The Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit
Institute for Retired Professionals
presents
On The Bookshelf
Western
Jazz Quartet
`Be My Knife'
a resident faculty ensemble in the School of Music,
Western University
Trent Kynaston, saxophone • Thomas Knific, bass
Stephen Zegree, piano • Tim Froncek, druMs
with
Sunny Wilkinson, vocalist
Israeli author David Grossman writes an intimate
novel about two married, middle-aged adults who
reawaken to feelings they thought had passed them by.
SANDEE BRAWARS KY
Special to the Jewish News
y
Wednesday, April 24, 2002 • 1:30 p.m.
Jewish Community Center of Metropoliotan Detroit
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CC
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want to be able to say to myself, 'I bled
truth with her.' Yes, that's what I want.
Be a knife for me, and I, I swear, will be
a knife for you." .
The novel is told first through Yair's
letters — sometimes he writes her sever-
al letters a day — and then a shorter sec-
tion of the book includes excerpts of
Miriam's diary; the final pages are writ-
ten as narration.
ou have to peel back layer
after layer of cataracts from
the soul," Israeli novelist
David Grossman says about
writing. He's speaking of his own soul;
in each novel he goes deep within, him-
self to probe the inner lives of the char-
acters he creates, exploring a landscape
of love, language and memory.
Widely published interna-
tionally, Grossman has been
"Be My Knife":
compared to Kafka and Joyce.
A
love affair o
His writing is beautifully craft-
words
between
ed and gripping; it doesn't
characters
always make for easy reading,
yearning for
but it's more than worthwhile.
the
connection
Recently, he was in New
that
has
always
York City as part of a lecture
eluded
them.
tour in connection with his
latest book to be published
here, Be My Knife (Farrar
Straus & Giroux; $25), trans-
lated- by Vera Almog and Maya
Gurantz.
Grossman is the youngest
Yair says they have
of Israel's leading novelists,
"a likeness like the
and, at 48, he looks much
one that exists, say,
younger. His spoken lan-
guage has the intensity and
between two cups
broken in exactly the
energy that's evident in his
same place." Both are
prose.
married, and reveal
In an interview, he's articu-
David Grossman: "I
secrets
of their
late and speaks slowly, pausing
have a clear idea of what
desires
and disap-
to find the right word, some-
I want Israel to be."
pointments and
times apologizing for his
reflect on the silences
English although he speaks
between their letters.
fluently and poetically.
He doesn't want to have a usual love
affair with Miriam as he realizes it would
Telling The Truth
fall into the cliche of adultery. Instead,
Grossman's earlier novels, including
Yair, who's adept at adultery, wants to try
The Zigzag Kid, delve into the emo-
something he hasn't done before.
tional lives of children, and in Be My
Knife, he writes of an unusual love
affair between adults.
Yair, a dealer in rare books, is struck
by. the appearance of a teacher named
Miriam when he notices her at a class
reunion: Contacting her by mail, he
suggests an encounter in written
words only:
"We could be like two people who
inject themselves with truth serum and
at long last have to tell it, the truth. I
Readers Journey
Is this a love story? "Yes, it's a strange
love story" Grossman replies. "I wanted
to write about a different kind of love.
It's a love story because it's about two
total strangers who manage to create
their own bubble of intimacy"— their
own verbal territory
Grossman finds the notion of "meet-
ing a stranger's language" to be exciting.