In one of the episodes in the story "Jewish Nose", from the third storybook of the author Anat Einhar of the same name (published by Kinneret Zmora Dvir), the protagonist goes for a massage with a masseuse at the German hotel where she is staying.
While massaging, he suddenly removes her panties from her and begins to massage down her abdomen, digging into her crotch, while she tightens her legs as tightly as she can, until he lets go of her.
In an interview at her home in Tel Aviv, Einhar says that the story is based on a similar experience that happened to her on vacation in Austria, but if for other women the situation could have been stressful and even threatening - for her, she clarifies, she had "zero trauma".
It's not because she does not see how other women can feel threatened in such a situation, but because, in her real and fictional life, she is drawn to the examination of boundaries, to the question of what it would have been like if she had behaved differently.
In contrast to the fictional story, where the matter ended in a sweet plot twist, in the reality version she told her husband, when she left the room, what happened there, and he in response asked her "why did you not give up?".
And this question, about where to stop, continues to accompany it.
"I really ask myself sometimes why I did not dedicate myself there. And not because it could have been fun, but to ask what would have happened. I think today I would have done one of the two, or I would have stopped it immediately, or I would have agreed. Not sure I would have complained, "Although I have to complain about such things. But instead I lay with my legs together and waited for him to give up."
***
Einahar, as a writer, critic (until recently, in Yedioth Ahronoth) and a Facebook anchor with a lively community of followers, consistently expresses a reluctant and critical voice in relation to the changing rules of political correctness and in relation to the "culture of cancellation" of works and creators.
"Some young women today expect that if they are alone in an elevator, a foreign man will not enter the elevator - for them it is rudeness, it is boomerang. I will never argue with someone who feels threatened, but the thought of it becoming normative saddens me. Borderline situations interest me, they are part to me "From human nature. The desire for sterile space does not give an opportunity to deal with the questions. Some men say, 'When you walk in front of a woman on the street, look down,' and it was written in all seriousness!"
You're mad?
"It's not anger, maybe grief. At its core change is good, and is required and important. But 'cancellation' - that word is completely unfounded. It's an attempt to hide, to erase traces, to uproot. Maybe like in digital erasure, when you delete a message I hurt you. Unlike the paper you wrote on and threw in the trash - a digital message is simply deleted. I think the 'culture of cancellation' is trying to do the same to old traditions and works - to erase them as if they never were. But that's absurd. Do you want to erase the Odyssey? You can cause it not to be taught, that it will not be in libraries, but it cannot be completely eliminated. But it's there, it's human nature. "
The cover of the book is also Jewish,
You know what that makes sense. The idea is that once one corrects language, culture, consciousness changes. This is a revolutionary concept. It comes to reshape our consciousness.
"The marking 'it's bad' and 'it's good' is more accurate. The attempt to erase, not even condemn, but simply to be silent about something as if it were not, so that it is quiet and its molecules disappear from the air - it alienates, castrates. It makes people my husband. Automatic responses - herd and self-righteous.Get people also some space to decide for themselves, we should have a moral awareness.
"It happened to me several times that I got a message in private or someone wrote a post, 'I have so and so friends with this creep, either you cancel the friendships with him or you cancel the friendships with me.' He could have done it quietly, but there is a statement here: I do not I want to touch you too. It's absolute and absolute, and it must not be contradicted, and if you try to contradict you
will
be nullified as well.
Even 20 years ago they knew that sexual harassment was forbidden, and continued to harass sex all the time, because it did not have the negative effect it has today, as something really obscene.
"The change, for me, is completely justified. The fact that women today can talk about it and not dismiss it, not treat it as a hassle without a sense of humor, it's great. But like anything, every ideal that has come true - communism, etc. - They become oppressive, mouth-watering, infected with terrible righteousness. "
Every revolution involves excessive violence.
"Then not only do I pay a price, everyone pays a price, even people who have thought patterns that are terribly coordinated with it, because it is terribly flattering, narrowing, binary, 'it should be abolished and it should be praised,' without distinction of nuances. And I'm not talking about Forgiveness, I'm talking about thinking - being a thinking person and not an automatic person.
"Once I was riding a bus on a long-distance trip and I was sitting next to an ultra-Orthodox boy, and suddenly I felt him start touching me, and I looked and saw that he was full of eczema, and I said 'what a poor man.' I was also about a decade older than him, "That he was exaggerating, and I looked at him, and he was terribly frightened. So today I would take a picture of him and I would write, 'Look what happened to me on the bus,' but enough, we are human beings."
"A writer must have a sensitive moral stance. A character does not, but a writer does. If a writer has double standards and blind spots, that is a problem. In life I am not a person with a sharp moral sense. I am not Mother Theresa, but in writing I have a beacon."
Are you saying that these norms stop other aspects within ourselves?
"External cancellation is internal cancellation. You cancel something yourself - some clarification, some legitimacy of thinking about something complex and multifaceted. Some time ago I downloaded a trashy book from the 1970s about people raising chickens for battle. It interested me, but I started reading, And it was really disgusting, someone who collects a minor and treats her like garbage, tells her to shut up, beats her, without awareness. "On Facebook, 'this book - do not touch it.'
Maybe that's part of the deal.
The day reads experienced and knows your limits.
It may be that the culture of cancellation has come to give legitimacy to those who are at the beginning of the road to say that these works are obscene.
After all, even twenty years ago we knew how to see things we did not like, even in masterpieces.
But if you were opposed to it, you would be snoozy and not understand literature.
So maybe now opens up some space within the literary discourse, which has a lot of things stuck in it.
"I am not opaque to it. I have a childhood, the eldest is 17.5 years old, and we have a lot of conversations on these issues. As a writer, I think writers must have a sensitive moral stance. To character - not really, but to a writer yes. This is a problem. In life itself I am not a person with a particularly sharp moral sense. I am not Mother Theresa, I do not feel sorry for people, not a terribly devout leftist. But when I am in writing I have a lighthouse. Maybe because it is a world I have defined myself, "I have some attitude towards them. I will not write a story to say what I think. The story is not disguised for my opinions, I write because I really want to find out something between myself."
Take the story back
But sometimes, her literary character, who is sent to find out something - collides with life, creating a strange encounter between reality and imagination.
It happened to Einhar with the story "Shameful Story".
Her protagonist hears of a disturbing minister who shoved two fingers into someone's mouth, and since then the fingers have "stuck in her mouth."
She feels their skin, joints and cartilage and has a strong desire to bite them, and when she goes to Dizengoff Center to buy headphones and the seller asks her to come with him to the back room, she asks him to put fingers in her mouth to experience it: she becomes the initiator and director of the abusive act.
"When I started, it must have been important for me to be accepted, and in order to be accepted you needed some kind of hierarchy. Criticism was more important to me than some would read. It was important for me to get a certificate, to understand who I am. Otherwise, who are you?"
"I wrote this story when I corresponded with a playwright, and he wanted me to write him an erotic story. For him personally, not even for work, but for fun. I thought it was really a disgusting and obscene act, but it could also be something provocative. It did not happen to me, But I wanted it to happen, that this repulsive, aggressive, and desecrating act would become something she performs. But when I sent the story to the playwright, he replied, 'Okay, now send me a picture of my ass.' I said, uh, like that? And now he is mine. "
Sounds like he did not understand the story.
"It happens a lot that I write a story and suddenly he finds his way to life in less proactive ways. I really went to buy headphones two years ago, and really someone said to me under the mustache 'Come on', and we went to the back room, etc. The same young woman expecting a man not to enter the elevator "You're actually seeing the offer as a kind of harassment. So I'm not saying, 'I got a story,' I say, this is life. I live a safe life, but these areas interest me."
Tendency to hierarchy
Einahar, a native of Petah Tikva, came to writing after being destined for painting as a child.
She also wrote as a child, but painting was her outstanding talent.
"The painting would have come out of my sleeve. I would not say that there was a curse in this talent, but it attracted attention, and this radiation, when you stand over me and say 'look, look what she drew' - would bring me the section. Maybe it's unbearable when it comes to you easily "If I had bothered more I would have been able to enjoy the compliment, as I enjoy being complimented on the writing."
Since the spotlight was on the painting, could the writing have developed in its shadow?
"When I studied at Bezalel in the early 1990s, there was the wave of Orly Castel-Blum and the Keret Challenge, and they started writing in a more individualistic and urban style. Confidence that I do it well, even though that self-confidence could also have been a complete illusion.I would meet people and say 'I'm really good, I'm going to be a writer'.
The first acclaimed review of her debut book was literary critic Amnon Navot, who was known for his brutal killings, and published a rave review of her debut book, "Summer Predators," which also won the Sapphire Prize for Creation in 2008.
At the same time, this critique also reveals Navot's fixed gender perceptions, as he writes about Einhar against the background of three female models of writing: on the one hand, Yehudit Katzir, whose book he killed, and on the other, Amalia Kahana-Carmon and Leah Ini, whom he loved.
"I really liked him but he was problematic in relation to women. He did not underestimate women's literature, but there was something traditional and gendered in a way that sucks in his attitude towards women."
"It's great that women can talk about sexual harassment and not be treated as a nuisance without a sense of humor. But like any ideal that has come true, it's starting to reach places that instead of doing good become mouthfuls, tainted with terrible righteousness."
She describes her early encounters with him at the "Little Prince" cafe in Tel Aviv: "He terrified me. Everyone around the table was marginal and had a passon, and everyone, Oded Carmeli and Yehuda Wiesen, terribly adored Boaz Yizraeli and passed his books from hand to hand, and I thought "I'm going to publish my first book in Am Oved, with Yuval Shimoni, and in the best and most institutional conditions, so I was sure he would kill."
He wrote an almost castrating review because she was good.
"True. But then, when I brought him the next story I wrote - 'Katzenelnbogen', which appears in 'Jewish Nose' - he told me, 'After you published a book like' Summer Predators ', you can in no way publish this story.' I said to myself, he seems to be exaggerating. From that moment I got rid of him, it seemed to me an incompetent opinion, because it was so absolute. He was very angry at writers like Dror Burstein, who after masterpieces published smaller, less ambitious things. "His utter negation, and the perception that one must constantly meet a certain standard - it's really not me. Let me write nonsense as well. It really disgusted him, for example, that I write on Facebook, it was ridiculous in his eyes."
As a critic, do you look up to the figure of the critic he has placed, as an authority standing at the gate?
"I try not to cling to models that can no longer exist. I have a tendency to hierarchy. I can not deny that if you are in a good place inside, if you are not at the bottom, you really enjoy it. After all, gatekeepers let you in, and did not let others in."
But perhaps critical awareness is less worthwhile today, because there is no clear hierarchy?
"Here I am ambivalent. When I started, it must have been important for me to be accepted, and to be accepted you need some kind of hierarchy. Criticism was more important to me than some would read. It was important for me to get a certificate, to understand who I am. Otherwise, who are you? 70 likes and he got 80 likes. On the other hand, there is no point in forcibly striving for models that no longer exist, there is something degenerate and degenerate in it. , Now there is no such difference.Especially if someone writes interesting and in-depth and I see that he has read the book.Today critics of the press are neither Amnon Navot nor Dan Miron.Today it is me, tomorrow it is you, according to the whims of the editor. "There is a great turnover and a complete mess."
When you break the centers of authority, it leaves too much power for money, right?
Today book publishers are willing to spend anything at the right price, and good public relations can get you far
.
"I know people who have money, and pay editors, distributors, publicists, etc., and still fail to break a certain ceiling. They may have quite a few buyers, but they are off the radar of awards and reviews, so those centers of authority have not been completely destroyed. A lot of writers, as long as you are sold you are fine. "
That is, the volume of sales replaces the old authority?
"Maybe. But I see it as an underworld of the real literary world."
Or you still see things through the prism of the old authority.
Einahar laughs.
"In my head, in my visuals, they are in the dark, and we are in the light. A dim lamp, but a light."
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