Another Israeli Novelist It�s reported that the g…
Another Israeli Novelist
It�s reported that the guy who paraglided into Buckingham Palace this week is a frustrated author. He was seeking publicity and thereby a publisher for a book he has written. He has learnt that getting published is often a greater struggle than writing a book in the first place. Publishers don’t like new names. I�ve also noticed that it doesn�t help if you�re also dead.
One of my favourite novels has failed to find a publisher in this country because the author died young (but not young enough, presumably). Yaakov Shabtai had a fatal heart attack twenty years ago. He was 47. His great work Past Continuous has since been released in the US (though it�s now out of print), and I�ve seen a German paperback. There�s even a film version. The novel is set in Tel Aviv and follows three men in their crazy world of friends, family and lovers. Nothing remarkable about that of course, except that there something unique about Shabtai�s prose. In the Hebrew original there are no paragraphs, and it�s a novel of over 350 pages. But whereas Thomas Bernhard, who is also famously paragraphless, is darkly humourous, Shabtai is joyously light. One reads as if on a crest of a wave.
Apparently, publishers find it difficult to generate interest in an author who�s not around to discuss the �peace process� or reveal all about his dental problems, so it looks like Past Continuous, or its follow up, Past Perfect, will never be published here. In the meantime, I�ve just found a short story online by him called Uncle Peretz Takes Off. Click on the link within the page that appears. The story itself is quite long (the print out is 21 pages) but it reads just like his novels and is definitely worth the trouble of printing.
Other SpikeMagazine.com posts of interest:
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