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Human Writes: Boycotts

When a story of mine is boycotted, I take offense twice: once for myself, because like any whiny Jew, I don’t think I deserve this crap, and a second time for the story. Because what is a literary boycott, of any kind, really saying? It’s saying that when we read a work of literature, we’re doing it a favor. And that if the person who wrote it dares to misbehave, their work will instantly lose the privilege of being read and we’ll move on to someone else’s work—a more moral and compliant author. This attitude does away with the romantic view of art as a window into one creator’s unique experience, and instead perceives a work of art as one more generic consumable in the supermarket of life. In the boycotter’s mindset, an artist is someone who provides us with goods or services. And just like with a plumber, a cab driver, or a fast-food vendor, if we don’t like a particular provider, we can get the exact same product or service from someone else.

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Trapped in our bomb shelters, we Israelis shouldn’t let the war define us

It’s not as if running to the bomb shelter in the middle of the night is sometimes my idea and sometimes because there’s an air-raid siren. Or that decisions about the war’s goals and how long it will last are made collaboratively. War always demands to lead, and the only real freedom we have as civilians in a nation being bombed on a regular basis is how much control to give it over our lives.

In other words: to what extent do you let the conflict be your leader? Should you reduce your entire existence to passively responding to orders handed down by the masters of war?

אוטוקורקט

"היקום הקורס אל תוך עצמו של קרת הוא היקום שלנו, ולמול התחושה שלא נותרו לנו בו כמעט שום נקודות ייחוס יציבות, הכתיבה הקרתית היא נקודת ייחוס יציבה; ומוכרותה, שבנסיבות אחרות הייתה יכולה לשמש כטיעון כנגדה, הופכת לעוגן חיוני מתמיד. כי בקיום שמשתנה באופן בלתי נסבל כל כך, הופך הקבוע והיציב לאפשרות היחידה שלנו לזהות את עצמנו, לנקודת הייחוס שלמולה אנו יכולים לתפוס את ההשתנות ולאמוד את דרכנו על פני המסלול הבלתי מובן שעושה הכוכב שבו נגזר עלינו לחיות."

- שירי ארצי, ידיעות

“What About Me?“

Written by Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen for “Short Stories on Human Rights“ (2008).

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Random quote

In order to be murdered, you first have to be a person

— "Taboola Rasa"

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Talking Past Each Other in Israel

All of a sudden the whole scenario seemed less like a political dispute and more like a modern Tower of Babel, where God made everyone speak different languages to stop their effort to build endlessly upward, a check on human arrogance.

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Words Without Borders, 2010

I believe that there is a truth. I believe it is very difficult to articulate that truth. I try to go in that direction, but I don’t pretend I will get there.

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New York Times, 2012

For Keret, the creative impulse resides not in a conscious devotion to the classic armature of fiction (character, plot, theme, etc.) but in an allegiance to the anarchic instigations of the subconscious. His best stories display a kind of irrepressible dream logic

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