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“I’ve been looking at [Keret’s] Substack and it’s so witty and enjoyable, and he’s clearly having a wonderful time doing it, I thought, ‘maybe I could do that’” — Salman Rushdie, The Guardian

Quarter to Three

There’s this guy who lives on my block, he’s nice but a little odd. He talks to himself and sometimes to me. When things are bad he talks to himself very loudly, actual yelling matches. And someone always ends up calling the police. A little over a year ago, he had a really bad fight with himself and the police insisted on taking him away, and then he disappeared. A few months ago, my local barista told me the guy was hospitalized, and that a woman who works at the hospital is a regular at the coffee shop and she said he was doing much better. I ran into him this morning, on the corner of Dizengoff Street, and he told me he was on his way to buy a pack of cigarettes. He said he was going through a rough patch but he was going to be fine now. At least until three o’clock. I was about to ask what would happen at three o’clock, but an air-raid siren interrupted our conversation. I hurried away to the neighborhood bomb shelter, while he went on to the convenience store. I could see him as I walked away, surrounded by terrified people scurrying for shelter. From a distance, he looked like the sanest person on the street, by far.

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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

Her third story started out funny. It was about a woman who gave birth to a cat. The hero of the story was the husband, who suspected that the cat wasn't his. A fat ginger tomcat that slept on the lid of the dumpster right below the window of the couple's bedroom gave the husband a condescending look every time he went downstairs to throw out the garbage.

— "Creative Writing"

More stories

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.

More non-fiction

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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