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@The Source Israel heard Amos Oz read from his latest book,
The Same
Sea (Harcourt Brace, October 2001)
at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington. Oz was introduced
to the crowd of mostly older Israelis as a literary hero, a prolific
writer, and a winner of the coveted Israel Prize, as well
as the French Prix Femina
and the 1992 Frankfurt Peace Prize.
Oz, born in
Jerusalem in 1939, now lives in Arad and teaches at Ben Gurion
University of the Negev. He has been a visiting Fellow at Oxford and a
visiting professor at Princeton. Dressed in a brown turtleneck and
sports coat, Oz said that the "news are not awful" despite the reports
from
CNN. He urged the audience not to be completely devoted to the news
broadcasts but to leave time to experience the entire range of human
emotions from love to loneliness. "Otherwise," Oz said,
"we have given in
to the fanatics who seek complete attention to their cause." The Israel
that hardly ever makes it to the news broadcast, "is an Israel where
people are tempermental, noisy, hedonistic and secular to the bone.
Israelis are great talkers and poor listeners, a country of 6.5 million
prime ministers! I love Israel," Oz said, "even when
I cannot stand it!"
Oz spoke about the "great and simple things" in life such as loss,
love,
loneliness, rage, compassion. Oz took five years to write
The Same Sea
and he even went to Cypress alone to be able to concentrate on it. But
there at the end of each day of writing, he found himself making notes
and sketches, writing verse and rhymes and he realized that this was how
the book had to be written, not only to tell a story, but also to "sing
and dance." His goal became to write a novel taken back to its "gutsy
roots of shameless storytelling". It is also a very personal story,
at once both fiction and confession. The story is set in Bat Yam and
tells
the story of a prodigal son, his beautiful girlfriend, his father, sex
and ghosts. The tale transcends politics and tells of the
possibilities of more than forgiveness, but indeed of momentary
communion between enemies. But it is not a political book and Oz pleaded
with the audience not to read it as a political text.
Submitted by D. Rosenbloom.
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