-provoking.

   Still, Keret’s an interesting young writer. If not exactly Kafkaesque, he’s still amusing, and he offers a glimpse into what serious Israelis are thinking about. Luckily, while Keret and other younger writers search for their voices (and good translators), Amos Oz is still producing great literature, a literature ambitious and grand enough to tackle the big issues while telling personal stories.

 
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