The Universe of Amos Oz

A conversation with Amos Oz, the most well-known contemporary Israeli writer, about literature as a form of knowing others, unhappy families, the difficulty of a man to know the woman inside himself, the 'Arab Spring', and many other topics.

Interview by Mihaela Frank

Published by ELLE Romania in April 2012

I've never met anyone who has read a book by Amos Oz without being mesmerized by it. Whether it's about love or war, whether his characters are people living in a kibbutz or city folks from Jerusalem, men in their twenties or sixties, and women young or mature, Amos Oz has the gift of penetrating deep into the most intimate fibers of his characters’ minds and hearts. He has everything a writer needs (and dare I say, a man needs): he's fun, attractive, intelligent, empathetic, clear-sighted, and – when necessary – sharp. His books shake you from head to toe and make you think that the man who wrote them knows a lot about human nature. And he should because the life experience of this man is incredibly rich.

Amos Oz was born into a family of intellectuals who emigrated to Israel from Eastern Europe. He grew up in a house full of books and in a world constantly terrorized by conflicts, wars, and terrorist attacks – a world where, as someone told him in his childhood, 'not all boys will grow up to be great men.' At 12, his mother committed suicide, a tragedy that would mark his entire life and fill him with revolt against the world of his parents. Not long after that, at 15, young Amos left his parental home, changed his family name from Klausner to Oz, and settled in a kibbutz where he would live for the next thirty years. During that time, he married (at the age of 21), had three children, worked in agriculture, went to war, attended courses in philosophy and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, began to write, became the most famous Israeli writer, published political essays (being, along with writer David Grossman, a supporter of the two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict). For more than 20 years, he left the kibbutz (due to his son's health) and lived in a small town on the edge of the desert, called Arad. This is when he became, for the first time in his life, a property owner, because in a kibbutz there is no private property, members share all the goods and earnings. Now, at 72, Amos Oz has reconciled with the past, has forgiven his parents, and even finds amusement in the fact that, ultimately, despite all his efforts to be something else, he has become exactly what they wanted for their son.

The discussion below took place in Bucharest, where Amos Oz was invited by his Romanian publisher, Humanitas. The writer came accompanied by his wife Nily, a woman full of energy and good spirits, with whom he has been married for 52 years and about whom he says she deserves a prize for that. We met one morning, for half an hour, on the top floor of the Intercontinental Hotel, where the Israeli writer answered my questions with a warm voice and with perfectly constructed phrases, as if taken straight out of a book... signed by Amos Oz.

Question: The characters in your books are Jews who either live in a kibbutz or in a large city like Jerusalem. At the same time, these heroes are totally universal – they could be people from anywhere. Do you think this is the key to your international success?

Amos Oz: I think this is the key to any well-written book. Good literature is always provincial. All the authors of books I love – Chekhov, Faulkner, García Márquez – write about small, isolated places. And the world reads these books with pleasure because we are all provincial. Even if we live in a big city, we in fact live in a neighborhood, on a street, in an apartment building. So each of us lives in a small village, even if we live in a big city.

Question: I must confess that, before reading your books, I never really thought about the people living somewhere in this world in a country called Israel – except superficially, when the news channels sometimes report on conflicts in the region. Now, however, the people from this part of the world have become very familiar to me, just as the Russians became familiar after I read Dostoevsky (even though I have never been to Russia). Are you aware of this effect of your books?

A.O.: Absolutely. I believe that reading a good book is better than traveling. If you buy a plane ticket and go visit, for example, Colombia, say for two or three weeks, you will see monuments, museums, historical sites, if you're lucky you might talk with a few of the local people, and then you'll return home. But if you read a novel by García Márquez about Colombia, you're invited into the homes of the people there, into their living rooms, their kitchens, even their bedrooms. You go places no tourist ever goes. So, books are the best means possible to truly get to know other people, other traditions, other ways of life, other countries, other civilizations.

Question: Speaking of getting to know others, other peoples, other traditions... I've heard a touching story about the Arabic translation of your most important book, A Tale of Love and Darkness. Can you tell us about it? And how was this book about Jews received in the Arab world?

A.O.: The story is indeed very emotional. Six or seven years ago, a young Palestinian man from Israel named George Khoury was jogging on the campus of the University of Jerusalem when he was shot in the head and killed by Palestinian terrorists who mistook him for a Jew. After this tragedy, his grieving family decided to fund the Arabic translation of my book, A Tale of Love and Darkness, to commemorate their son and, at the same time, to help the two peoples get to know and understand each other better. So the Arabic translation, published in Beirut, Lebanon, is dedicated to the memory of George Khoury. The book was met with mixed feelings. Some critics shouted in anger: 'Why did we have to translate into Arabic an Israeli propaganda book?'. Others wrote: 'Let our writers read this book and learn how to write!'. So, it was a polarized reaction. The book has been published in all Arab countries. Very recently, someone brought me a pirated copy of the book in Kurdish, which had been translated from Arabic without my permission. Of course, I was very happy. Let as many people as possible read this book, because, as I've told you, I believe books build bridges between people.

Question: So you're aware of the critics' reactions to your book, but do you know anything about ordinary people, about average readers, so to speak?

A.O.: It's very hard to say because there is no direct communication between Jews and the Arab world. However, I have heard about some reactions from readers in the Arab world who read A Tale of Love and Darkness and said that this book changed them – just as you told me that reading my books made you think about the ordinary people of Israel. Because, in the minds of many Arabs, Israelis are nothing but cruel soldiers. So, when you read about Jewish families, about children, about everyday life, about their disappointments and sorrows, it opens your eyes, wherever you are.

Question: Have you kept in touch with the family of that assassinated boy?

A.O.: Yes. We are good friends and we visit each other from time to time. The father, Elias Khoury, is a prominent lawyer who has suffered the same tragedy twice: years ago, his father was killed in a Palestinian terrorist attack in Jerusalem. Then his son was killed. This man, who by the way is by no means a Zionist sympathizer, was struck twice by Palestinian terrorists.

Question: What do you think about the 'Arab Spring'? I remember seeing on TV some images from demonstrations in Cairo. A man was telling an American journalist: 'We want to be like you. We want to live in a normal, democratic country.' Do you think that man's dream has a chance to come true?

A.O.: I think it's a mistake to imagine that the same thing will happen in all Arab countries. That they will all evolve in the same way. Each Arab country is different. In some of them, we may see an 'Arab Spring', in others I fear we'll witness an 'Islamic Winter.' People believe that events in the Arab world will evolve just like the events in the communist bloc in 1989. That suddenly, dictatorships will be toppled, and freedom will take their place. It won't happen like that. Different things will happen in different Arab countries. Good things and, I'm afraid, bad things too.

Question: Back to your books, most of your heroes are, to a greater or lesser extent, unhappy people. Why is that?

A.O.: Think about a bridge over a river. If the bridge functions well, facilitating the traffic of 75,000 cars per day, hundreds of trains, and thousands of pedestrians, there's no story to tell about that. But if the bridge collapses, then we have a story. Happiness speaks for itself; it doesn't need a story. Only unhappiness needs its story to be told. Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina that all happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Question: Do you agree with that?

A.O.: Yes. Not entirely, but yes. I believe that happy families are also different sometimes. But if you ask me to describe my books in one word, I will say: 'about family'. If you ask me to answer in two words, I will say 'about unhappy families'. If you ask for three words, you'll have to read my books.

Question: Why does this subject, the family, attract you so much?

A.O.: For me, the family is the most fascinating institution in the universe. The most mysterious, the most paradoxical, the most tragic, the most comical, the most absurd, and the most enduring institution. Look how, for thousands of years, the family has survived – with difficulty, making all kinds of strange noises, struggling, fighting, but still alive. Jesus said that something better was coming to replace the family institution. Plato predicted the same thing. But the family has survived and still exists everywhere – from Greenwich Village to Iran and from Africa to the North Pole. This institution – mother, father, sons, daughters – still functions somehow, with difficulty, with straining, often with failures, but it keeps going. So, for me, the family is a great mystery. If I had to choose between two options, being part of the first mission to Mars and spending 24 hours as a fly in the house of a family – any family – I would choose to be the fly, not the astronaut. First, because it's much safer, and then because it's much more interesting.

Question: At the age of 15, you rebelled against your father and left home. You left Jerusalem to live in a kibbutz. Looking back at life in the kibbutz, was it as you dreamed it would be when you left the city?

A.O.: Nothing in real life will ever be like in our dreams. The only way to keep a dream perfect is to never live it. That's true for any kind of dream, whether it's about a journey, a vacation, starting a family, a sexual fantasy, or building a country. In every fulfilled dream, there's always a small feeling of disappointment. My disappointment wasn't related to the nature of the kibbutz but to the nature of the dream itself. So, my life in the kibbutz was not as I had dreamed it would be. But I learned a great deal about human nature, in the years I spent in the Hulda kibbutz. It was the best university I could ever have attended.

Question: You spent almost 30 years in the kibbutz. Have you ever dreamed of going out into the world, like one of your characters from A Perfect Peace?

A.O.: Many times. I think that every person – from a kibbutz or anywhere else – dreams from time to time of going out into the world. Every human being has fantasies about breaking the routine and escaping. It's the most common human fantasy.

Question: What held you?

A.O.: What held me was my curiosity about life in the kibbutz. I was very curious about this small community of 300 people, whose secrets I knew. I knew everything about everyone. Of course, my punishment was that they knew more about me than I would have liked them to know. But in the end, it was fair, I can't complain. So, curiosity kept me there for so many years.

Question: I assume that after you became a famous writer, things got 'worse' from this point of view. A famous writer usually lives in the spotlight. How do you reconcile with that?

A.O.: I don't live in the spotlight. I live in a small town, and I have a quiet, discreet life, with a very well-established daily routine. I don't go many places, I don't hang out in literary cafes, I don't often go on book tours, so I don't really live in the spotlight. I live in a small, isolated town called Arad, near the desert, and I stick to my daily schedule. I live with my family and my work. Sometimes, when I sit at a table in a cafe in Arad, people I don't know will sit next to me and start discussing politics – because most people in Israel don't agree with my politics, so they want to argue with me. But it doesn't bother me, I like it.

Question: Were you ever drawn to the mirage of the big cities?

A.O.: I like to stay in a big city for a week. After two weeks in New York, my adrenaline reserves are depleted, and I feel the need to return home.

Question: What is it like to live near a desert, to have the desert behind your house?

A.O.: The desert is wonderful. It teaches you to be humble. Every day, I wake up at five o'clock and take a 30–45-minute walk in the desert, sometimes I even spend the whole day there. It's a perfectly silent, empty, pure place. When I come home and turn on the radio, I hear a politician or another using words like "never", "always", or "forever" and I know the stones in the desert laugh at them. I love the desert. It’s a wonderful neighbor and a constant source of inspiration.

Question: So you don't live in the spotlight, but in a small city, you walk through the desert and mind your own business. Sounds more like the portrait of a monk than that of an internationally successful writer.

A.O.: Oh, I don't think so. I'm not a monk because I have a family and friends. I spend my evenings with my family, with our group of friends, usually in a large company – two or three couples. We talk, drink, talk about books, politics... So, I don't live like a monk, but like an ordinary person, surrounded by a small group of friends. A small group of people is enough for me. I don't believe in intimacy with a crowd of people. There is no such thing. Intimacy is only possible with a few people.

Question: How anchored are you in modern life? Do you use a computer, have email, or a Facebook account? Listen to music, go to the movies?

A.O.: Yes, I watch movies and listen to music – different genres, depending on the mood I'm in. Sometimes I listen to Baroque music in the morning and jazz in the evening. But I don't use email and the Internet. I have a computer, but I only use it as a typewriter. I think life is too short to spend part of it on the Internet, in front of the computer.

Question: People are always curious about this, so I'll ask you a very common question. What is your daily routine? Do you write easily or is it a difficult process?

A.O.: It's hard work. I spend my days at my desk, with a magnifying glass placed over my eyes – metaphorically speaking – like an old-fashioned watchmaker, and with a pair of tweezers in hand, with which I examine each word in the light, then I put it in a sentence, and if I'm not satisfied I take it out, set it aside and pick another word, which I examine again in the light and put in the sentence. Sometimes I take that one out too, polish it a bit, and then put it back in place. After that, sometimes I change all the other words in the sentence. That's what I do all the time. It's molecular work. Writing a novel is like building the entire Carpathian Mountains out of Lego pieces. Because a novel is made of words, not ideas, not concepts, not even plots. It is made of words and how the words are placed next to each other. I do believe in the accuracy, in precision with which you use words. Of course, no reader will ever notice how hard I worked to place a certain word in a sentence. But that's good. When you listen to a concert, you don't notice any particular note in a symphony, unless it's a false note. So, I work very hard so that my readers don't realize how hard I worked.

Question: It's not an easy life, the life of a writer...

A.O.: You know, in movies, we always see writers, in a few seconds sequence, writing furiously and full of inspiration, then the sequence changes and we are at the book launch reception, full of glamour, with the writer bombarded by flashlights, surrounded by friends and beautiful women. In reality, things are not like that.

Question: You've written a beautiful book called Knowing a Woman. Is it hard for a man to know a woman?

A.O.: I believe it's crucial for every man to learn to know the woman inside him. Inside every man, there's something of a woman. The man who cannot find the way to the woman within him will not find the way to any other woman either. And this book is very much about the journey of a very masculine man towards the woman inside him.

Question: Have you undertaken this journey yourself?

A.O.: Yes, I have. It's not an easy journey. My grandfather was a great womanizer, the kind from the 19th century, who would kiss women's hands, send them boxes of chocolate, open doors for them, send them flowers on their birthdays... And he was very successful with women. One day, when I was 36 and he was 92, he invited me to his office, closed the window, locked the door, and seated me, very formally, on a chair on the other side of the desk where he was sitting. Then he said, "My boy, it's time for the two of us to talk about women." I, again, was 36, married, and had two teenage daughters! But he thought that, finally, I was mature enough to talk about women. Then he said, "You see, my boy, women are, in a way, exactly like us. In other ways, they are totally different." Then he continued, "In what ways they are like us and in what ways they are different, that's a problem I'm still working on." I'm not yet 92, but I'm still working on this.

Question: You've been married for over 50 years. What's the secret to this marriage, which I assume to be successful?

A.O.: My wife is my best friend. That's the secret to a successful marriage: friendship.

Question: That’s it?

A.O.: That's the short answer. The long answer would take 50 years.

Question: ...and we only have time for one more question. You've explored the father-son relationship theme in many of your books. Clearly, the relationship with your father has preoccupied you for a long time. Have you, after all, made peace with him? What would you say to him today if you could talk?

A.O.: My father died 40 years ago. But I still talk to him every day. Most of the time, we argue about politics because we have very different opinions. Yes, I think I have made peace. I believe this because today I do what he always wanted for me: I write. When I was 14, I rebelled against my father's world. And since he was a city person, I decided to live in a kibbutz. He was right-wing, so I became a social democrat. He was an intellectual, I decided to become a tractorist. He was short, so I decided to be tall – that didn't work out, but I tried. I tried to be everything he wasn't. But here I am today, sitting in a room full of books and writing others, just as my father wished. So, yes, I have made peace. Not regarding politics, but otherwise, yes.

Amos Oz, the renowned Israeli writer, died on Friday, December 28, 2018, at the age of 79. He was one of the most respected intellectuals, prolific authors, and renowned peace advocate in his country. His writings have been translated into over 40 languages.