The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Yam, Reality: Interview with the Author Ilan Amit Israel today

2021-11-15T09:57:55.344Z


The author Ilan Amit watched for two years a couple of men who ran together at sea every day and had soul-searching, and decided to examine male friendships in his book • He tells of the revolution in his writing ( Between literature and surfing ("When you're on the wave, there's a distance from everything")


His new book, the sixth, by Ilan Amit, was born out of morning runs in Tel Aviv. "I would see a couple of men in their sixties, every day, for two years, on my running track. Sometimes I saw them on Ben-Gurion Boulevard, sometimes on the promenade. They would play chess, talk - I recorded some of their conversations while running, sentences like ' What eats me the most is '- such mental conversations. It was clear to me that they were good, heterosexual friends. Then one of them disappeared, and I did not see him again. I only saw his friend. And that already really piqued my curiosity. I said,' Or something really critical "It happened, and the other got sick or died, or there was a crisis." Then I started telling the story of these two men. That's what ignited the writing of this novel. "

The novel born out of the interest in friendships between men is "Cello for Breakfast" (Yediot Seforim), which centers on the friendships between Yigal and Amos, who have come a long way together since the unspoken experiences in the tank during the war, through marriage - the women who married them also became friends. Following the friendships between the owners - the partnership committee in the laundromat they run in Tel Aviv.

The friendship becomes an axis that connects the two families, and makes Amos, who has no children, a father figure to Yigal's sons.

Amos and Vigal are a kind of complementary opposites: one is hot-tempered and extroverted, and the other is quieter and more restrained.

Until about halfway through the book, a chain of events puts their friendships to the test.

"Their friendship is like a relationship," says Amit.

"They have an impact on each other, and they are used to being together in small, stressful spaces, like the tank or the laundry. They are constantly thinking what the other will say. I call it 'chronic friendship.' Yigal is jealous of Amos returning to his quiet apartment, without the children, "A little in Yigal's children. He raised his children a little, and was the only one who managed to calm Yehuda, the eldest, when he was a baby. The two couples live a bit like an extended family."

What attracted you to friendships between men?


"I've always been a friend of women. I have no male friends. I have no friends from the military. I had childhood friends, but unfortunately I did not keep in touch with them. When I had male friends, it usually came from women. I was always interested in women, on a romantic and non-romantic basis. "I understand that with male friends, you talk about women. When you only talk to women, you can not see things from the outside."

From the stars to reality


In recent years a fellow surfer has been surfing, and he says he has "surfing friendships. Surfing has changed my life: the momentum that the wave gives you, when you're on the wave, from a distance from anything else, I have not found it in any other sport I have done. Between surfers.Surfers are people who are very jealous of their wave.Once you catch a wave, you run over it.And if someone tries to catch the wave when you are on it, he destroys it for you.So sometimes there is violence in the water.There is a lot 'below the surface' of the waves. It takes time to identify who is a friend of whom, who is hostile to whom. "

Is this a metaphor for psychological literature?


"It's not a metaphor, it's life."


Much of Amit's writing deals with family relationships and muted traumas. "Family employs me. What is a functioning family? But each of the books I wrote was in a different style, as if a different writer had written it. Even if two or three of my books are relatively similar in dealing with psychology, relationships and family, each book is a different world.


" Mine was science fiction at all. At age 20 I became interested in dolphins and whales and space science, and wrote a fantasy about an alien entity that directs life on Earth, for which dolphins are the successful species, while humans are a by-product that needs to be eradicated. The book was immature, and it was gone. But I'm glad I wrote it.


"Then I started writing books that were more related to my life, books that were a little more therapeutic, related to things that happened to me in the family. 'One Woman Fell' that came out in 2009 was a book that was hard to swallow. A saleswoman at a bookstore told me, ' There's a trauma, here's someone committing suicide. '

"'John's False Loves' is perhaps my favorite book. It has something very poetic, in style and story, but it spoke less to the general public. 'Michael's New Life' - it may have had difficult content to swallow.

"In the new book I came out without meaning to a very sensitive story, and at the same time optimistic. It's time. I like the fact that I was able to write an optimistic book. There is no 'happy ending' here that ties all the ends, but I brought the characters Their personal family. "

You describe a process of transition from very personal, perhaps therapeutic, writing to another writing.


"Yes, writing is more observant. There is a stage where you start to bore yourself. Even when I look at these two friends, Amos Vigal, my 'I' comes in, but in a more elusive way. The interesting stage in writing may be to come up with a story and find yourself Entered it through the back window, as a supporting actor - do not put yourself in the center, 'Look at me, what I went through.' I even have a fantasy to go back to writing a fantasy. In astronomy, in biology - then psychology. I went through a parachute trajectory, from the stars to reality. And painful things that happen to you and your loved ones connect you to reality. But I did not completely abandon the stars. When I am at sea in the morning, I sit on the surfboard and look at the sky. "And for a few seconds I hear a voice of the things that once interested me."

Relaxed writing


Surfing, says Amit, is a major factor in changes in writing, and in general.

"I feel like I'm writing now at ease. Not out of 'why not understand me, this book has to succeed.


' I't not let that drive me. , A killer that would usually have been very upsetting to me, this time I read it after I came back from a session at sea, and I was all in this post-surfing calm, and I said 'not terrible'.

"Life is not the insult from the literature, life is what happened now in the water."

Source: israelhayom

All news articles on 2021-11-15

You may like

Trends 24h

News/Politics 2024-03-28T06:04:53.137Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.