Reading My Own Work and Reading John Boyne
Next Sunday evening, March 31, at Besarabia Bar, Jerusalem
Dear readers,
Next Sunday evening I’ll be giving a reading of one of the episodes from my war narrative at Besarabia Bar, down below Migdal Ha’ir in downtown Jerusalem. Thanks to Lonnie Monka of Jerusalism for the initiative, which he began literally on his way home after being discharged from months of reserve duty in Gaza.
I’m pondering which story to read—perhaps “The Crater” or “Akatziyah”? Happy to entertain suggestions!
The break I took from this project has stretched on longer than I hoped. I wanted to do some thinking about how to move forward with it. Also, I needed to deal with a pressing annual artistic challenge—writing the Purimspiel for Kehillat Yedidya, my synagogue community. In the meantime, I also got started on a new play, and I want to get a draft of that done before going back to these stories. So please bear with me.
What I’m Reading
Last week my book club discussed John Boyne’s The Heart’s Invisible Furies. It’s a book I would probably never have picked it up if it hadn’t been put on our reading list by one of my fellow members, and as such it’s the perfect example of why I value being in the club. Boyne’s book is a masterfully constructed and often very funny story of the life of a gay man in Ireland from his birth out of wedlock just after World War II to his death 70 years later. It conveys in equal measure just how hard Ireland was on people who did not conform to the country’s (often hypocritical) moral code and just how absurd were the situations and predicaments that this situation created.
To his credit, Boyne doesn’t fall into the trap that, to my mind at least, renders a lot of contemporary fiction uninteresting. Boyne is gay, but this is not autofiction—his protagonist is of a different generation. His characters are real and sympathetic, but he doesn’t reduce his characters, their lives, and their actions to simplistic psychological logic.
A couple years ago I listened to the audio version of Fintan O’Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland. There’s a synergy between the two books—they cover much the same period and address a lot of the same issues, in two different genres.
Looking forward to seeing you at Besarabia next week!
Haim