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    Rhyming Life & Death: A Novel
    Rhyming Life & Death: A Novel
    Rhyming Life & Death: A Novel
    Ebook108 pages2 hours

    Rhyming Life & Death: A Novel

    By Amos Oz and Nicholas de Lange

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Fiction and reality merge inside the mind of a famous Israeli author in this “hilarious and profound . . . slyly philosophical novel” (Booklist).

    In this novel, Amos Oz offers a prismatic portrait of the storytelling impulse, with an extended glimpse inside the mind of a celebrated, unnamed Author.
     
    On a stiflingly hot night, the Author is in Tel Aviv to give a reading from his new book. As his attention wanders, he begins to invent lives for the strangers he sees around him: here, a self-styled cultural guru, Yakir Bar-Orian Zhitomirski; there, a love-starved professional reader, Rochele Reznik; to say nothing of Ricky the waitress, the real object of his desires. Reality and fiction blend in this ingenious, poignant work by the author of A Tale of Love and Darkness, a winner of the Koret Jewish Book Award.
     
    “A fable on themes of sex, death and writing pitched somewhere between the fictional universes of JM Coetzee and Milan Kundera.” — The Guardian
     
    “The witty and melancholy recorder of his country’s brilliant sufficiencies. . . . Now Oz takes an equally witty, equally melancholy look at his role as a writer.” —Los Angeles Times
     
    “From the prodigious Oz comes a delightfully elusive . . . story of imagination, talent and the transitory nature of fame. . . . Stamped with Oz’s charm and graceful skill in creating rich characters.” —Publishers Weekly
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateApr 26, 2010
    ISBN9780547416298
    Rhyming Life & Death: A Novel
    Author

    Amos Oz

    AMOS OZ (1939–2018) was born in Jerusalem. He was the recipient of the Prix Femina, the Frankfurt Peace Prize, the Goethe Prize, the Primo Levi Prize, and the National Jewish Book Award, among other international honors. His work, including A Tale of Love and Darkness and In the Land of Israel, has been translated into forty-four languages. 

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    Reviews for Rhyming Life & Death

    3.5/5

    53 ratings11 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Dit korte verhaal lijkt een spielerei, een vingeroefening van Oz, maar misschien is het dat net niet en is het hem dodelijke ernst. Onzekerheid dus, die zich ook vormelijk uit in voortdurend verschuivende perspectieven, korte stukjes actie en vervolgens weer mijmering. Opvallend is de focus op het groezelige en troosteloze van het bestaan. Uiteindelijk staan de schrijver en het schrijverschap centraal, en blijken alle personages de schrijver zelf, die daarmee de onmacht van zich af schrijft. Geen gemakkelijk boek, maar ik denk wel dat Oz er veel plezier aan heeft beleefd.
    • 3/5
      This was a difficult book for me. There were parts that I enjoyed but there were also parts that I had a hard time with because of the Israeli/Jewish words, history and names.

      This is a book about 8 hours of the Author/Narrator's life including time at a speaking engagement. What I believe is that the entire book is part of the Author trying to answer, "How do you write & why do you write". I think this book tries to answer these two questions by telling us stories hoping we will relate to his life (why) and connecting names, faces, people (how).

      I'll have to read this book again to see if I come up with the same opinion.
    • 3/5
      Dit korte verhaal lijkt een spielerei, een vingeroefening van Oz, maar misschien is het dat net niet en is het hem dodelijke ernst. Onzekerheid dus, die zich ook vormelijk uit in voortdurend verschuivende perspectieven, korte stukjes actie en vervolgens weer mijmering. Opvallend is de focus op het groezelige en troosteloze van het bestaan. Uiteindelijk staan de schrijver en het schrijverschap centraal, en blijken alle personages de schrijver zelf, die daarmee de onmacht van zich af schrijft. Geen gemakkelijk boek, maar ik denk wel dat Oz er veel plezier aan heeft beleefd.
    • 4/5
      To read this book is to transport yourself temporarily to another place. It is warm and humid, and the air-conditioning is unreliable. Filled with playfulness, 'the Author' is to give a talk at a cultural centre where many have gathered to hear him. Before, during, and after the engagement the Author tells us his thoughts and observations of the people he encounters and imagines, and how the evening transpires.Arriving early he detours to a nearby cafe, and it becomes clear that this Author is preoccupied with the lives of the others he observes. Amos Oz teases us with the possibilities of those lives - where they live, who they live with, who they loved, what they lost, and even what may slowly be killing them. Later in the night, once the event is over, the Author escorts the professional reader for a walk before saying goodnight to her. What happens beyond that is uncertain. Oz playfully suggests one possibility while ruling out another. Just as things fall neatly into place, he goes back and shows a parallel reality.I've read a few Oz books now and would say that this one has some passages I'd describe as 'classic Oz'. In places he is definitely in top gear as he supplies depth and intrigue to each and every character's life. At other times though it can feel that he has switched on the cruise control and taken his foot off the gas...A short book, Oz manages to pack so much in to the story that it feels like much more than has actually been read. The cast is long, and it is wonderful how much substance he manages to convey in so short a time. There are stories within stories here, and the possibilities are endless. All in all a very enjoyable read, and one that will probably reveal more to the reader each time it is rediscovered. An intriguing glimpse inside the mind of an author and how they may see the world around them in all its triviality and beauty.
    • 4/5
      A short poem of a book. It has it's wry funny moments and is beautifully empathetic about human frailty and the human condition, also the writing and translation are beautiful. One of those literary explorations into what writing is, what reading is, what the possibilities and pitfalls of both are. If you want to turn on the light and find out what is going on, this book is for you.
    • 4/5
      I have been fascinated with the writing process as of late and the idea behinds this book fascinated me.Eight hours in the life of the Author with all his inner thoughts and character creations laid out before your eyes. All the events may be part of the Authors reality, his characters, or a fantasy, you'll have to guess. It's like being part of theAuthor's innermost thoughts even fleeting ones. I found it fascinatng. QuotesSometimes he included a short epitaph for someone who was dead and forgotten except in the occassional thoughts of a child or grandchild, and even this memory was ephemeral because, with the death of the last person who remembered him, the subject of the poem would die A second and final death p 52if only he could say to her, Listen, Rochele, please don't be sad, after all, the characters in this book are all just the Author himself: Ricky, Charlie, Mr.Leon, Ovadya, Yuval, Yerucham, they are all just the Author and whatever happens to them here is really only happening to him, and even you, Rochele, are just a thought in my mind and whatever is happening to you and me is actually only happening toe. P. 84Actually, the angry teacher or deputy head of department Dr. Pessach Yikhat was quite right when he stood up at the end of the evening and declared furiously that one of the roles of literature is to distill from misery and suffering at least a drop of comfort or human kindness. How to pit it: to lick our wounds, if not to dress them. At the very least literature should not preen itself on mocking us and picking at our wounds, as modern writers in our days do ad nauseum. All they can write is satire, irony, parody (including self-parody), vicious sarcasm, all steeped in malice. In Dr. Pessach Yikhat's view they should have this fact pointed out to them and they should be reminde of their responsilities. 103
    • 4/5
      Rhyming Life and Death is the latest novel by the acclaimed Israeli novelist, public intellectual and peace activist Amos Oz. This was a short novel, and I thought it would be a good introduction to Oz's work.The events take place on one evening, in which the Author attends a public reading of his latest book. While a literary critic discusses his work and a woman reads from his book, he gazes out onto the audience, and creates stories about several people he see, along with a waitress at a cafe, that appear throughout the book. He also appears to have a relationship with the reader of his book, but there are several distinct episodes, and one is never sure where reality ends and fantasy/fiction begins. It was a moderately interesting and amusing exercise, but it wasn't exactly what I was looking for or expecting.
    • 4/5
      In a dramatic telling of a single night, Rhyming Life & Death is something of a story, and something of a demonstration of a story's genesis, exploring the wonders and twists of an imagination.Working from the mind of an author, our narrator for the duration, Oz wanders through his imaginings about an assortment of characters, bringing them together into a world that is hardpressed to be called either imaginary or real. In the end, it doesn't matter. Oz has explored the process and wonder of creation, and given us a story and a show in the process.Absolutely recommended.
    • 3/5
      A first book of this author for me. The book is kind of a circular story about an author and a book presentation and all his unstoppable imagination. For me there are 2 major themes in this book. The first is clearly about writing and being an author, the imagination, building up a story, suggestions, minimal changes in circumstances that can lead a story a complete other way .... Other reviews here on LT tell that all characters are the author himself, but for me some are just "extra characters" in his imagination to create interaction with the author.The second level or second theme "getting old" and the fragility of life. On top of all the characters (author or author's imagination) the difference between an older person (or character) and the younger is that they have a completely different viewpoint on the same situation, and thus another interpretation. Getting older is clearly fearsome for a lot of people amongst us and the author is no exception. In one of the key scenes the difference between young and older people is described and, in my humble opinion, it's no coincidence how this scene ends.Hard to say if some of the story is autobiographic. I don't know Oz good enough.Well written book, the circular effect of the story, the limited timeframe, the search for characters who are the author (all ?) or who are not ... Clearly Oz has no problems with inserting style patterns in his writing. But too me, after a good start there are some 20 - 30 pages where one is waiting for something to happen instead of just following the curious ways of the author's imagination. Then, happily, some action comes in and after this turnpoint it's easier to stay focused.
    • 4/5
      This was nice detour after the navigation of Ulysses. It was bitter cold outdoors and eight hours of an Author's life in Tel Aviv was a fitting escape.
    • 3/5
      This slim, inventive novel covers an 8-hour period in which a well-known author (referred to, simply, as the Author) participates in a reading from his recently published book. All the while, the Author concocts fictional personalities and stories about the real people he encounters during the course of the evening. Two men in a café, observed as the Author eats a pre-reading omelet, become “a gangster’s henchman” and his “agent of sorts, or perhaps a hairdryer salesman.” The waitress is cast in a week-long romance with “the reserve goalkeeper of Bnei-Yehuda football team.” During the reading and afterwards, as the Author walks the city until 4 a.m., his stories spin out into ever greater layers of complexity and interrelatedness, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. Through it all, the Author questions why he writes and discovers his art has become his only connection to the world:"[H]e continues to watch them and write about them so as to touch them without touching, and so that they touch him without really touching him. … He is covered in shame and confusion because he observes them all from a distance, from the wings, as if they all exist only for him to make use of in his books. And with the shame comes a profound sadness that he is always an outsider, unable to touch or to be touched …."Rhyming Life & Death is an interesting conceptual novel. Oz’s deconstruction of the creative process is unsettling because it reveals just how quickly we, the readers, will adopt a story line as a kind of “reality,” at least with respect to the protagonist. While this book’s cerebral pleasures are many, its emotional resonance falls flat. It’s difficult to care much about the Author’s roughly-drawn characters and sketchy stories, making Rhyming Life & Death more of an engaging philosophical exercise than a novel.

    Book preview

    Rhyming Life & Death - Amos Oz

    title page

    Contents

    Title Page

    Contents

    Copyright

    Rhyming Life & Death

    The Characters

    About the Author

    Connect with HMH

    Copyright © 2007 by Amos Oz

    Translation copyright © 2009 by Nicholas de Lange

    First published in Hebrew as Haruzei Hahayim Vehamavet by Keter Publishing House Ltd.

    First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Chatto & Windus Random House

    ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

    For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to trade.permissions@hmhco.com or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

    www.hmhco.com

    The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

    Oz, Amos.

    [Haruze ha-hayim veha-mavet. English]

    Rhyming life and death / Amos Oz ; translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange.

    p. cm.

    ISBN 978-0-15-101367-8

    I. De Lange, N. R. M. (Nicholas Robert Michael), date. II. Title.

    PJ5054.09H3713 2009

    892.4'36—dc22 2008049207

    eISBN 978-0-547-41629-8

    v2.0217

    ⊳⊳⊳

    These are the most commonly asked questions. Why do you write? Why do you write the way you do? Are you trying to influence your readers, and, if so, how? What role do your books play? Do you constantly cross out and correct or do you write straight out of your head? What is it like to be a famous writer and what effect does it have on your family? Why do you mostly describe the negative side of things? What do you think of other writers: which ones have influenced you and which ones can’t you stand? And by the way, how would you define yourself? How would you respond to those who attack you, and what do the attacks do to you? Do you write with a pen or on a computer? And how much, roughly, do you earn from each book? Do you draw the material for your stories from your imagination or directly from life? What does your ex-wife think of the female characters in your books? And, in fact, why did you leave your first wife, and your second wife? Do you have fixed times for writing or do you just write when the muse visits you? Are you politically committed as a writer, and, if so, what is your political affiliation? Are your books autobiographical or completely fictional? And above all, how is it that, as a creative artist, you lead such a stolid, unexciting private life? Or are there all sorts of things that we don’t know about you? And how can a writer, an artist, spend his life working as an accountant? Or is it simply a job for you? And tell us, doesn’t being an accountant totally kill your muse? Or do you have another life, one that’s not for publication? Won’t you at least give us a few hints this evening? And would you please tell us, briefly and in your own words, what exactly you were trying to say in your last book?

    There are clever answers and there are evasive answers: there are no simple, straightforward answers.

    And so the Author will sit down in a little café three or four streets away from the Shunia Shor Community Center building where the literary evening is to take place. The interior of the café feels low, gloomy, and suffocating, which is why it suits him rather well right now. He will sit here and try to concentrate on these questions. (He always arrives half an hour or forty minutes early for any meeting, and so he always has to find something to do to pass the time.) A tired waitress in a short skirt, and with high breasts, dabs a cloth over his table: but the Formica remains sticky even after she has wiped it. Maybe the cloth was not clean?

    While she does it the Author eyes her legs: they are shapely, attractive legs, although the ankles are a little on the thick side. Then he steals a look at her face: it is a pleasant, sunny face, with eyebrows that meet in the middle and the hair tied back with a red rubber band. The Author detects a smell of sweat and soap, the smell of a weary woman. He can make out the outline of her underpants through her skirt. His eyes fix on this barely discernible shape: he finds a slight asymmetry in favor of the left buttock exciting. She notices his look groping at her legs, her hips, her waist, and her face expresses disgust and entreaty: just leave me alone, for heaven’s sake.

    And so the Author politely looks away, orders an omelet and salad with a roll and a glass of coffee, extracts a cigarette from its packet, and holds it unlit in between the second and third fingers of his left hand which is supporting his cheek: an intensely cultured look that fails to impress the waitress because she has already turned on the heels of her flat shoes and vanished behind the partition.

    While he waits for his omelet, the Author imagines the waitress’s first love (he decides to name the waitress Ricky): when Ricky was only sixteen she fell in love with the reserve goalkeeper of Bnei-Yehuda football team, Charlie, who turned up one rainy day in his Lancia in front of the beauty parlor where she worked and swept her away for a three-day break in a hotel in Eilat (of which an uncle of his was part-owner). While they were there, he even bought her a sensational evening dress with silver sequins and everything, that made her look like a Greek singer, but after two weeks or so he dropped her and went off again to the same hotel, this time with the runner-up in the Queen of the Waves contest. Eight years and four men later, Ricky has never stopped dreaming that one day he will come back: he had episodes where he would seem to be terribly angry with her, really scary, dangerous, as if he was about to go crazy, and she was quite alarmed at times, but suddenly, in an instant, his mood would lighten and he would forgive her, cuddling her with childlike happiness, calling her Gogog, kissing her neck, tickling her with his warm breath, gently parting her lips with his nose, like this, which gave her a warm sensation that crept over her body, like honey, then suddenly he would toss her up in the air, hard, like a pillow, until she screamed for her mother, but he always caught her at the very last moment and hugged her, so she wouldn’t fall. He liked to tickle her with the tip of his tongue, slowly for a long time behind both ears and inside her ears and on the nape of her neck where the finest hairs grew, until that feeling crept over her like honey again. Charlie never raised a finger against her or called her names. He was the first man who taught her to slow-dance, and to wear a micro bikini, and to lie naked face down in the sun and think dirty thoughts, and he was the first man to teach her what drop earrings with green stones did for her face and neck.

    But then he was forced to return the Lancia and wear a plaster cast on his fractured arm and he went off to Eilat again but this time with a different girl, Lucy, who almost won the Queen of the Waves competition, and, before he left, he said to Ricky, Look here, Gogog, I’m really really sorry but try to understand. Lucy was before you, Lucy and I didn’t really break up, we just had a bit of a spat and somehow it turned out that we didn’t see each other for a while, but now we’re back together again and that’s that, Lucy said to tell you that she’s really not mad at you, no hard feelings, you’ll see, Gogog, after a while you’ll gradually get over our thing together and I’m sure you’ll find someone who suits you more, because the fact is, you deserve someone better, you deserve the best there is. And the most important thing, Gogog, is that you and I only have good feelings about each other, no?

    Eventually Ricky gave the sequined dress away to a cousin and relegated the bikini to the back of a drawer, behind her sewing kit, where it was forgotten: men can’t help themselves, that’s just the way they are made, but women in her view are actually not much better, and that’s why love is something that one way or another always turns out badly.

    Charlie hasn’t played for Bnei-Yehuda for a long while. Now he has a wife and three children and owns a factory in Holon making solar water heaters—they say he even exports them wholesale to the Occupied Territories and to Cyprus. And what about that Lucy? With her skinny legs? What happened to her in the end? Did Charlie throw her away too when he’d finished using her? If only I had her address, or her phone number, and if I had the guts, I’d go and look her up. We could have a coffee together. And talk. We might even become friends, the two of us. It’s strange how I don’t give a damn about him anymore but I do care a bit

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