In this episode, we look at the concept of home; how we shape it and how it shapes us. Yardenne Greenspan takes a look at literature of trauma, bringing us work by two Israeli authors Yonatan Berg and Ron Dahan, who recount the horrors they have seen (and have been a part of) in their country, as well as Yehiel De-Nur better known by his pen name, Ka-Tzetnik 135633, a Holocaust survivor who in bitter detail recounts his time in Auschwitz. What unites these authors is their experience with LSD. Flashbacks to their traumatic experiences directly inform upon their writing and present the reader with a complex portrait of trauma. Daniel Goulden brings us a report from the Brooklyn Book Fair with recordings of Jonathan Lethem, Vivian Gornick, John Leguizamo, Cecily Wong, and Chinelo Okparanta discussing their respective homes and how that informs upon their work. READ MORE…
Language: Hebrew
Translation Tuesday: Poems by Ronny Someck
"In his painted eyes you can see a whole herd, / the prey in his dream’s forever-forest."
Bloody Mary
And poetry is a gun moll
in the back seat of an American car.
Her eyes pressed like triggers, her pistol hair firing blond
bullets down her neck.
Let’s say her name is Mary, Bloody Mary,
words squeeze out of her mouth like the juicy guts of a tomato
whose face was knifed just beforehand
on the salad plate.
She knows that grammar is the police force of language—
her earring transmitter
detects the siren at a distance.
The steering wheel will shift the car from question mark
to period
when she’ll open the door
and stand on the curb as a metaphor for the word
prostitute.
Live from the NYPL: Tel Aviv and Tehran Noir
Honoring noir writing—and living—in two notoriously conflicted cities
It was a full house at the New York Public Library on Wednesday night, and I learned just how similar Iranians and Israelis are.
Rick Moody moderated a panel event for Live at NYPL, launching two new books from Akashic’s Noir Series: Tel Aviv Noir and Tehran Noir. Akashic Books’ Noir series includes over sixty anthologies of noir stories set in cities around the world. The panel guests included Tel Aviv Noir editors Assaf Gavron and Etgar Keret, Tehran Noir editor Salar Abdoh and Tehran Noir contributor Gina Nahai. Sitting in the audience, listening intently, I felt complicit.
I had translated eleven out of the fourteen stories in Tel Aviv Noir (two others were written originally in English, a third was translated from Spanish). I felt that where the book succeeded or failed, I shared some of the responsibility. I also felt simultaneously in and out of place: I’ve lived in Tel Aviv most of my life, but have never been to Tehran, though when I see pictures of its mountains I get that belly ache of longing.
These two facts are connected: as an Israeli Jew, much of that world is closed to me. READ MORE…
Hebrew Poetry from Ron Dahan’s Collection “Youth”
Dahan's portrayals of war and daily life in Israel are stirring: precise yet deftly ambiguous, casual yet anguished
A soda machine burns outside a grocery store
and all the Pepsi and the Coke (diet, too) and the Sprite
Explode in all directions like grenades.
The village of Markabe is burnt and bombed like in a war movie.
And like in a war movie
there’s the guy who carries a heavy jerrycan on his back
and the guy with the cigarette between his teeth
and the guy called Nir
and the guy who’s going to die and doesn’t know it so he allows himself to reminisce about that time when