Short story files are one of the most interesting formats in the field of literature, locally and in general.
On the one hand, for the most part they do not have commercial success;
On the other hand, and perhaps also as a result, these are often the texts in which writers dare most of all to spread their wings and soar beyond the conventions of genre and literary tradition.
"Farewell to the Upper Western Side," Yuval Yavneh's new collection of stories, is a clear example of this trend.
The stories included here range from social critique to spiritual search, from fantasy to suspense and cosmic horror;
If it is possible to point to a clear common denominator between the various stories in the file, it is precisely the fact that they all strive in one way or another for the extraordinary, the wonderful and the unique.
The name of the book, like the cover, may indicate that most of the stories take place in New York, but in fact this is only true of the story that opens the file and the novella that seals it.
However, there is something international in the spirit of the book: social and political issues that often occupy Hebrew literature are almost completely absent, and the one story that deals with socio-economic issues requires Greece's struggle to preserve its independence and national identity in the face of EU austerity. .
More generally, the stories skip between countries, cultures and languages, seemingly out of disregard for these boundaries.
In this sense, "Farewell to the Upper West Side", the story that opens the file, can be seen as a kind of directional reading: the story deals with two young Jews living in New York, whose Hebrew occupies a prominent place in their lives.
But contrary to the expectations of their parents and teachers, "their Hebrew did not serve as a bridge to Israel - it developed like a wild mutation and became a private language," a language that served them to establish imaginary Hebrew autonomy in the heart of "New York."
It is an autonomy that exists only in the spirit, and is held by the power of the mutual faith of the two members - and accordingly, it begins to be undermined as soon as one of the two is admitted to study at Yale University.
There is no doubt that the real protagonist of the story is Hebrew itself - the ancient, sublime, wild Hebrew, whose official language of the State of Israel is just one of the many possibilities it treasures in its vicinity, and not necessarily the most interesting of them all.
As mentioned, many of the stories in the file are marked by a movement from the ordinary to the sublime and the extraordinary (a movement that is also expressed in the frequent use of language coins that originate from the Hebrew secret doctrine).
In "The Jugglers' Conference" a juggling show that the narrator goes to with his children gradually becomes a pagan ritual of horror, and the light and slightly ridiculous New Age atmosphere becomes an attempt to replace modern time with ancient one;
The protagonist of "Noise Gate", a doctoral student in sound engineering, abandons the desire to create as pure a sound as possible and instead tries to experience the perfect noise that no sound bothers - a move that implicitly also strives against the forced harmony of the Russian melting pot and erasing his Russian identity. ;
And "Monk," whose protagonist follows a mysterious monk through the streets of Jerusalem, stands entirely in the search for a different and more powerful form of existence.
The writing itself also expresses this movement: many of the stories are characterized by long, short-lived passages, and descriptions that attempt to capture the experience that is inconceivable.
Thus, for example, in "Sha'ar-Noise": "It was pure noise, not a noise that clung to the heels of the sound like mud in the heels of the walk, but a noise that was like a golden artery from which the sounds were carved, a noise that was in the first place and not in retrospect. Trying to reach him, but can only get closer. "
The stories tend to end shortly after the climax, with a subtle change that is hard to define: the pursuit of the sublime fails - the nuns break down as quickly as it began, the student fails to recreate the noise experience - but the experience itself still leaves its mark on the characters.
Some of the stories in the file clearly tend to be speculative: "Land of Life" is told from the point of view of a demon, who comes to the cemetery in Beit Shemesh to accompany his father - it is his washing of semen, which has been poured in vain on the land, breathed life into him.
But instead of the dark creature familiar to us from the Jewish tradition, which comes from Lilith's womb, the demon is an embodiment of the energy contained in the fiance, and in his words he reveals the erotic charge hidden in religion itself.
As its name implies, the novella "In the Days of the Plague" - which seals the book - deals with the early days of the Corona plague.
This is a significant trauma on a global scale, for which literature will probably still require a great deal - and it is not surprising that the short story and the novella precede the novel.
The novella takes place in two timelines: the first, Pre-Corona, depicts the intense love of Batya (who also appears in the first story in the file) and Henry;
And the second describes Batya's experiences after the separation, against the background of social distance.
The search for the wondrous is expressed here mainly in the sex scenes: long, detailed and lengthy, and seemingly striving for some essence that is beyond the flesh.
The book certainly has flaws as well: the dialogues tend to be quite artificial, and the stories that deal with socio-political issues ("The Cop and the Clown," "From Syntheme Square to Ephtharios and Nizelos with the head of Apollo") sometimes suffer from over-politeness.
In general, the eagerness to get to the sublime and unusual parts of the story seems to lead to a slightly flat construction and presentation of the characters and situations.
But there is no doubt that the highs are worth the lows, and this is an interesting, unusual and thought-provoking book.
Yuval Yavne / Farewell to the Upper West Side, Kahal Publishing, 245 pages
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