ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The first time I interviewed Etgar Keret about one of his short story collections, he told me that fiction helped him make sense of a crazy world.
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ETGAR KERET: It's like this kind of feeling as if I'm on this rocket or spaceship leaving Earth. And I look at the people down there and, you know, they seem smaller and smaller, and the things that they're doing, you know, I can make less and less sense of it.
SHAPIRO: That was 2019, and since then, the world has only gotten crazier. I met Etgar Keret face-to-face a few years later at his apartment in Tel Aviv, Israel. It was just a couple weeks after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. I was reporting on the beginning of a war that has now dragged on for more than a year and a half. And that day, Keret told me writing has always functioned like a sort of cushion for him.
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KERET: It's both something that protects me from reality, and at the same time can create a bridged reality...
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
KERET: ...And also makes me understand myself, you know?
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
KERET: So I really don't remember any time in my life that was bad that I didn't write in.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
KERET: But this time, it was as if, like, there was nothing to write because I guess that for writing you need to have a bit of a solid ground. This kind of feeling, you should know up from down. You should know what your name is, you know? If you don't hold that, you cannot do anything.
SHAPIRO: Well, he eventually was able to write because Etgar Keret now has a new short story collection called "Autocorrect," and he's with us now.
It's so good to talk to you again. Welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
KERET: Thank you for having me.
SHAPIRO: So what changed?
KERET: Well, the honest disclosure is that the books that you're holding, except for two stories, was written before the 7 of October.
SHAPIRO: Oh.
KERET: It's actually - it's ironic, but I was supposed to deliver the manuscript to the publishing house on the 8 of October.
SHAPIRO: Wow.
KERET: And what happened was that I read the manuscript on the 6, and I said to my wife, this book is too dark. You know, my mother died. I was depressed. You know, it's too much. And my wife said, you're such a drama queen, you know? Go to sleep, wake up tomorrow, read it again. If it will still feel too dark, you know, then tell your publisher.
And, of course, when I woke up the next day, I didn't remember I wrote a book. And it took me more than three months, you know, to even kind of just think that I've actually finished writing a book. And I've added two stories that I've written during the war, and suddenly the collection had made sense. You know, it's kind of - suddenly I understood what it was about. It was how to stay human in inhuman times.
SHAPIRO: It's so interesting to hear you say this because reading the collection, two thoughts that I had were, No.1, this feels much darker than your other books, and No.2, it doesn't feel obviously written during a war. There aren't contextual clues that would tell us that. And now that makes sense to me.
KERET: Yes. It's funny that from the two stories that I've written in the war, one of them - "Gondola" - is basically a story about a woman that meets somebody on Tinder, and this guy says that he's married, and she discovers that he isn't really married. So it's funny that, you know, after this horrible war and those horrible experiences, in the end, it all comes down on a story about somebody having a Tinder date, you know?
SHAPIRO: Yeah. That story also has no cues that it would have been written during a war. But like so many of the stories in this book, it focuses on a small personal relationship, and it also has an element of alternate realities without bordering on science fiction. It's like the world appears to be this way, but actually it's that way, or a small change might have led to a very different outcome. It's a theme that recurs again and again throughout these stories.
KERET: Yes, but I think that, you know, what makes a story is the choices that the character takes. I think that we live in an age when it's difficult to remember that because most of the time we don't take choices. You know, we go to Instagram and we see the cute kitten clips that was sent to us, or we go to the demonstrations that all the people from our community go to. But the idea of who you truly are and what decisions are really the decisions that you take was something that was crucial for my parents, who were Holocaust survivors, and it becomes crucial in my writings. It's as if I'm looking for my characters' fingerprints.
SHAPIRO: So you said that this collection is stories about how you maintain your humanity in an inhuman world. (Laughter) It's silly to ask, but what's the answer to the question?
KERET: Well, I think that the - first and foremost, the most important thing is to break root (ph), to own reality, to tell your own story; that when you're in a situation, you're not aperiodically (ph) a victim or a victimizer. When they tell you, don't forgive somebody, don't listen. Look in your heart and see if you want to forgive that person or not. And, you know, in the stories, most of my characters end badly, but at least they try, you know? And I think...
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
KERET: ...In this age, we should strive to try because even that seems to be an effort.
SHAPIRO: Can I ask what the other story in this collection is that you wrote since the beginning of the war?
KERET: It's called "Intention," and it's a story that I wrote after a long conversation that I had with my ultra-Orthodox sister. And I talked to her early during the war, and she told me that she doubled her prayers.
SHAPIRO: Right.
KERET: And I was very cynical about that, you know? I was both cynical and felt bad about being cynical. So at some stage, I told her, let's talk another day. And I did what I always do when I start finding myself becoming negative, and that's basically to try and write a story from the point of view of the person that I'm kind of criticizing. And I wrote a story about an ultra-Orthodox man who, after the 7 of October, decides to pray the perfect prayer that would bring peace to the Middle East, that would bring peace to Gaza, that would release the kidnapped people. And I've kind of tried to be that person.
And while writing the story, I realized that I'm not that different from my sister who prays because, actually, both writing fiction and praying is kind of assuming somebody on the other side. When I write a story, I assume that there is this perfect, nice and gentle reader who understand what I'm writing about.
SHAPIRO: Wow.
KERET: And it helps me formulate my thought and write a story that is important for myself. And when my sister prays, that - you know, without getting into theological issues - it kind of helps her figure out what she wants - you know? - where she wants to head, what she's afraid of. And in a second, you know, I stopped being critical, and I could call her again and be the nice brother that I was supposed to be in the first place.
SHAPIRO: So on October 6, you read most of this collection and said, it's too dark. Now when you read the collection, what do you think?
KERET: Now, it feels just right. You know, it - sometimes you have these kind of elevators that are stuck between the two floors. Now it just kind of slid, and it seems as if reality kind of stepped down a notch just to meet this dark book.
SHAPIRO: Etgar Keret's new book of short stories is called "Autocorrect." I always enjoy talking with you. It means so much to me. Thank you for the conversation.
KERET: Thank you so much.
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