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| Orly Castel-Bloom |
You Don`t Argue With Rice |
| Stories |
Or Yehuda, Kinneret/Zmora-Bitan, 2004. 307 pp.
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This collection, edited by Fabiana Heifetz, contains 28 of Orly Castel-Bloom`s highly acclaimed short stories, encapsulating 17 years of work of the most original and daring writer to emerge in Israeli literature during the 1980s. Castel-Bloom`s short story collections as well as her novels place her in the first rank of Israeli writers. She redefines the relationship between style and content, moving from the tragic to the comic and setting aside standard literary convention. The present collection reflects the point to which the author`s language has developed, from the predominantly standard language of her first stories to the unique and liberated language of the later ones, stories which seek to hold a mirror up to society, and, at the same time, more prominently feature elements of fantasy and satire.
Yet from the beginning, Castel-Bloom has always written critique, whether voicing social criticism or speculating on the metaphysical significance of life or, more accurately, on the lack thereof. For she is an intellectual writer, whose writing is not only an examination of herself and her immediate surroundings, but also a critical observation of a broader reality. She comments on the political situation in Israel, on the condition of women in society, on society in general, and on human existence. Sometimes a restrained criticism emanates from her stories as in "Heathcliff," in which the romantic-cinematic imagination within the protagonist`s soul fights against the tough, violent reality of the Israeli street, until the predictable awakening and defeat. At other times, as in "The Woman Who Preferred to Search for Food," the protest is blunt with no attempt to prettify it, in the spirit of "in war as in war."
The collection ends with a new story in which Castel-Bloom describes herself years and years in the future, an old woman in a chronic-care institution, free at last from her obligations to society.
Selected stories are available in translation.
Orly Castel-Bloom was born in Tel Aviv in 1960, and she still lives there today. She studied Film at Tel Aviv University and began publishing in 1987. She has published 10 books for adults and one for children, and her books have been translated into English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Swedish, Greek, Chinese and Portuguese.
Castel-Bloom is considered to be one of the most outstanding writers of the 80`s generation, which brought about a significant change in Hebrew literature. She received the 1990 Tel Aviv Prize for Literature for Where Am I, and the Alterman Prize in 1993. Her book, Dolly City, has been included in the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works. In 1999, a leading Israeli newspaper included Castel-Bloom among the 50 most influential women in Israel. Castel-Bloom was twice awarded the Prime Minister`s Prize (1994 and 2001) and in 2003 she received the Newman Prize.
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Selected stories are available in translation.
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