Israel: A Traveler's Literary Companion

Dislike difficulties in finding the book. Available copies are limited. Recommended to anyone interested in fine literature, Israeli literature and Israeli culture at various time periods in a variety of locales.

This book was published in 1996 and contained 16 works by 15 writers. As far as could be determined, there were 12 short stories, 2 excerpts from novels, 1 piece of reportage, and 1 essay. All the works were translated from Hebrew. The oldest writers in the collection were two immigrants from Poland, Yosl Birstein (1920-) and Shulamith Hareven (1930-2003), as well as the native-born Amos Oz (1939-) and A. B. Yehoshua (1939-). Among the youngest were Gadi Taub (1965-), Gafi Amir (1966-) and Etgar Kerrett (1967-). Others included David Grossman (1954-), David Ehrlich (1959-), and Yehudit Katzir (1963-). Of all the writers, five were women. Not included in the collection were distinguished authors such as Aharon Appelfeld and Amos Elon. The collection was weighted heavily toward the contemporary. Ten of the works were from the 1990s, five from the 1980s and one, by Yehoshua, from the 1950s. The settings included Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Eilat, nameless small towns, a kibbutz, and borders with the West Bank and Syria. The book's introduction briefly surveyed Israeli writing after the 1940s, seeing homogeneity in the 1950s and through much of the 1960s. The great majority of the authors of the time were male, of Ashkenazi heritage, with backgrounds in socialist Zionist youth movements and veterans of the 1948 war. In their work, the army and the kibbutz were adopted repeatedly as settings, with urban life coming to the fore only in the 1960s. Frequent themes were issues of national values and the tension between private desires and social expectations. The style, it was said, was frequently humorless social realism. More recent writing was described as disorientingly varied, shattering the façade of a monolithic Israeli culture, disclosing cultural diversity and contradictions and mutual incompatibilities. There were Orthodox believers, secularists, and those indifferent to religion. The diversity extended to place, as reflected in the present collection. Likewise, contemporary styles were said to range from deadpan realism to magic realism, surrealism to anecdotal narratives in the first person. It was claimed that this anthology was the first collection to reflect honestly such diversity. For this reader, two of the most interesting works in the collection weren't the fictional pieces at all, but reportage by David Grossman and an essay by Amos Oz, both from the 1980s. These concerned the relations between Palestinians in a village that had been divided by war -- showing mutual envy, admiration and dislike -- and the tension between Orthodox Judaism and a Zionism the writer thought was in decline, as reflected in the changes seen over time in an old neighborhood in Jerusalem. These two writers' powers of observation and description were apparent, especially those of Grossman, with his sensitivity to the many dimensions of his subject, though the writing of Oz felt more convoluted than it needed to be. Among the fiction, most enjoyed were a story by David Ehrlich about the tension between a small northern Israeli town inhabited by people with traditional pioneer values and a materialistic young couple that moved in. A story by Katzir, about a woman's frustrated search for connection, seemed overlong, taking up a fifth of the book, but captured well how cruel people could be, thoughtlessly or otherwise, to the sensitive protagonist. There were a surprisingly generous number of stories about alienation, materialism, a frustrated search for love or sex, and other failures to connect. Nearly all of these were written in the first person, which eventually grew monotonous and began to grate. There were no pieces containing attractive characters, healthy family ties, friendship that survived and grew over time, or a healthy grounding in a faith, religious or political. And too many pieces that felt opaque (Ofra Riesenfeld, Orly Castel-Bloom, one of Birstein's). For these reasons, regrettably I wasn't able to enjoy much in this collection, unlike the other books read so far in this worthwhile literary companion series, and was unable to rate it more highly. It was a surprise too that none of the fictional pieces in the collection brought together an Israeli and Palestinian for any kind of meaningful conversation. An anthology of Palestinian writers, A Land of Stone and Thyme, published the same year as this collection, contained a short story by Riyad Baidas in which a casual conversation showed how differently things like surroundings, human contact and peace of mind could be viewed.

[Spoiler Alert] The back cover of this book included a capsule review "The idea.. is simple: Explore a place ... through the writings of that country's best writers". The idea may be simple, and it may be a good one. But sadly, this book falls short of what the idea has to offer. In anticipation of a possible upcoming trip to Israel, I picked up this book with the hope that it would provide me with a 'feel' for the place and its people. Unfortunately, the stories in the book seemed both pretentious and uninteresting. We're treated to a Casper-Milquetoast-ish woman who travels to meet her sister... and that's pretty much it. A 20-something platonic couple lamenting about being all washed up as they approach 30. A gay romance struck down when the protagonist accuses his paramour of theft. A group of co-workers forced together by circumstances, eventually winding up in a drunken menage a trois. While the stories were competently written, none of them seemed particularly interesting... and any of them could easily have been set in an American or European city, with no real change except for the scenery. In short, the book fell far short of providing any insight into Israel, or Israelis. When I was done, my reaction was 'I sure hope the country and its people are more interesting than the ones in these stories'. As the original works were in Hebrew, its possible that something was lost in the translation. Its also possible, that despite being thousands of miles away and surrounded by enemies, Israelis are pretty much like everyone else. I still want to take my trip. But this book did nothing to either entice me to do so or prepare me for the experience.