In The Army You Feel Violated -

I Have To Admit That Talking Authoritatively About My Students' Stories Can Make Me Feel, At Times, Like An Astronaut Who Has Just Landed On A New Planet And Insists On Giving Guided Tours To Its Inhabitants.

I Was First Introduced To Kafka's Writing During My Compulsory Army-service Basic Training. During That Period, Kafka's Fiction Felt Hyperrealistic.

If You Were To Do The World Championship Of Victimhood In Modern Times, Then The Finals Would Probably Be Between Jews And Palestinians. I Think The Jews Win: We, Isralians, Go From The Spanish Inquisition To Pogroms To The Fake Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion To World War Ii And The Holocaust - It's A Horrible History. And If You Look At The Palestinian World, Victimized By Every Entity In The Middle East, They Were Massacred In Every Country. I Think That, In Israel, The Greatest Fear That People Have, And I Have It, Too, Is This Fear Of Genocide.

In The Last War, People Became Vocal From The Right-wing Point Of View: If You're Liberal, Then You're A Traitor.

In America, Where Writers Are Preoccupied With The Craft Of Writing, I Always Try To Introduce This Concept Of The Badly Written Good Story. Turning The Hierarchy Around And Putting Passion On Top And Not Craft, Because When You Just Focus On Craft, You Can Write Something That Is Very Sterile.