Grossman – both author and activist – yearns for a language that is dynamic, particular, and inventive, and well-defined genres can often dictate such unexpected vocabularies. From a story written as a glossary of encyclopaedic definitions, through an epistolary love affair that turns nasty, to a poetic rendition of grief and the afterlife – and now the stand-up routine, Grossman has searched widely for the right literary frame to showcase an ineffable ‘real’. Grossman’s readers should have learned to expect the unexpected. Why did one of Israel’s most distinguished authors, the darling of that country’s intellectual Left, cross over to the world of stand-up comedy, shocking even his most loyal fans with his command of the vernacular, if not the outright vulgar? In June 2017, Israeli author David Grossman and his English translator, Jessica Cohen, were awarded the Man Booker International Prize for the novel Sus Echad Nichnas Lebar, first published in Hebrew in 2014 and published in Cohen’s English translation as A Horse Walks into A Bar in 2016. ‘I want you to see me, really see me, and then afterwards tell me.’
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |