The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories

The first collection of short stories by Israeli writer Etgar Keret published in English starts out brilliantly, with several surreal and fantastic tales that seem to be a witches' brew of the best of Jorge Luis Borges, mixed with a splash of Julio Cortázar and José Donoso. In the title story, a principled but misunderstood bus driver invokes a higher calling to serve one of his passengers, though with an unexpected result. In "Uterus", a young man despairs when his mother's organ, preserved for prosperity in a local museum, is sold and then hijacked by eco-terrorists. And, in "A Souvenir of Hell", a young Uzbek woman works at a convenience store which primarily serves the residents of Hell, who emerge from its mouth for one day of show more freedom every 100 years. However, the stories in the latter half of the book, particularly the lengthy Kneller's Happy Campers, were very disappointing to this reader. Despite this, I was sufficiently impressed and enthralled with many of Keret's stories in this collection, and despite my mediocre rating of The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God I will eagerly search for more of his books soon. show less

There is a direct path between Keret's fevered imagination and his written page. There are no speed limits or detours. The stories won't be inhibited by oppressive laws of physics, or even by reality. These are short intense bursts of 'what ifs'.
In "One Last Story and That's It", a demon shows up to the house of a writer, to take away his talent. The writer begs him to let him do just one more story. Well, ok, the demon agrees, and so he just hangs out for a bit, watching tv and drinking lemonade. Finally the time comes, and the demon pulls out the talent, folds it neatly and packs it away into a box lined with styrofoam peanuts. The writer half-jokes, hey if you get overstocked on that talent, I'll be glad to take it back. And the show more demon starts to think, this job is such a crock of shit. Just two more stops til the end of the day.
"A Souvenir of Hell" is about a tourist village, located at the mouth of the entrance to Hell. It capitalises on the tourist traffic going to Hell. "Hole in the Wall" is a place to yell wishes in to, so a man wishes for and gets an angel, who is some stooped skinny guy that wears a trench coat to hide his wings.
Surreal, bizarre, funny. show less

Flash fiction has always been a bit of a mystery to me, that is, until I picked up this book. Keret is a genius at writing a vignette that looks small (a mere 3-4 pages), but which contains an entire universe. I just fell in love with Keret's writing and his insight into the human heart. The stories are so varied that most everyone will find something to love - from endearing stories like "Breaking the Pig," where a little boy releases his piggybank into the wild rather than be forced to break it with a hammer to heart-wrenching stories like "Cocked and Loaded," which describes with painful poignancy the impotent rage many Israeli soldiers feel towards the Palestinian population. Trivia: For those who have seen the movie Wristcutters, show more the original story ("Kneller's Happy Campers") can be found in this collection. show less

There is a direct path between Keret's fevered imagination and his written page. There are no speed limits or detours. The stories won't be inhibited by oppressive laws of physics, or even by reality. These are short intense bursts of 'what ifs'.
In "One Last Story and That's It", a demon shows up to the house of a writer, to take away his talent. The writer begs him to let him do just one more story. Well, ok, the demon agrees, and so he just hangs out for a bit, watching tv and drinking lemonade. Finally the time comes, and the demon pulls out the talent, folds it neatly and packs it away into a box lined with styrofoam peanuts. The writer half-jokes, hey if you get overstocked on that talent, I'll be glad to take it back. And the show more demon starts to think, this job is such a crock of shit. Just two more stops til the end of the day.
"A Souvenir of Hell" is about a tourist village, located at the mouth of the entrance to Hell. It capitalises on the tourist traffic going to Hell. "Hole in the Wall" is a place to yell wishes in to, so a man wishes for and gets an angel, who is some stooped skinny guy that wears a trench coat to hide his wings.
Surreal, bizarre, funny. show less

I'm going to be honest, the only reason I picked up The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be Godby Etgar Keret was for the story "Kneller's Happy Campers," which was adapted into the film Wristcutters. I haven't watched movie yet, mostly because I wanted to read the story. It's silly, I know, but sometimes reading the story first allows me to watch the movie comfortably. What I didn't know was that Etgar Keret's collection of short stories is a translation. I've mentioned how translations tend to mess with my mind sometimes.

Either way, the book is brilliant. From start to finish - which just happens to be "Kneller's Happy Campers" - the book is filled with stories that are a little bit amusing, a little bit lovely and downright weird. Warped show more and Wonderful, as the quip says at the bottom of the cover. It's not lie. From grandfathers coming back as sneakers, finding Heaven within a pipe or a man who is afflicted with a crippling disability of being too nice, the stories never have pause to ask whether or not they're believable. You simply accept them.

Much like Bizarro fiction - from authors such as Carlton Mellick III - Etgar Keret engages us with themes that we can relate to or recognize while dazzling our senses with a slice of imagination that we normally don't read in contemporary literature. His voice carries through the pages, description wrapping us. show less

If you aren’t already familiar with Keret’s writing, it make take a few of these very short stories to sync up with his particular comic wavelength. Written originally in Hebrew and set, often, in Israel, there are commonplace life events such as universal military service that set the subject matter apart from much North American writing. The stories here are slight, almost oblique, more scene or sketch than story, really. Many carry an overt moral, which may or may not be subverted by the narrator. But the best of them are both ironic and non-ironic at the same time. And that is a delicate balance to strike.

There is one longer story here called, “Kneller’s Happy Campers”. It reveals, I think, what happens when you take this show more style and expand it. It almost begs to become surrealist or absurdist, depending on your point of view. In “Kneller’s Happy Campers”, all of the participants are actually suicides and this is what amounts to their afterlife. It’s a great premise, but you are probably already wondering, “Where do you go with that?” If you are Etgar Keret, you mostly just stay put, wander around a bit, and then head back to where you started. Which makes the afterlife pretty much like life.

Gently recommended. show less

This is a book of short stories by "undoubtedly the most popular writer among Israeli youth", although I feel like that's misleading because these don't feel like stories written expressly for young people (although maybe "youth" just means people under the age of 35? yet what is youth but a state of mind? etc.). Most of Keret's short stories are very short, like maybe they average two-and-a-half pages, but they are also very good; he's not shocking or violent or trying too hard to be funny, and, even though he doesn't really traffic in twist endings, his stories still feel surprising and fresh. It's hard to summarize the plot of two-page stories without giving things away, so here are first sentences from some of them:

This is the story show more about a bus driver who would never open the door of the bus for people who were late.

There's this village in Uzbekistan that was built right smack at the mouth of Hell.

The son of the Head of the Mossad didn't even know he was the son of the Head of the Mossad.

Dad wouldn't buy me a Bart Simpson doll.

I will definitely be reading more of Keret's books. show less