Posted on December 17, 2007 by Steve Pollak
Here are a few recent Jewish book items from around the Web:
Nextbook
Author Diana Bletter wrote an article about Ron Leshem's "Beaufort
," a novel about Israeli soldiers fighting in Lebanon in the early 1980s. The Hebrew version of the book (titled "Im Yesh Gan Eden") came out in Israel in 2005 and, as Bletter's piece notes, it became a bestseller despite that fact that "few Israelis seemed willing even to talk about the eighteen-year occupation." The novel also went on to win the Sapir Prize for Literature and a movie version of the book debuted in Israel in March. Next month, it will be published in English here in the states. Here's more from Bletter's article on Nextbook.org:
At the start of the 1982 Lebanese War, a small Golani reconnaissance unit stormed and captured Beaufort Castle. The Southern Lebanon security zone, controlled by the Israeli Army allied with the predominantly Christian South Lebanese Army, was established to prevent further rocket attacks on Israel by Hezbollah fighters who had moved into Lebanon. Soldiers at Beaufort knew the castle could become another Masada; they were sitting ducks for Hezbollah raids and mortar attacks. Alone in a medieval fortress on a lonely, vulnerable peak, cut off from their superiors at Army headquarters, they created their own culture, language, and rules. A wounded soldier is a flower; a dead soldier is a poppy. Eaten is afraid, and it is the worst thing for the unit, because it is contagious. The novel's title comes from a saying that was written by a soldier over the doorway leading into Beaufort's bunkers: "If heaven exists, this is what it looks like. If there's a hell, this is what it feels like."
The New York Jewish Week
Sandee Brawarsky interviewed Peter Cole, a Jerusalem poet and translator who won a MacArthur "genius" grant earlier this year. He talked about how his politics quietly appear in his poems and in the work of the publishing company he owns:
He founded Ibis Editions in 1998, along with his essayist/biographer wife Adina Hoffman and their partner poet Gabriel Levin. With close to 20 titles in print, the press — so named because the ibis in Egyptian mythology represents Thoth, scribe to the gods —is “a reincarnation of the Andalucian model” with cross-fertilization of cultures. It publishes English and bilingual editions, and hopes to add Turkish to the list of languages.
“We’re devoted to bringing these voices into the world — they come from a place of light and vision that is endangered in the current matrix of Israel and Palestine,” he said.
When the work is described as idealistic, he asserts that it’s based in realism, that it might serve an ideal but that the work is physical and tactile, with much lugging of boxes.
“It’s important that a sense of hopefulness be grounded in things, in texts, so that there’s physical evidence of what we’re talking about, not simply hope.”
The Forward
Over at the Forward, there was a story about Milliard Kauffman's "Bowl of Cherries
." At age 90, this co-creator of Mr. Magoo
has written "an irreverent" debut novel. Here's more:
The novel offers a contemporary glimpse of a highly fictional, chicken-shaped province of Southern Iraq that contains the aptly named city of Coproliabad, where citizens build startling architectural wonders out of human excrement. Make no mistake, "Bowl of Cherries." is crass, offensive and overblown, but its portrait of a world driven mad by greed and hucksterism, miracle cures and imperialist agendas stumbles smack into its share of worthy targets. Not unlike our beloved Mr. Magoo.