The twists and turns are mind-boggling at times. Book's cover
Book review: Etgar Keret goes to heaven
In The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God & Other Stories, hip author Etgar Keret helps us relive local experiences such as military service, introduces us to Rabin (a cat), and uses heaven and hell to make a point about everyday life
I was pondering over the right words to describe The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God & Other Stories when I happened to glance at the cover for the hundredth time. This time, I noticed the subtitle at the bottom, which read "Warped and wonderful short stories," and I had my answer.
It is no wonder that in a recent interview Keret mentioned Kafka and Kurt Vonnegut as two of his biggest influences, as the events depicted in his stories are similar in their absurdity and peculiarity to those that are portrayed in the works of the two literary giants.
The twists and turns are mind-boggling at times, and I found myself actually feeling envious of Keret's ability to change a story's entire direction and sentiment in a few short sentences:
"Rabin's dead. It happened last night. He got run over by a scooter" (Rabin's Dead, pp.49). Rabin, so it happens, was a cat.
Keret's writing is distinctly local, but it is far from being provincial, and at times he perfectly links local experiences, such as military service, to universal concepts and situations.
Religious and existential references
In “A Souvenir of Hell,” dead people appear straight out of hell to shop and spend the day in a "godforsaken" Uzbekistani village: "…they only come out every 100 years…Like in the army, when you only get one weekend out of three…"
The stories are remarkably imaginative, and are presented in a succinct yet heartfelt manner.
In "Plague of the First Unborn," we are taken back to ancient Egypt. Naturally, one would think the story would have a Jewish connotation, and it does, but from a completely unforeseen angle, as the story depicts an Egyptian family's domestic tragedy during the harshest biblical plague.
The domestic tragedy, as it turns out, has more to do with the relationship between the husband and wife than with the loss of a child. This conclusion typifies the stories, as they all touch on the most basic human emotions or situations, regardless of whether the setting is ancient Egypt or modern-day Tel Aviv.
The recurring themes and underlying currents permit the stories' assemblage into one book.
Keret, who was born in 1967 and resides in Tel Aviv, is regarded as a cultural leader by his predominantly secular and often cynical Generation X-type audience, but in this compilation he does not shy away from religious and existential references.
However, Keret's main characters are secular, and religion is never the focal point, but rather a point of reference to emphasize the notion that everything boils down to the most rudimentary feelings and acts.
Touches on the Holocaust as well
In “Katzenstein” and “Pipes,” Keret uses heaven and hell mainly as a backdrop in order to make a point about life. Although the setting makes for a more interesting and poignant delivery, it is never the essence: "Heaven is simply a place for people who were genuinely unable to be happy on earth."
In “Kneller's Happy Camper's,” Keret depicts life after death as being similar to everyday life, physically as well as spiritually, thus narrowing the gap between the setting (heaven or hell) and the essence (the endless search for love and meaning) even more: "I'd always imagine (regarding life after death) these beeping sounds, like a fuzz-buster, and people floating around in space and stuff. But now that I'm here, I don't know, mostly it reminds me of Tel Aviv."
Perhaps the one thing that separates Keret from his fellow Gen-X Israelis is that Keret deals directly with the Holocaust in his writing, while most young Israelis have developed certain apathy toward the issue.
Both of Keret's parents are Holocaust survivors, and a few stories in the compilation touch on the subject.
In “Shoes,” the main character, a young boy, hears a lecture from a Holocaust survivor, who urges the children not to buy German-made products because, "You should always remember that underneath the fancy wrapping there are parts and tubes that they made out of the bones and skin and flesh of dead Jews."
Two weeks later, the boy's parents return from a trip abroad with a shiny new pair of Adidas shoes as a present to him:
"They're from Germany, you know," I told her, squeezing her hand tightly. "Of course, I know," Mom smiled, "Adidas is the best brand in the world." "Grandpa was from Germany too," I tried to give her a hint. "Grandpa was from Poland," Mom corrected me."
The book cannot be regarded as light reading material, but it is a light read, because the complex, surprising, and deeply emotional stories are presented in the simplest and most direct form – pure story-telling at its very best.
The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God & Other Stories / by Etgar Keret
ISBN 1-59264-105-9, Paperback, USD 12.95 - Published by Toby Press
