The Nimrod Flipout: Stories (2002)

This is a very short book, of very short stories that you could probably read in a couple of hours, yet it took me weeks to get through. It felt like work, and I just didn’t want to pick it up. It’s not hard to read, the writing is overly simplistic if anything. It wasn’t even terrible, I actually liked a few of the stories, but too much of it was just tedious and dull. I have to say that it really wasn’t bad enough to warrant my reaction and reluctance to read it, I just didn’t click with it.

It’s like a guy says "Dude, I’ve got a wacky idea for a story" and then writes that outline down. That’s all you get. The ideas aren’t really fleshed out, neither are the characters. There is a lot of sameness to the stories. A few of them have a surrealistic quality that I think is what appeals to people, and some of them worked, but a lot of it was just "what if my uncle was a banana?" with no further plot, and "I’m watching my girlfriend get dressed. The End."

The writing was kind of stilted and clumsy, but I’m not sure how much of that was the translation.

This is an instance where I can honestly say I just didn’t get it. ( )

This guy is brilliant and I will definitely be buying more of his books! I’m not a huge fan of short stories but this collection demonstrates their power.

Many stories are very short - some are only one or two pages long. Etgar's prose is very tight and would make Hemingway blush – OK maybe that was a stretch (actually he’s much better than Hemingway). Most stories are centered on relationships and have a sorority fraternity vibe to them, so people who are sensitive to sexual scenes and the “F” word might to want to tread lightly.

So why does this collection work when so many fail? For me, timing is important in short stories and Keret is spot-on. The Halibut story is a good example of this. He sets up the scene and then builds the story very quickly; reviewers say Keret uses one word when others would have used five, and they’re right. Not to mention this particular story was very funny.

Another reason this collection works, is because they are weird. Little oddities and quirks appear when you’re not expecting them. This is especially true when the setting is in an everyday environment; the story A Good-Looking Couple is an example. I won’t spoil the story, but the technique he used worked very well.

But not everything is fun-and-games. The much talked about Surprise Egg (about a bomb explosion) makes you re-evaluate your relations and reactions to strangers. This only happens a few times and hits you in a strange way. Good stuff. ( )

This collection of tales, some of them micro-short and so abbreviated as to constitute a kind instant video take on an absurd, surrealistic, humorous incident, are so original and true to their own quirky, adolescent, prurient voice that it is hard to evaluate them. Collectively, if the stories constitute a portrait of Israel in the post-Oslo Accords era, then the author sees a good deal of unreality, loneliness, zaniness, internet business deals, infidelity, and social transformation. In one particularly memorable story, the doctor who does an autopsy on a woman who has been a victim of a suicide bombing discovers that she is riddled with cancer and would have died soon in all events. Should the doctor tell the family or withhold the information? In another, an angry father continues to try to kill an aggressive dog belonging to his son that keeps on coming back. In another, two sets of identical twins marry, but one man kills the other after he discovers he has committed adultery with the other woman (few outside can tell these individuals apart). In another, a man who should be happy because he has everything visits India with his father, who dies, and meet some Israelis who use religion as an excuse to obtain sex and faux enlightenment. In “The Thought in the Shape of a Story,” we are on the moon, where thoughts take distinct shapes. One person decides to break the traditions and to build a unique spaceship that will enable him to venture into the universe to discover other unique thoughts (in unique shapes). This angers the other inhabitants of the moon so much that they destroy the spaceship, which leads to their own demise, since all their thoughts are in the same fatalistic shape. There is a good deal of allegory in these latter-day Aesop’s Fables on the situation in the Middle East and between the Palestinians and Israelis, and the indirection is delicious and a welcome antidote to political posturing. ( )

There’s been a sort of quiet Keret hype brewing here on LT in the last few years, and after finally checking for myself I can totally see why (My sincere thanks to Eva -bookoholic13- who is the one who sparked my interest in this deliciously exact Israeli writer!) This is a collection of very short short stories, often just glimpses and mostly under ten pages long, and always with a subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) twist of strangeness. If I understand the label “slipstream” correctly, I guess it could apply to many of these stories. With such a short format, Keret can write many stories that basically are just about one idea or concept. Like the one about how the people on the moon destroyed themselves by making their thoughts manifest, or the one about a young man who realizes that his girlfriend turns into a big fat hairy male football fan every night, or the one exploring the parallel concepts of the main character dying and opening the first Laundromat in Israel.

Those are very good, but I still think I prefer the stories that are more like snapshots, or slices of life. The ones that just brushes on lives, describing them ever so briefly in the oddest of circumstances. A pathologist discovers that the victim of a terror attack was terminally ill in undiagnosed cancer, and wrestles with if he should tell the family or not. A woman is embarrassed by her father arranging a visit in the cockpit after a hellish first travel abroad. Three friends are juggling the lingering madness of a dead friends between them, in turns. It’s very original stuff, and I can’t wait to read more Keret.

One word of caution: These stories are really like potato chips. It’s impossible to have just one, but there’s also the risk of devouring too many at once, leaving a sense of oversaturation. ( )

brilliant collection of short stories - amusing funny ludicrous insightful and sometimes plain strange. A very entertaining read. ( )