Interesting conversation between Krauss and Oz in Jerusalem. They discuss Israel, each other’s work and, interestingly, the process of writing.
Having just finished THE HISTORY OF LOVE, it’s interesting to their discussion of the book. Amos Oz is very warm in his praise and in particular commends Nicole Krauss on her ear for dialogue. He says that he hears the Yiddish beneath the English of the novels joint protagonist, Leo Gursky. Nicole Krauss talks about her idiosyncratic use of the phrase ‘And yet.’ – something that can grate as it’s used so much.
Some notes:
Also, interesting (towards the end) Amoz Oz states that he dislikes the term fiction. In Hebrew, bookshops group novels under the heading sippoet, translated as narrative prose.
Oz: Writers are driven by a curiousity to understand what it feels like to be someone else.
NK suggests this might be why writers are so often liberal – they have the capacity to put themselves in another’s place and as a result are more likely to have empathy. NK found in writing A HISTORY OF LOVE that it was easier to put personal feelings into a character who is outwardly less like her ie she could explore personal themes through the Leo Gursky character more easily than through 14 year old, Alma – a character she gives many of her own biographical contingencies.
NK mentions that Oz’s novel, MY MICHAEL was written when he was just 25 – around the age she was when writing The History Of Love.
Amos Oz talked about how long it took him to look at his own difficult background directly. For most of his adult life he was full of anger and hatred towards his parents. His mother killed herself when he was a child and he blamed both his father and himself for this. On reaching the age of 60, curiousity crept in; after that came compassion, understanding, humour and finally even more curiousity. He reached the age when he could write about his parents as if they were his children – as if they were not quite adult when the family drama occurred. In his view this meant that the memoir that that explored this was not melancholy, but rather humourous.
At the very end, NK delivers her credo for future literary efforts. The desire to do different things, learning from David Grossman to put everything into a book – saving nothing for future efforts. ‘I want to take everything that I love and put it into my books’. I can’t remember where, but I remember reading somewhere JM Coetzee saying much the same thing. Seems like a good thing to do.
