Keret discusses writing, Israeli culture

Over 50 people attended a talk by Israeli author and filmmaker Etgar Keret on Tuesday called “Is Reality Overrated?”

At the event, which was sponsored by CHAI and Hillel, Keret read aloud a few of his short stories, including the title piece of his latest book, Suddenly, a Knock on the Door. This story describes an interesting encounter between a lonely writer, Keret, and several rogues who forcefully demand that he tells them a story.

“He misses the feeling of creating something out of something. That’s right — something out of something. Because something out of nothing is when you make something up out of thin air, in which case it has no value. Anybody can do that,” Keret read.

Keret emphasized that short stories are important to him.

“For me, stories are a way of discovering or articulating things that I always felt but was unable to tell,” Keret said.

Keret described his writing process as very different from that of typical writers.

“The process that I experience is much more like surfing,” Keret said. “I really don’t know where it is going to take me. What I’m focused [on] is keeping my balance. The equivalent of keeping your balance is finding the right tone that will keep the story going. Only when I look at the text, edit and think about it, I can make the connections.”

Keret also discussed what makes a good story. “I prefer the badly written good story to the well written story,” Keret said. “When I think about the best stories I’ve heard in my life, they weren’t necessarily from the most articulate people, but it was from the people who cared the most about what they were talking about. There was something contagious about the way they cared.”

Keret also cited the element of surprise as something that stands out to him in well-written works.

“What I love is to be surprised by the story,” Keret said. “Let a story begin [in] one spot and take me to a totally different place.”

Keret described the feeling of safety that he gains from writing fiction.

“When you write fiction, it is a perfect protection, because they are like a cipher. When people read stories, they can recognize the motion, but they cannot recognize the context,” Keret said. “It’s a perfect hiding mechanism.”

Keret explained how with his memoir, The Seven Good Years, he was not able to benefit from the protection of fiction.

“With non-fiction it doesn’t work,” Keret said. “It was a very strange experience for me to write non-fiction.”

Keret read aloud from “Pastrami,” the last story in The Seven Good Years, which will be published in the U.S. this June.

“He’s seven, and seven is the age when it’s not considered cool to talk about fear, so the word ‘nervous’ is used instead,” Keret said.

“Pastrami” records the experience of the war through the eyes of Lev, Keret’s son. Pastrami is the game that his family plays during air-raid sirens in Israel.

“What was difficult for me was not so much the war itself but the fact that, for the first time, there was a feeling as if the society was split in a very radical way,” Keret said. “If I were against the government and expressed my ideas, I would receive death threats.”

Keret shared an excerpt from this story with his audience.

“Yesterday, he came to school with a piece of iron from the last rocket, and it had the symbol of the company on it and the name in Arabic. Why did it have to explode so far away?” Keret read.

“Pastrami” articulates Keret’s effort to shield Lev from the harsh realities of war.

“A lie is very much like an object — a knife or a hammer,” Keret said. “If you use it to hang a picture, it’s nice. If you bang a person with it, it’s not nice.”

CHAI Secretary and sophomore Gabriela Mizrahi, who also ran the event, enjoyed listening to Keret speak.

“He has an amazing literary voice which showcases the absurd in everyday situations,” Mizrahi said. “I’m really happy about the event. So many people were interested and able to come out.”

Junior Jonathan Weinreich, president of Hopkins Hillel, was pleased with the quality of the speaker.

“He was a lot funnier in person than I thought he would be. He’s really witty when he writes, but he’s really funny in person,” Weinreich said.

Mizrahi explained the reasoning behind CHAI’s decision to host Keret.

“We want people to see how rich and deep Israeli culture is. We’d like to show that there is so much more than the politics and headlines,” she said. “What I like most about Israeli culture is the peculiarity of having such a diverse population in such a small country. That diversity really contributes to the depth of culture.”

Amir Bavler, the Israel Fellow at Hopkins Hillel, also had a favorable reaction to the event.

“It provides a different point of view of Israel culture,” Bavler said. “This is Israel for me. Israel is culture, music, human rights — everything.”