One should read Israeli writers, of course — Agnon, Amichai, A.B. Yehoshua, Aharon Appelfeld, Orly Castel-Bloom, Etgar Keret. But the more appropriate template may come from fellow Americans, writers who, by exploring the Diaspora Jew\’s relationship to Israel, have gone down this road before.
\”I never think of food as something that\’s stationary,\” Nathan said on a recent book tour stop in Los Angeles. \”Things change, neighborhoods change, food changes, we get new ingredients, people get ideas. And when you come to a country you adapt what you knew to that country.\”
It disturbed me to hear on U.S. public radio and read in The New York Times that Saul Bellow was to be seen as simply an American writer — which, of course, he is — and not significantly a Jewish writer.
Maybe they think they\’re doing him a favor? I think they\’re bleaching out a lot of the substance of Bellow, who died Tuesday at 89.
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