“Everybody comes from somewhere.” An Interview with Writer Amos Oz

This past summer, I bought a plane ticket to Israel with no intention other than to record my observations of a country that seemed so defined by conflict. I spent my first month trying my hand at in-the-trenches war reporting, scurrying back and forth between the West Bank and my apartment in Jerusalem. But, the romantic veneer of the protracted, hyperbolized Israeli-Palestinian melodrama quickly revealed itself as just that—a romantic veneer, characterized much more by tragically mundane, day-to-day background noise than by ducking into bunkers and dodging bullets. My focus shifted to the effect of such background noise on the collective Israeli psyche. Consequently, I turned to Israeli literature, which came into being along side Israel and grew up under the exact same circumstances. Who better to speak with about such a thing—the simultaneous emergence of a nation and a literature—than Amos Oz, the progenitor of modern Hebrew storytelling, still presiding ever so vigilantly over his domain?

Born Amos Klausner in Jerusalem in 1939 to Russian scholars who had emigrated in the early 1920s, Oz spent his early childhood witnessing the British Mandate’s disintegration. At fifteen, after his mother’s suicide, he left home for Kibbutz Hulda to become a Labor Zionist. It was there, at Hulda, that young Klausner changed his surname to “Oz”, meaning strength, met his wife, Nily, and began to write, stealing away in the early hours by candlelight to the bathroom with a pen and notepad. He went on to study philosophy and literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and serve in both the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War. He published his first book in 1965, a collection of short stories entitled Where the Jackals Howl. Since then, his oeuvre has grown to 38 books, 13 of them novels, and he has become the recipient of too many awards to name. A Tale of Love and Darkness, Oz’s memoir and widely considered his magnum opus, was translated just last year into a film directed by and starring Natalie Portman. In Oz’s writing, Israel speaks, whispering its magnificent tales of conquer and reconquer, of ordinary human life, of celestial struggle, heartbreak, family, wailing partition, and of identity.

Near the end of my stay in the Holy Land, I spoke to Oz over the phone. We discussed the project of Israeli literature, and, inevitably, the project of Israel.

—Prashanth Ramakrishna

I. PLAYING TENNIS WITH YOURSELF

AMOS OZ: Yes?

THE BELIEVER: Hi, Mr. Oz. It’s Prashanth.

AO: Yes, how are you?

BLVR: It’s nice to meet you, if only over the telephone.

AO: Tell me, please, are you going to record our conversation? Or are you...