ARTS . Arts Picks

Etgar Keret

Reading and signing, Thu., Oct. 23, 7:30 p.m., free, with Rivka Galchen, Free Library, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341, freelibrary.org.


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Published: Oct 21, 2008

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Celebrated Israeli short-story writer Etgar Keret aptly likens himself to a magician — or a con man. How else to account for his capacity to reveal the complexity of humanity in a few paragraphs or a few pages?

His story "The Real Winner of the Preliminary Games," one of the highlights in his most recent collection The Girl on the Fridge (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $12), mixes drinking until you puke, the Olympic trials and suicidal thoughts. And like most of his work, it is surprisingly life-affirming.

"My parents passed through the Holocaust as children, and it made them optimistic," says Keret. "My mother said that her starting point was human beings who were racist, violent and horrible, but when the war stopped, people were nicer." How characteristically Keretian.

Likely drawn to his inability to be boring, Keret's devoted fans respond to his work even when it's at its most illogical. (See his story "Myth Milk," which contains a strange bit about an espresso maker on a quilt over a grave.)

"I do my best to express that life is fragile and worth something," Keret demurs. "I really feel that we are always living on some kind of edge — a thin line. It's like walking on a tightrope and not looking down."

Reading and signing, Thu., Oct. 23, 7:30 p.m., free, with Rivka Galchen, Free Library, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341, freelibrary.org.