A Conversation with Israeli Author Amos Oz

Born in 1939, Amos Oz is one of Israel’s best known writers. Much celebrated as a novelist, he’s published many works of both fiction and non-fiction.

Outspoken about politics, he’s been a supporter of a two-state solution for many years, and is active with the organization Peace Now.

Oz’s newest book is “Scenes from Village Life,” a novel comprised of related stories.

While the themes of land, ownership and inheritance arise in the novel, Oz told us he did not intend to address political issues in this book.

“I didn’t write the book about Israelis and Palestinians,” says Oz. “When I want to make a statement about Israelis and Palestinians, I write an angry article, usually telling my government to go to hell.”

Amos Oz spoke with Marco Werman in The World’s Boston studio.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman. This is the world. Amos Oz has long been one of Israel’s best known writers. He’s also outspoken about his politics. Oz is a long time supporter of a two state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict and he’s active with the organization Peace Now. His newest book is called scenes from village life. It consists of loosely related stories all set in the fictional Israeli village of Tel Ilan. Amos Oz joins us here in our Boston studio. Now the village that you refer to in the title Scenes from Village Life-Tel Ilan, it’s fictional but it seems like it could exist. It’s rustic, it’s also become touristy and trendy. On the surface it seems like a nice place. Is it?

Amos Oz: It’s a very nice place. It’s a very attractive place but it’s full of horrors and nightmares and fears and apprehensions.

Werman: And where do those fears and apprehensions come from?

Oz: They come from the inner lives of the people I write about. All of those people are unhappy people. I don’t write about happy people. Happy people speak for themselves. They don’t need me to write about them. So? Those people have lost something or hide something from themselves and they are searching it all the time, searching in the basements, in the attics, inside their own souls. This is a book about half knowing and about half remembering.

Werman: Do you know a village like this in Israel or anywhere in the world?

Oz: There are about 20 such villages in Israel. I mean very old villages – twice as old as the state of Israel – old Jewish villages and there are such villages everywhere in the world. It’s a universal book. It’s more about the human condition than it is about the Israeli condition.

Werman: It’s interesting, you said there are villages like Tel Ilan all over the world and one thing that I really seem to appreciate about this book is that we hear so much about Israel and the Middle East in terms of stereotypes and cliches if you will, but this made me feel like they’re just as bothered as the rest of us around the world.

Oz: I’m delighted to hear this because there’s actually no relationship between Israel of the media and the real Israel. In Israel of the media you normally get to see about 80% fanatics and zelot settlers from the West Bank, 19% heartless soldiers of the road blocks, and 1% of wonderful intellectuals like myself who criticize the government and pray for peace. The real Israel is a temperamental, hot-headed, passionate, noisy, argumentative society; very militant and it belongs in a Felini movie and not in an Ingmar Bergman film.

Werman: Very well put. Now the whole question of the first story in the book, called ‘Heirs’, it points to some very real issues of land and ownership in Israel today. Whose land is it? Who gets to live there? Do you find it easier to address this issue in a work of fiction than in non-fiction.

Oz: I didn’t even intend the address the issue of Israelis and Palestinians and their two contradicting claims over the land. I didn’t write the book about Israelis and Palestinians. When I want to make a statement about Israelis and Palestinians I write an angry article usually telling my government to go to hell. When I tell stories, they are stories about people and most of them are stories about small time people not about Israelis and Palestinians.

Werman: Your work is translated and read around the world but there’s always things that are lost in translation. What do you think an Israeli reader understands from this book that might not be obvious to non-Israelis?

Oz: An Israeli reader understands the Hebrew language and the Hebrew language is what is lost in translation because it’s a very unique musical instrument. Contemporary Hebrew has many things in common with Elizabethan English. The language is still a smoldering lover, an erupting volcano, and the write of modern Hebrew can afford to take daring liberties with the language. I’m not implying that every contemporary Israeli poet is a William Shakespeare by saying the language is Elizabethan but the Elizabethan condition is fascinating and practically almost untranslatable.

Werman: You’ve been working with the same translator for 40+ years now. How does that work? Do you ever get into arguments with your translator?

Oz: It works like a good marriage. My books are translated into 41 languages. The only translation that can ever hurt me is the English translation because this is the only one I can read. As a result I often argue with my English translator. He comes up with various ideas for an English idiom to translate the Hebrew idiom. I veto everything, he explodes at me saying, “So what the hell is the language for this or that?” and I smile and say English is your department and not mine.”

Werman: Amos Oz, do you consider ‘Scenes from Village Life’ a novel or a novel that’s kind of short stories pieced together?

Oz: I regard it as a novel in stories because the stories are inter-related and characters move freely from one story to another, reappear, come to visit on each other, they all know one another, and perhaps I should also tell you that this book was born out of a dream. I had a dream a few years ago and in my dream I was in one of those very old villages and the village was empty and abandoned. I was roaming alone in the empty streets, no dogs, no kids, no birds, looking for someone. When I woke up I knew that my next book is going to be located in such a village and the village is going to be one of the protagonists of the book.

Werman: Do you often take inspiration from your dreams for writing?

Oz: Very often. I like to try to recall my dreams when I wake up in the morning. I stay in bed for three extra minutes, concentrate my thoughts, and try to remember and recall the dreams in my mind. Many of my stories in my novels were initially born out of dreams.

Werman: So that’s how you kind of remember your dreams and when you start writing do you have a regular schedule that you follow?

Oz: I wake up at 5:00 every morning of my life. I live in a small desert town in the south of Israel in the Negev desert. I begin my day by taking a brisk 40 minute walk in the desert which helps me knock everything into proportion. When I come back home and switch on the radio and I hear politicians using words such as never, forever, or for eternity I know the stones out in the desert are laughing at them. Then I drink a cup of coffee, I sit myself by my desk, and I start asking myself what if I were him, what if I were her. That’s what I do for a living.

Werman: In one of the last stories of your book called ‘Singing’, a group of people from the village gather to have kind of a sing-a-long. The narrator says “we felt good sitting in a circle on a rainy stormy night singing old songs from the days when everything had seemed so clear and bright.” In that statement there seems to be a resignation that it will take awhile if ever before things will be clear and bright again. The future of this village, of Tel Ilan, doesn’t seem very hopeful. Are you hopeful about the future of Israel?

Oz: I’m worried about the future of Israel and I’m worried about the present of Israel but I always bear in mind that unlike other countries that were born out of politics, history, geography, demography, Israel was born out of a dream. Now everything that is born out of a dream is destined to be disappointing. It is not a disappointment in the nature of Israel, it’s a disappointment in the nature of dreams. Israel is a dream come true and as such it is destined to be flawed.

Werman: So what happens?

Oz: What happens now is that we are searching with peace with the Palestinians and with the other Arabs and without peace we are a lame nation. The lasting conflicting is playing havoc in Israel and in Palestine and in the entire Middle East. The majority of the Israelis are unhappily ready to accept the two state solution now. The majority of the Palestinians are also unhappily ready to accept a two state solution. If I may use a metaphor I would say that the patient, Israeli and Palestinian, is reluctantly ready for the surgery of creating two states. The doctors are cowards. We have a crisis of leadership on both sides.

Werman: Amos Oz, very good to meet you and speak with you. Thanks for coming to our studio.

Oz: Thank you for having me.

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