In the army you feel violated - there's no private space. Writing was a life-saver, a way of recovering private territory.
Etgar KeretEtgar means "challenge." And my family name is Keret, which means "urban." So my name is "urban challenge." My joke is, it's a good description of a birth but a strange name for a human being.
Etgar KeretIn Israel, there is this reduction of the political discourse to something that is very limited. It's as if you have that pitch that only dogs can hear. Sometimes I feel I speak at such a pitch that very few people around me communicate with what I'm saying.
Etgar KeretWhen I was a kid, I wanted to make my parents happy. I'd always say to them, "What do you want me to do? Do sports? Be rich? Be funny?" My mother would say, "Whatever we want from you, you already gave us - we wanted you to be alive, and you made it."
Etgar KeretWhat happens when you speak colloquial Hebrew is you switch between registers all the time. So in a typical sentence, three words are biblical, one word is Russian, and one word is Yiddish. This kind of connection between very high language and very low language is very natural, people use it all the time.
Etgar Keret