

Loading... The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories (original 2015; edition 2015)by Etgar Keret (Author)
Work InformationThe Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories by Etgar Keret (2015)
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No current Talk conversations about this book. Not bad for a book that I found in a free pile on the street, he is very creative, imaginative and occasionally disturbing. I read the first 3-4 stories when I first picked this book up, and then finished the rest this past week. I was really impressed by this collection. His stories are funny, complex, sometimes profound, and very relevant (how many review bingo words did I get there?). I expected quirky but I really don't think they are. The last piece reminded me of a Kelly Link story (there are lots of other similarities there) and would like to read both of them again back to back. 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 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. 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 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. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesContains
Classic warped and wonderful stories from a "genius" (The New York Times) and master storyteller. Brief, intense, painfully funny, and shockingly honest, Etgar Keret's stories are snapshots that illuminate with intelligence and wit the hidden truths of life. As with the best writers of fiction, hilarity and anguish are the twin pillars of his work. Keret covers a remarkable emotional and narrative terrain--from a father's first lesson to his boy to a standoff between soldiers caught up in the Middle East conflict to a slice of life where nothing much happens. New to Riverhead's list, these wildly inventive, uniquely humane stories are for fans of Etgar Keret's inimitable style and readers of transforming, brilliant fiction. No library descriptions found.
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)892.436 — Literature Literature of other languages Middle Eastern languages Jewish, Israeli, and Hebrew Hebrew fiction 1947–2000LC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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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 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. (