OUROITAWISHINEWS •
y
:Friday, ;.August 30,1985, 23 •
PECTATIO S
Americans expect Israeli
writer Amos Oz to deliver
panaceas for whatever ails
the Middle East. Despite the
misapprehension, he feels
very much at home in the
United States
BY ARTHUR J. MAGIDA
Special to The Jewish News
Oz's "raving political enemies" are, in- novel, and — probably inevitable for
deed, many. He is a founder of Peace Now, someone as steeped as Oz in the drama
the Israeli group that urges certain accom- and the history and the intrigue of the
modations with Zion's Arabloes and that Middle East — / one on Israelis and Pal-
some less progressive Israelis equate with estinians.
appeasement. Oz is a ripe and easy target . His year in Colorado was the longest
for them, almost a Neville Chamberlain- break that Oi has taken in 16 years from
like figure in their eyes. He is more likeable Hulda; the/kibbutz about mid-way be-
and sensible and surely less pompous than tween Jerusalem and Tel Aviv where he
the late English Prime Minister, but put has been living since he left his parents'
an umbrella in Oz's hands and, to an home at the age of 14. In 1969, Oz spent
Israeli right-winger, you have Chamber-
a year teaching at Oxford. His two teach-
lain incarnate. Lucky for Oz that it doesn't ing sa aticals — the year at Oxford and
rain often in Israel.
the y : . now ending in Colorado — were
It is sometimes as a Peace Now leader
as
erent as the United States and
that Oz comes to the United States, speak- E .
• Oxford was More gentlemanly,
ing his way across the country at con- m re leisurely. There, Oz was a don. It
ferences. and fund-raisers. It was not as vies, he said, "a civilized sabbatical. By
such that Oz spent the last 12 months in / comparison, teaching in the United States
the U.S. Now in his 46th year, Oz is prob-
is the difference between jogging and
ably Israel's premier writer, a man whose fishing. Oxford was the fishing."
novels, short stories and essays have been
Teaching in America, said Oz, is "not
translated into 18 languages and who may
more strenuous, but more hectic. There's
be his country's equivalent, not of Neville
more action. There are different expecta-
Chamberlain, but of Norman Mailer or tions," a difference that emerges from the
Gore Vidal -- a writer as at home on the world weariness of the English, a people
political stump as he is at the typewriter.
who sometimes act as if they have seen
This is a major feat for a novelist, a everything and heard everything and done
craftsman usually more at ease with the everything, and the eagerness of Amer-
quiet, cloistered world of his study and his icans to grasp at panaceas, to quest,
interminable rewrites than in the more roil-
maybe eternally, for solutions that set
ing ventures of the politician. The appeal
straight both man and the world.
of politics for someone like Oz seems to
At Oxford, said Oz, "nobody expected
come more from the abstract and woe me to brim over redeeming words or to
poetry of its promise feisty Was
have a xnesiege, to tell the rest of the
to deliver man from bowel! than tram world what to do. They've heard the
tbersety bathroom whadog and dad* answers to thg before Hos they seem to
comas to *very preimgaul potiliehm
Yeraikat year, OstsagitgCeleasto
adIssidshio the Iodide s anti° do
Ameba Dover, He came from Jeremiad*
hie affil, billy, sed one sot *tit thaw
MMus, a assopmaPold mathoweit us
direhasihereuddloak mushiest*
Osidititsiewomaremilitembowead
mak* NM*, us er de ammo
have scattegailrolist hair' 'sagas about the
prowet d a tawirsiklitomithe Holy
Last Is my mina am*. sod cow
katedaw idattis sod oesaidrilsh, lo
Wm* asst deasihme, thirs arm this
erste* deputed.' diet 1 wadd have
theism's —ate artier."
1111. le esertimse As daddithafpute.
dosieglarthissimipiermia*
But the expectation is here. Now, this can
easily get on one's nerves. Nonetheless, I
prefer this to the exhausted gesture of
raising an exhausted eyebrow and re
sponding to whatever you might have to
say -- even if it is not redeeming — by say-
ing, 'Oh, really?' or 'Is that so?' "
Oz is relieved to be heading home to
Israel. In one sense,' he is a citizen of the
world, with his works sold around the
globe and visits to his kibbutz bungalow
from critics from the New York Times and
even the likes of actress-activist Jane Fon-
da and trips to Oslo to mingle with writer
friends at Nobel Prize time. But in another
sense, Oz is much the man of the kibbutz.
He has lived there for 32 years. On Hulda,
he teaches and works occasionally in the
fields and, of course, he writes. On the kib-
butz, Oz's penumbra of fame fades into in-
significance. His 'reputation, for instance,
of being "one of the quickest waiters in the
communal dining hall is not based on my
literary achievements," he said. Worldly
ephemera such as fame pale beside the
basics of kibbutz life.
Also fading on the kibbutz will be the
pressure on Oz to spread the gospel of
redemption, to bring forth the word about
peace and Middle East brotherhood and
whether, indeed, there can truly be an end
to the internecine melodramas that plague
the Holy Land — and on which the region
almost seems genetically to thrive. On
Hulda, Oz may find a certain peace, a
respite to be who he is and not what others
so stubbornly wish him to be: A sage, a
pundit, an oracle.
The Israeli kibbutz was founded as an
experiment. For some, like Oz, it may end
up being a sanctuary. Forel/0mila. Oz's
Wet fictional creation, Yamisoldhhits,
it may be a strait jacket, do snidest of
small tom, a place with thrsisatomiluk
dandy orpekive collards of rumors,
hake, tsulithme, hal146.1 cattikall
•
CF