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12 Friday, March 2, 1984

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Faulknerian Tale from Israel's A.B. Yehoshua

By JOSEPH COHEN

Tulane University

NEW ORLEANS —
William Faulkner is alive
and well and living in Is-
rael. He has returned to our
world as a sixth generation
Sabra, masquerading in the
person of Israeli novelist
A.B. Yehoshua. At least, it
seems to, however strange!
The proof is in
Yehoshua's newest novel,
"A Late Divorce" (Double-
day), translated from the
Hebrew into English by
Hillel Halkin. The book is
destined to be among the
most significant imports of
the year. -
Faulkner's presence is
everywhere felt in this re-
markable novel. It is a
presence that both exhila-
rates and depresses, so sus-
tained is the emotional in-
tensity of the story, not just
recalling but indeed being
structured upon what many
regard as the Southern
writer's single most impor-
tant work, "The Sound and
the Fury." Not simply de-

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rivative, "A Late Divorce" is
a Faulknerian tour de force,
with enormous power in its
own originality, enabling it
to function organically and
soundly in its own right.
Israelis reading the
novel in Hebrew and
those Americans reading
it in English who may be
unfamiliar with Faulkner
might find the "stream-
of-consciousness" tech-
nique, often employed,
an at-first puzzling but
subsequently satisfying
diversion, without hav-
ing to know either the na-
ture of Faulkner's craft
or the specific subject-
matter of "The Sound
and the Fury."
Devotees of serious fiction
today no longer expect to
have the plot handed over
without a fight, and they
know that there are five
sides to every question.
Pondering, speculating and
puzzling are basic require-
ments for solving the narra-
tive riddles which are pre-
sently the mirrors to human
experience.
The puzzling over re-
quired here is similar to the
suspense that develops in a
detective novel, and if it is
momentarily' distracting, it
is more than compensated
for by the sheer lyrical qual-
ity of Yehoshua's prose, a
poetic accomplishment
which was also a notewor-

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thy feature of Faulkner's
writing. Though both books
are fiction of an exception-
ally high order, each func-
tions somewhat as poetry
does, communicating on an
emotional level, making it
easy for the reader to relate
to the characters and to re-
spond to their actions.
Despite the reader's hav-
ing to guess who is report-
ing the action at- the outset
of each chapter, Yehoshua's
plot emerges smoothly
enough:
Yuhudah Kaminka, aged
64, an Israeli teacher living
in Minneapolis, returns just
before Passover to his home-
land to divorce his wife
Naomi, committed several
years earlier to a mental
hospital, following her at-
tempt to lodge a breadknife
in Kaminka's chest.
Schizophrenic though she
obviously is, Kaminka is no
less paranoid. He needs the
divorce in order to marry his
American Jewish friend,
Connie, about to give birth
to his child.
Kaminka's three chil-
dren by Naomi are
grown, two of them mar-
ried, all living either in
Haifa, Tel Aviv or
Jerusalem. Their turbu-
lent, nerve-wracked lives
are further unhinged by
Kaminka's reappearance
and the hostility that re-
surfaces around the
negotiations. At stake is
the ownership of the fam-
ily apartment, a valuable
piece of real estate.
In the end Kaminka gets
what he came for, and the
story ends as any good
Southern gothic novel
should, in horror.
What do all these nice Is-
raelis have to do with
Southern gothicism? In the
first place, with one excep-
tion, they are not so nice.
Beyond that, they are no
different from anyone else
under extreme stress.
Secondly, Yehoshua,
whose stories, like Faulk-
ner's, concentrate attention
on psychological and moral
problems, involves Faulk-
ner at the beginning of his
book, hinting broadly (but
imprecisely, on purpose) at
its outcome in his use of an
epigraph to the first chap-
ter, taken from "The Sound
and the Fury." This chapter,
related by Gaddi, Kamin-
ka's seven-year-old
grandson, is introduced
with the quotation "Benjy
knew it when DaMuddy
died."
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Fury," Benjy is the 33--
year-old idiot son of
Jason and Caroline
Compson, members of a
Southern aristocratic
family, well into decline.
DaMuddy is the
nickname of Benjy's
grandmother. Gaddi,
though a bright child, is
modeled after Benjy, still
a child because of his
mental incapacity.
Other identifiable models
include Naomi Kaminka,
patterned after Caroline
Compson, the unloving,
hypochondrical mother;
Ya'el, the Karginka's oldest
child (Gaddi's mother) who
is Faulkner's Caddie in
Yehoshua's story, the only
character fully capable of
loving all her family and
willing to absorb their hurts

A. B. YEHOSHUA

for which generosity she,
like Caddie, is humiliated.
Asa, her brother, the bril-
liant historian, derives di-
rectly from Quentin, the
third Compson child, a
bright abstractionist who
commits suicide after his
first year at Harvard, obses-
sed, as Asa is, over a prob-
lem of virginity, sufficient
in its magnitude to wreck
the lives of both young men:
Tsvi, the third Kaminka
child, a homosexual, is
modeled after Jason, the
fourth Compson child.
While Jason is heterosex-
ual, both he and Tsvi are
dominated by their willing-
ness to employ cruelly their
cold, inhumane logic.
They are alike also in
their dishonesty and the
curious fact that of all the
Compson and Kaminka
children only these two
purposely cultivate their
sick mothers, again for their
selfish gain.
Narrative technique,
style and characteriza-
tion apart, Yeshoshua im-
itates Faulkner further
by naming his chapters
for days of the week just

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He who denies himself a
good life in his world is an
ingrate, showing constempt
for the King's bounties and
grace.

as Faulkner used dates
for his chapter headings,
and the books of both
authors end on holidays
of corresponding sea-
sonal significance,
Yeshoshua's on the first
day of Passover, Faulk-
ner's on Easter Sunday.

Everything in both books
leads up to these holidays,
which serve as moral
backdrops against which
the weaknesses and follies
of the characters in both
works are accentuated.
Just as Faulkner did,
Yeshoshua makes it clear
by implication that redemp-
tive religious values are
everywhere present but are
ignored or, at best, merely
paid lip-service, by people
hurling themselves toward
their own destruction.
Finally, the basic theme
of both books is identical.
Each demonstrates for us
the impact of the loss of love
within the family unit, and
the devastating effect this
loss has, first on the chil-
dren, and in time on society
as a whole. It is a lesson
every generation must
learn anew whether it
is located in the turn-of-
the-century American
South or in contemporary
Israel.
That Yehoshua has dealt

so masterfully with this
message both indepen-
dently of and in conjunction
with Faulkner's "The Sound
and the Fury" is no small
achievement. For the
American reader, particu-

HILLEL HALKIN

larly the Jewish one, who
already knows Faulkner's
work, the book is bound to
give a double measure of
pleasure.

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