Writing in the Dark: Essays on Literature and Politics

by David Grossman, Jessica Cohen (Translator)

Recent essays on Israel, literature, and language from one of the country's most respected and best-loved voices

Throughout his career, David Grossman has been a voice for peace and reconciliation between Israel and its Arab citizens and neighbors. In six new essays on politics and culture in Israel today, he addresses the conscience of a country that has lost faith in its leaders and its ideals. This collection includes an already famous speech concerning the disastrous Second Lebanon War of 2006, the war that took the life of Grossman’s twenty-year-old son, Uri.

Moving, humane, clear-sighted, and courageous, touching on literature and artistic creation as well as politics and philosophy, these writings are a cri de coeur from a heroic voice of reason at a time of uncertainty and despair.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Israel, Politics, Philosophy, Writing, Literature

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

From ithl.org:

Leading Israeli novelist David Grossman (b. 1954, Jerusalem) studied philosophy and drama at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and later worked as an editor and broadcaster at Israel Radio. Grossman has written seven novels, a play, a number of short stories and novellas, and a number of books for children and youth. He has also published several books of non-fiction, including interviews with Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. Among Grossman`s many literary awards: the Valumbrosa Prize (Italy), the Eliette von Karajan Prize (Austria), the Nelly Sachs Prize (1991), the Premio Grinzane and the Premio Mondelo for The Zig-Zag Kid (Italy, 1996), the Vittorio de Sica Prize (Italy), the Juliet Club Prize, the Marsh Award for Children`s Literature in Translation (UK, 1998), the Buxtehude Bulle (Germany, 2001), the Sapir Prize for Someone to Run With (2001), the Bialik Prize (2004), the Koret Jewish Book Award (USA, 2006), the Premio per la Pace e l`Azione Umanitaria 2006 (City of Rome/Italy), Onorificenza della Stella Solidarita Italiana 2007, Premio Ischia - International Award for Journalism 2007, the Geschwister Scholl Prize (Germany), the Emet Prize (Israel, 2007)and the Albatross Prize (Germany, 2009). He has also been awarded the Chevalier de l`Ordre des Arts et Belles Lettres (France, 1998) and an Honorary Doctorate by Florence University (2008). In 2007, his novels The Book of Internal Grammar and See Under: Love were named among the ten most important books since the creation of the State of Israel. His books have been translated into over 25 languages.

See also other authors with similar names.

Reviews

[Mariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Among the tortures and devastations of life is this then- our friends are not able to finish their stories.' Virginia Woolf 'The Waves'

Today I know that at ten I discovered that books are the place in the world where both the thing and the loss of it can coexist.

I kind of ruined this review for ever writing it by writing it in my head while I was doing other stuff like working or driving. Not the doing other stuff but that I took it down too many other paths to get back to where I had been. It's been months. In my head I loved when Grossman discovered that his father wanted to show him where he had lived when he gave him his favorite stories from childhood. I wanted to learn how to keep my heart in a world that is colder than the dry eye that springs up around the defeated Witch of the West. She has a lot of sisters. I relived being talked to like a person in chopped off talking heads nowhere land. Change the conversations, say what you mean, turn on the damned lights. The politics part I was relieved enormously like when someone is sane in a room of straight jacketed bull shit.

I take a lot of words and feelings inside myself from what I read and hear to hope against the opposite ends of my anti-words that they will be enough when I need them. Ideas, something to play with and keep warm. The anti-words are not silence but what would drown out by taking away. I'll try not to hibernate inside of them if I eat too much but sometimes I do. I can go "quiet" and do nothing but read for months and months. It settles the dust on my confusion when it is too much when it works. I don't know what else works.

Someone on goodreads who has helped me a lot without knowing it, really I would say fitting my loose parts I wouldn't have bridged alone, is Emilie. She has written my very favorite reviews and comments I have ever read on goodreads. If you could feel understood it is that kind of feeling. It has infinite value to me, this feeling. I have other favorites too (it could be just a shelf title and I'll find it oddly reassuring. That Eric put Rilke's book on his "hearts-laid-bare" shelf got me to thinking a lot about writers who make it "safe" for sensitive people, like I feel Rilke does, like making the world degrees warmer enough for survival. The smallest things can mean a lot to me on here). But my favorite is when Emilie said about Martin Millar in her comment thread for his Lonely Werewolf Girl(I would read this forever and be happy) that she felt that he was writing friends for himself. I have thought about this so many times since then. I have used it to explain feelings to myself about books. I have wanted to write friends for myself. It's more than that it is a whole self inside that will make enduring everything that needs to be endured happen. I have been afraid of writing friends for myself because it takes a lot of materials to be able to create in this way. You get tired. I feel afraid of forgetting how to do anything else. My feeling is that it has taken Martin Millar so long to finish writing the third Kalix book because of this. I stopped checking his blog for updates because it was painful to read about his addictions to some new video game. But I need you to write friends for me! If only someone else could do it for me. David Grossman has this world of scales in miniature and when you feel small like a kid again of writing for yourself. He gets it like no one else I know of but Emilie and probably Martin Millar have understood. You want to write it all, your outside and insides, and it is really scary because you know what you are missing and you can't do it all. The missing parts become the anti-words. Emilie once commented "Talk Ofer to Me" about what Grossman did in his novel To the End of the Land. If you could save someone else. It's when you want to write for someone else but it is really a hope about that missing part of yourself. You don't really want to be alone and you hope to be understood. I felt so much better when Emilie wrote about that because I struggle a lot to be understood. I used to ask "Does anyone else feel this too?" a lot on goodreads because I kinda secretly hoped someone would say they did. David Grossman understands this feeling. I know he does because he wrote about it in Writing in the Dark. I wish I could learn from him about how to remove the barriers in the building. Maybe let something be what it is instead of needing so much to live on.

I write, and the world does not close in on me. It does not grow smaller. It moves in the direction of what is open, future, possible. I imagine, and the act of imagination revives me. I am not fossilized in the face of predators. I invent characters. Sometimes I feel as if I am digging people out of the ice in which reality has encased them. But perhaps, more than anything, the person I am digging out at the moment is myself.

I read these in October. Some I had read years ago (there are six essays over all) in other things before they were collected here in a book. Jessica Cohen translated again (she translated To the End of the Land). I checked out her blog not too long ago hoping she would post that she had finished translating Grossman's new novel (not yet sighs). I noticed several remarks from her about critics who seem to think that books translate themselves. I don't think that but sometimes I forget to mention the translators because I got self conscious about worrying about it too much in other reviews. I definitely include them in the force fields of understanding between one another. I cannot read Hebrew. I've read different translators working with Grossman's material. To me this is reassuring in a voice coming out no matter what brain mass lands it shores on. I'm afraid of trying to describe this voice to me that feels "safe" for me to be in. It is a home that I cannot always go back to because I don't have it unless I am reading someone else.

I write. I give intimate private names to an external and foreign world. In a sense, I make it mine. In a sense, I return from feeling exiled and foreign to feeling at home. By doing so, I am already making a small change in what appeared to me earlier as unchangeable. Also, when I describe the impermeable arbitrariness that signs my destiny — arbitrariness at the hands of a human being, or arbitrariness at the hands of fate — I suddenly discover new nuances, subtleties. I discover that the mere act of writing about arbitrariness allows me to feel a freedom of movement in relation to it. That by merely facing up to arbitrariness I am granted freedom — maybe the only freedom a man may have against any arbitrariness: the freedom to put your tragedy into your own words. The freedom to express yourself differently, innovatively, before that which threatens to chain and bind one to arbitrariness and its limited, fossilizing definitions.

Grossman writes about the books that have read me. That is title of the first essay. I really loved that title. He writes about the inner logic within himself from inside the stories that he has been in. That is exactly what it is like. The best feeling I have known is going inside a story and what happens in it takes on a reality that unfolds if you could understand your own life. Touch the people in it. That they would LET you touch them because they wanted you to know them. The context they take is mental braille words to touch and those words make you made enough to do the same when it really happens. It is better than a scar or a belly button from when they cut you when you were born. I feel like I'm a warmer person when I feel alive in this way.

I can't remember now which part it even was because I stupidly didn't mark it for myself. Well, I didn't know this was what I was going to want to hold on to for mental stringing. Never mind, I found it. I had to find it. He writes about Bialik's poem "My Song" not using literary source of inspiration to describe his childhood bookshelves. He wrote about his mother's sigh about a cricket from inside the father's home after she has lost him. Grossman didn't use a literary source of inspiration because of a literary source of inspiration. I related to this so much, the way it informed and set him free the same love.
He wrote about the inspiration of claustrophobia. (This was his inspiration for one of my favorite books, The Book of Intimate Grammar.) If you could be set free and love from the same source, to write and hold yourself up, then you could live in books and live outside of the books. It doesn't have to be a trap, maybe. You don't have to get stuck. I love that Grossman struggles with this too. I can't tell you how reassuring it was to me to read this when I was feeling so alone outside of the written word. I really, really didn't want to have to keep on writing friends for myself. Bless everyone who makes it feel less alone in those times. I can't thank you enough.

So my feeling a couple of months ago when I started review writing this review in my head was literary examples. A lot of Virginia Woolf. Some of Grossman's favorite Bruno Schulz. No, Mariel, you're doing it all wrong! I was too depressed to try to write this review until I started thinking about just admitting that I need the words of other people.

I write. I feel the many possibilities that exist in every human situation, and I feel my capacity to choose among them. I feel the sweetness of liberty, which I thought I had lost. I take pleasure in the richness of a real, personal, intimate language. I remember the delights of breathing fully, properly, when I manage to escape the claustrophobia of slogans and cliches. I begin to breathe with both lungs.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful essays on writing, war and peace (not to be confused with Tolstoy's book on writing "War and Peace")*. Most are incredibly sad, especially those written after the death of Grossman's son in the second Lebanon war - a war that Grossman vehemently opposed from the start. As an Israeli, I came away from this book feeling pretty depressed and hopeless about the state of things in my country. But Grossman is definitely a "prophet of wrath" - he tends to make very harsh judgments about the corruption of Israeli society, while idealizing the lifestyles and morals of people elsewhere (and elsewhen). Few people in Israel voice opinions like Grossman's, and Israelis need to sit up and pay attention to what he's saying - some serious soul-searching is definitely in order. However, there are many positive aspects of Israeli society (such as closeness with family, friendships, a sense of being part of a larger community whether you like it or not) that are sorely lacking elsewhere and shouldn't be trivialized.

Oh, and many, many thanks to Hannah for the proof!

*Sorry DG, your book deserves far more serious treatment but I just couldn't help it.

[Peter Allum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essays on the human cost of Israel's militarism

A slim collection of six essays dating from the late-1990s to the mid-2000s.

In the first essay, "Books That Have Read Me", Grossman reflects on the readings that shaped him as a novelist. He cites a range of names, many familiar (Kafka, Thomas Mann, Heinrich Boll, Virginia Woolf, Joyce, Camus) as well as Sholem Aleichem, A.B. Yehoshua, and Amos Oz.

He also cites another "precious source of inspiration and awe", the writing of Bruno Schulz, a Polish Jew from Galicia. Grossman notes that "he was a modest art teacher who turned his small domestic life into a tremendous mythology, and today he is considered one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century." With these plaudits, I immediately ordered one of Schulz's short story collections.

In the remaining five essays, Grossman discusses why he writes (in "The Desire to be Gisella") and speaks to the political/security situation in Israel. These essays blur into a single, strong message about the psychic cost to the Israeli people of the state's permanently poised state of military readiness:

"When we live in a perpetual state of battle for our very existence, we often begin, out of despair and anxiety, and perhaps mainly out of exhaustion, to believe deep in our hearts that the war--in all its forms and guises--is the main thing in life, and often the only thing. We are so submerged in our warped perception that we barely grasp the true price we are paying for living alongside our own lives, for not daring even to dream about the whole spectrum of possibilities that a full, normal, peaceful life can offer a human being."

"The violence in which we have been living for so long acts naturally and incessantly to turn human beings into faceless, one-dimensional creatures lacking volition. Wars, armies, regimes, and fanatic religions try to blur the nuances that create personal, private uniqueness, the nonrecurrent wonder of each and every person, and attempt to turn people into a mass, into a horde, so that they may be better "suited" to their purposes and to the entire situation."

"The constant--and very real--fear of being hurt, the fear of death, of intolerable loss, or even of "mere" humiliation, leads each of us, the citizens and prisoners of the conflict, to dampen our own vitality, our emotional and intellectual range, and to cloak ourselves in more and more protective layers until we suffocate."

And Grossman discusses how, somehow, he manages to escape this suffocating burden when he writes:

"I also write about what cannot be restored. About what has no comfort. Then too, in a way I still cannot explain, the circumstances of my life do not close in on me and leave me paralyzed. Many times a day, as I sit at my writing desk, I touch sorrow and loss like someone touching electricity with bare hands, yet it does not kill me. I do not understand how this miracle has come to pass. Perhaps after I finish this novel, I will try to understand. Not now. It is too soon."

This is deeply human, eloquent, sensitive writing. I had not previously considered how a national undercurrent of anxiety, fear, and even defiance can sap the human possibilities of an entire country. Ironically, Grossman's essays are a testimony to this subtle oppression. In each case, he circles back to the same theme, Israel's fragile existence, its militaristic response, and the resultant human cost. The essays therefore have a sameness to them and the collection, as a result, seems somewhat restricted in its range. That said, Grossman is undeniably an impressive writer and moral force.

[Ingeborg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very good book, food for thought. The style is relatively simple, there is not too much quotation, and it is a real pleasure to read. This is a fine example of a person who uses his text to help him think.

There are many interesting questions here, but I will especially point out two:

I like it how Grossman states that he writes from the desire "to know the Other from within him". Writing from another point of view - as well as reading about the point of view that is not ours - is an excellent opportunity to understand the complexity of our existence. For example, as soon as our 'enemies' become real people with their faces and fates, they will be less abstract and alien to us, we will start regarding them as human beings.

And an even more important point: this is a book about language, mass media, about our basic need to posess our own language. What does this mean exactly? Grossman states - we are being suffocated by the language of politics and media, after a while we understand it and posess it as our own language, which is a mistake that makes us think less, and we become fragile and prone to demagogues.

That's why we should use literature to help us gain our own language, in a sense - to return to ourselves, to our "pure" language as it was before we were contaminated by politics, media etc. It is exactly fine literature with its distinct language that reminds us of our right to uniqueness and individuality, and we should never forget that. The best stories make us more human, whereas the cliches of politics and mass media "freeze us into one official story", make us insensitive, and often deprive us from the flexibility of thought.

Quote: At its best, literature can be kind to us: it can slightly allay our sense of insult at the dehumanzation that results from living in a large, anonymous global societies. (...) Reading literature restores our dignity and our primal faces, the ones that existed before they were blurred and erased among the masses. Before we were expropriated, nationalized, and sold wholesale to the lowest bidder.

[Άννα Μακρή · Rating 4 out of 5]

Η λογοτεχνική αξία αυτών των κειμένων ανεβοκατέβαινε από πολύ ψηλά έως μέτρια επίπεδα, αλλά η ανθρωπιστική τους αξία έμεινε σταθερά στην κορυφή, από την πρώτη λέξη ως την τελευταία. Για 'μένα, το μεγαλύτερο ενδιαφέρον (γι' αυτό το αγόρασα κιόλας) είχαν οι σκέψεις πάνω στη δύναμη της γλώσσας και πώς χρησιμοποιείται από τους κονσερβοποιούς των ανθρώπων. Και πώς μπορούμε όλοι μας να τη χρησιμοποιήσουμε για να ακουστεί η δική μας φωνή, η προσωπική, ατομική φωνή του καθενός.

[Frances · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book up on a whim, having only read Run With Her and Sleeping On a Wire. I can't recommend this book enough. I thought the essays within so thoughtfully and beautifully written. What I appreciate about how Grossman talks about the conflict and Palestine's future is that his peacenik views didn't change after the death of his son, Uri, in the Lebanese War. I think this dedication to peace is admirable, but also recognize that, since I don't have children, or children who have died in a senseless war, I can't really judge how people in that position react. Intergenerational trauma and loss can make people act in horrible ways.

When he's not talking to a foreign audience, he talks directly to Israelis, encouraging them to see how, in addition to the horrors involved in keeping Palestinians in ghettos, denying them rights, taking their land, and killing them indiscriminately (including women and children), the conflict deforms Israelis. (He also does so taking into consideration that Israelis' defensiveness is not mere paranoia: history proves that, in fact, Jews have often been right in thinking that everyone is out to get them.) I think that if any change is to come, Israelis will have to encourage Israelis to think differently. Anyone outside that unique and harrowing world would not be taken seriously.

This book also resonated with me as an American, as the United States is largely responsible for much of the world's misery, in Israel and many, many other places. It's easy to get discouraged, but if Grossman can look at Israel's flaws unflinchingly, so can we.

In such a short volume, Grossman addresses an unbelievably wide array of subjects. Below are some quotes I particularly liked.

"My generation, the children of the early 1950s in Israel, lived in a thick and densely populated silence. In my neighborhood, people screamed every night from their nightmares. More than once, when we talked into a room where adults were telling stories of the war, the conversation stopped immediately. We did pick up on the occasional fragment: 'The last time I saw him was on Himmelstrasse in Treblinka,' or 'She lost both her children in the first Aktion.' Every day, at twenty minutes past one, there was a ten-minute program on the radio in which a female announcer with a glum and rhythmic voice read the names of people searching for relatives lost during the war and in the Holocaust: Rachel, daughter of Perla and Abraham Seligson from Przemyśl, is looking for her little sister Leah'leh, who lived in Warsaw between the years...Eliyaho Frumkin, son of Yocheved and Hershl Frumkin from Stry, is looking for his wife, Elisheva, née Eichel, and his two sons, Yaakov and Meir...And so on and on forth. Every lunch of my childhood was spent listening to the sounds of this quiet lament."

"I feel the heavy price that I and the people around me pay for this prolonged state of war. Part of this price is a shrinking of our soul's surface area--those parts of us that touch the violent, menacing world outside--and a diminished ability and willingness to empathize at all with other people in pain. We also pay the price by suspending our moral judgment, and we give up on understanding what we ourselves think. Given a situation so frightening, so deceptive, and so complicated--both morally and practically--we feel it may be better not to think or know. Better to hand over the job of thinking and doing and setting moral standards to those who are surely 'in the know.' Better not to feel too much until the crisis ends--and if it never ends, at least we'll have suffered a little less, developed a useful dullness, protected ourselves as much as we could with a little indifference, a little repression, a little deliberate blindness, and a large dose of self-anesthetics. The constant--and very real--fear of being hurt, the fear of death, of intolerable loss, or even of 'mere' humiliation, leads each of us, the citizens and prisoners of the conflict, to dampen our own vitality, our emotional and intellectual range, and to cloak ourselves in more and more protective layers until we suffocate."

"My conclusion is that in many ways, we humans--social creatures known for our warmth and empathy toward our families, friends, and communities--are not only efficiently protected and fortressed against our enemies, but in some ways also protected--meaning, we protect ourselves--*from any Other.* From the projection of the Other's internality onto ourselves; from the way this internality is demandingly and constantly thrown at us; from something that I will call 'the chaos within the Other.' 'Hell is other people,' said Sartre, and perhaps our fear of the hell that exists in others is the reason that the paper-thin layer of skin that envelops us and separates us from others is sometimes as impervious as any fortified wall or border."

[Merili · Rating 3 out of 5]

Writing from the world of yesterday.

[Heather Richardson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought-provoking collection of essays from Israeli writer Grossman. 'The Desire to be Gisella' has particular lessons for fiction writers: Grossman unpicks his approach to inhabiting his fictional characters, and bringing them properly to life.

[Jaime Garba · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro de extraordinarios ensayos sobre la escritura y la literatura en el contexto de conflictos políticos y sociales. Grossman habla de sus motivaciones y retos, sus voces narrarivas y experiencias, que sirven para proyectar al lector en su propia realidad.

[Erika Dreifus]

My review of this book appears on My Machberet.

[Rocio · Rating 3 out of 5]

"La tierra sigue temblando debajo de nuestros pies"
Unos ensayos que nos cuentan el arte de escribir. De como el escritor deja una parte de sí mismo en el libro que escribe. Nos narra un poco de su libro "Vease: amor". Nos cuenta de la situación que es vivir en un país nuevo. El cual, no se sabe bien donde empieza y donde termina ya que las fronteras se van moviendo con el tiempo. Nos habla del conflicto entre Palestina y Israel.
Algunos ensayos me gustaron mas que otros. Unos me resultaron pesados y aburridos. Sentí que daba mil vueltas al mismo tema y no llegaba al punto. En otros me fascinaron y no quería que terminará.
Fue interesante leerlo en el momento actual que está viviendo el país. Me mostró como es tener que acostumbrarse desde que naces a vivir en continuas guerras. Como es vivir en un país sin paz. Donde no podes descansar ni un poco. Donde a un hijo te lo arrebata el ejercito. Es realmente triste de leer. Me abrió los ojos a un mundo nuevo.
Es un libro que habla sobre la escritura y la política. Un libro que te llega al alma en algunos momentos. Lo recomiendo, aunque no me haya encantado. En definitiva no me dejo indiferente.

"Lo que pedimos (...) es que un hombre pueda vivir toda la vida desde principio hasta el fin sin conocer ninguna guerra

[Milly Cohen · Rating 2 out of 5]

pues no, no me encanta
tiene partes padres, algunas frases, unas reflexiones sobre la escritura
pero sus opiniones sobre la guerra, mmm, luego del 7 de octubre, debieron haber cambiado
resulta tan obsoleto y ridículo hablar sobre un entendimiento y cordialidad y muchas otras cosas luego de la masacre
esperaría que sus opiniones hayan cambiado, pero leí que no
que sigue diciendo que la empatía y el diálogo es lo que necesitamos

en su capítulo sobre Los libros que me han hablado, habla de los suyos, soberbio
y conste que yo lo amo, y que La vida entera es uno de mis libros favoritos de la vida

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grossman, the brilliant Israeli novelist, presents six essays (or speeches) written between 1998 and 2007, the first four on the intersection of literature and politics and two others more exclusively on politics. The politics, of course, is that of Israel, where Grossman was born and raised, a land that has known no peace or settled borders since long before its founding. Grossman has served in its military in multiple wars and lost his 21 year old son in another war. He doesn’t question the necessity or rightness of a Jewish homeland. His study of literature and Jewish and world history underscores both. He does not underestimate the influence of anti-Semitism in the world, or in the embattled region in which Israel sits. Whether peace ever comes, there will be, he notes, much for the world to do to eliminate hatred of the Jews—witness in the US how the far right is home to both strong pro-Israel and anti-Semitic beliefs and hysteria.

Grossman does question the actions and decisions of Israel’s government that have contributed to endless conflict and an existential standoff, where absent settled borders Israel exists only by denying its founding principles and ever more ruthlessly oppressing the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Grossman does not believe this is sustainable. His optimism has been weakened by the reality of recent history—the assassination of Rabin, the breakdown of the peace process, the dominance of Netanyahu and his extremist policies. Yet the alternatives are unthinkable.

The more literary essays are entertaining and insightful. He writes in “Books that Have Read Me” about books that had influenced him and how that influence surfaced in his own writing. His traditions go back to the Yiddish literature of central and eastern Europe (Over There) and, of course, Hebrew language and literature as well. Grossman’s father emigrated to Palestine in 1936 and the author was born in Israel in 1954. As a boy Grossman knew nothing of Yiddish literature or of life of Jews in Europe but then, at age 8, his father gave him a book by Sholem Aleichem and the connection was immediate even if the understanding came later. In the meantime he inhabited two realities, one of Israel in the 60s and one of Over There back when. The two came together when, during a Holocaust Remembrance Day, “It struck me all at once. Suddenly. The six million, the murdered, the victims, the ‘Holocaust martyrs,’ all those terms were in fact my people. They were Mottel and Tevye and Shimele Soroker and Chavaleh and Stempenyu and Lily and Shimek. On the burning asphalt of Beit Hakerem school, the shtetl was suddenly taken from me.”

From here, in this fabulous essay, Grossman advances to his work and how the questions provoked from the loss he felt with this epiphany were the ones he wrestled with in his work—“the arbitrariness of an external force,” for example, citing four of his books with a different external force: See Under: Love it was Nazism; The Smile of the Lamb and Yellow Wind it was a self-described enlightened military occupation; and in The Book of Intimate Grammar the victim is the soul and the external force “the unequivocal quality of flesh” it inhabits. But this essay and the ones that follow it do not stop there but discuss other influential works and animating ideas in his catalog. It is fascinating reading. Grossman is a master of world literature blessed with a questioning soul and a commitment to the liberal humanism shared by others, including Clive James and Marilynne Robinson and others. A small book of 130 pages, Writing in the Dark will keep you thinking and coming back to it for as long as your soul inhabits this sad and beautiful world.

[Ingrid Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good collection of essays about the ongoing conflicts in Israel and how it damages the Israeli identity and hope for a peaceful future; other essays he speaks on his life as a writer and details a few of his other works, where he'd often "write in the dark" and write about other things for a while. Writing in this way, imagining a different cast of characters, a different future, a different story, is a way he kept himself sane while there was chaos around him in the real world.

Really well written and thought-provoking. A good read, relatively quick too (a little over 100 pages, I could read through it in a day).

[Rachelle Urist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucid and incisive, David Grossman is a Jewish force of conscience, thoughtful analysis, and remembrance. His essays include reminiscences of his precocious love for the writing of Sholom Aleichen at a time when his young buddies were playing ball and climbing trees. The world of the shtetl came alive for him, and only when he suddenly realized that those towns and its people no longer existed did the full impact of the holocaust hit home. He writes about the danger to the Jewish soul (and to Israel, as a democracy ruled by justice and compassion) that the current stalemate in the middle east has wrought. He flays the leadership of Israel that has allowed the situation to fester. He does all this with his writerly eye and his impatience for anything less than full and honest disclosure. His own grief - he lost a son to war in 2006 - adds weight and poignancy to every argument he makes, though he does not prostitute his mourning. He remains coolly and critically analytical. His writing is breathtaking.

[Marjorie Ingall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written and impressively translated. I haven't read Grossman's fiction (I know, I know) but a friend recommended this collection to me and I'm so glad. Grossman is a huge figure in Israel -- novelist, short-story writer, outspoken liberal, public intellectual. Two days after Grossman and two other writers, Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, held a press conference urging Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to reach a ceasefire agreement, Grossman's 20-year-old son was killed in the 2006 war with Lebanon. Loss imbues this whole book. Grossman is still so engaged with Israel -- he hasn't checked out. And he writes with such loveliness about the kinship he feels with other writers, invisible to him, in strange and war-torn places around the world. When I'm sad and frightened, I tune out. I admire Grossman so much for not doing that.

[GONZA · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not easy meeting a writer who take also a stand about the Palestine/Israel war, and Grossman has very realistic point of view, that I appreciate. That said I liked also the essay that were centered on writing only.

Non é facile trovare uno scrittore che prenda una posizione ben precisa per quanto riguarda il conflitto Palestina/Israele, inoltre quello di Grossman l'ho trovato particolarmente realistico e l'ho apprezzato. Detto questo, mi sono piaciuti anche i saggi che si concentravano fondamentalmente sulla scrittura.

[Raimo Wirkkala · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grossman is certainly an eloquent advocate for a just peace for all Israelis and the larger Middle East, as is illustrated in this collection of essays and speeches. He speaks truth to power and compassion, perhaps not born of loss but, more so, a survivor of it, to the rest. Interestingly, the literature referenced in the subtitle, is comprised, for the most part, of his own writings.

[Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this collection of essays and speeches, David Grossman creates a powerful argument on creating peace between Israel and its neighbors. He speaks with a profound sense of wisdom and a deep understanding of Israeli psychology. I look forward to reading his other books.

[Maria Hrickova · Rating 5 out of 5]

very important and valuable book
5+

[Nika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even after almost 20 years since they were written, the essays, especially “Contemplations on Peace”, pulse with spirit of time. Its diagnosis of current affairs of Israeli-Palestine conflict reads as a calcified prophecy, and can be read as a report on matters as well as a recipe to solve this decades old discord.

[Jane Marga · Rating 5 out of 5]

It gives a lucid view on how literature could provide a place for human experiences to be fully savored and understood in war-stricken countries: its complexities and conundrums along with messages of duality regarding hope and reconciliation.

[Dale Kushner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each essay in this compelling book is a gem. Grossman’s subjects range from influences on the author’s writing and writing life (he is a novelist, essayist, and Israeli peace advocate) to his heart-rending title piece (“Writing In the Dark”) that examines “the effects of trauma” on states and persons under a prolonged state of war; he writes about exile and alienation in their literal and figurative manifestations. Grossman is a writer who fiercely loves language, both its connotative and denotative modes. He is an anti-propagandist who calls for the truth of the human heart to be discussed in public discourse. That we suffer he admits but the possibility of liberty in the face of tyranny fuels his arguments.

[allyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In a disaster zone, of course, or in a prolonged war, the tendency of the hawkish sides is to minimize and deny the human aspect of the enemy, to flatten it into a stereotype or a collection of prejudices. Because only then can one truly fight to the death for decades, eventually hoping for the enemy's disappearance or death, believing that he is less human than us, or completely nonhuman.
" . . . One cannot truly adapt to such warped conditions without paying a high price, the highest price of all – the price of living itself, the price of sensitivity, of humanity, of curiosity, and of liberty of thought. The fear of and aversion to facing others fully and soberly: not only the enemy, but any others." (pp 46-47)

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal essays, heartbreaking and empowering, critical and hopeful. Grossman blends the ties of literature and politics, of writing, understanding and compassion, not effortlessly but deliberately and powerfully. His intelligence and approach to difficult subject matter is something I respect so much. I took so much from reading this!

[Betty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 2008. The most interesting on first impression is his view about Israel and its neighbors. Their conflict is opposite to the hopeful beginning of the country and to the Jewish ethical vision of compassion. Presumably he is in favor of a recognized boundary between Israel and Palestine and of an Israeli initiative to Palestinian moderates.

[Gustavo Ulises · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excelentes reflexiones sobre política, identidad y creación, que como textos separados funcionan muy bien pero ya puestos en libro este resulta reiterativo. Ideal también como introducción a la obra del autor.

[Matthew]

Food for political thought. Love Grossman's point of view and way of seeing issues from a unique and fresh perspective.