{"id":27332,"date":"2015-09-21T18:05:49","date_gmt":"2015-09-21T16:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=27332"},"modified":"2015-09-19T13:14:03","modified_gmt":"2015-09-19T11:14:03","slug":"27332","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=27332","title":{"rendered":"If a German Writer Wrote Like Etgar Keret, He\u2019d Be Booted Out of Town"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>If a German Writer Wrote Like Etgar Keret, He\u2019d Be Booted Out of Town<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

\"BennyBenny Ziffer<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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But when the writer comes from outside, from the realms of the Third World, the lay reader in Europe thinks to himself: What fun! Why don\u2019t our fossilized old authors write with in that kind of fun style?<\/span><\/strong>
\n\"\"
\nAt a certain point in the career of successful writers, they take one small step too many toward the edge of the cliff they\u2019re standing on. They trip and \u2013 oh! Maybe a sprained ankle. They bend down to find out what\u2019s causing the sharp pain, giving those behind them an opportunity to give them a light kick in the posterior. And the slide down the slippery slope begins. Slowly. At first it\u2019s not even felt. They hold on tight with the fingernails. But for how long?<\/span><\/p>\n

That’s when I heard (no one tells me anything in this house) that writer Etgar Keret is extraordinarily admired in Poland and that a house \u2013 a museum, actually \u2013 was established in his name in the heart of Warsaw, on the site of the former Jewish ghetto there. Here is the very embodiment of the era of globalization and postmodernism. The writer is no longer the \u201clandscape of his homeland,\u201d as poet Shaul Tchernichovsky once wrote, but the landscape of the image of a mischievous fellow \u2013 or the mischievous, nonbinding composite of images he creates for himself. In this specific case: the image of the urban Ashkenazi Israeli of Polish-Holocaust origin, who has returned home to that place, as it were, but who also remains in Israel, as it were, and who is ostensibly hesitant about what and who he is, but can also be decisive when the need arises.<\/span><\/p>\n

I \u2013 like Thomas Mann (no comparison intended), who when asked if he\u2019d already read Hemingway, replied, \u201cI am still on Tacitus\u201d \u2013 am not into fashion trends. I am still on Francois Mauriac and Andre Gide, and it will take me some time yet to be impressed by the play-dumb childish style of Etgar Keret.<\/span><\/p>\n

Already a decade ago, a witty Berlin friend summed up the Etgar Keret phenomenon for me like this: If a German or European writer were to write like Keret, he\u2019d be booted out of town and told that the writing was utter kitsch. But when the writer comes from outside, from the realms of the Third World, the lay reader in Europe thinks to himself: Wallah! What fun! Why don\u2019t our fossilized old authors write with in that kind of fun style?<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s the advantage of belonging to a culturally virginal place like Israel: You build a stylistic start-up by degrees. Let\u2019s call it \u201cTel Aviv Seinfeld\u201d style. First you try it out on the natives, then you sell it to the world, and you\u2019re set for life. Hundreds of natives try to imitate your style, but they don\u2019t achieve the same level of precision in mixing Seinfeldian New York with Tel Aviv.<\/span>
\n Not long ago, at a dinner of intellectuals in Paris with French Academy member Angelo Rinaldi, who is considered the pope of literary criticism there, Etgar Keret came up in conversation. The PR woman of a certain publishing house related that a writer had complained to her that the publisher wasn\u2019t promoting his books properly in France and that he was considering a move to a competitor. The elderly Rinaldi asked: Who was it? \u201cKeret, Keret,\u201d the PR woman told him. Rinaldi had never heard the name before, and went back to talking about how angry he had been at Francois Mauriac for not having had the courage to come out of the closet.<\/span><\/p>\n

(..)
\nWe also think that we have successfully upgraded the image of Tel Aviv and branded it such that despite its ugliness, nothingness and filth, it\u2019s considered something more than what it really is. One of those responsible for the imaginary upgrade of Tel Aviv to a sort of mischievous New York is Etgar Keret and his Cameri Quintet television skits, and the young and supposedly biting \u201cTel Aviv style\u201d he\u2019s created. From this point of view, he\u2019s an asset to the city\u2019s landlords. Thanks to this style, which is hovering in the air, they can demand thousands of shekels rent for fleabags in which herds of na\u00efve young people, misled into believing in false images, hope to live in the style of a character from an Etgar Keret story or skit or screenplay.<\/span>
\n Last week I was sitting with a young German writer who is in love with Tel Aviv, at a hummus place on the Nahalat Binyamin pedestrian mall. He too admitted that he is slowly discovering how neglected and dirty and expensive Tel Aviv is, and how far it is from the image to which it pretends. He told me he has discovered Warsaw. It\u2019s the new, big thing. I told him next time he\u2019s there he should visit the house \u2013 museum \u2013 of Etgar Keret.<\/span><\/p>\n

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twoje uwagi, linki, wlasne artykuly, lub wiadomosci przeslij do: webmaster@reunion68.com<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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If a German Writer Wrote Like Etgar Keret, He\u2019d Be Booted Out of Town Benny Ziffer But when the writer comes from outside, from the realms of the Third World, the lay reader in Europe thinks to himself: What fun! Why don\u2019t our fossilized old authors write with in that kind of fun style? At […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27332"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27332"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27347,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27332\/revisions\/27347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}