A Dispirited Rebellion: Essays on Contemporary Israeli Culture

This book is a brilliant attempt to describe and interpret current cultural developments in Israel, as manifested in the literature, art and media produced by people now in their 20s and 30s. Taub analyzes the experiences that nourish these creative people, and shows the connections, e.g., between the fiction of Orly Castel-Bloom and a certain kind of Israeli television, between rock groups and the local press in various towns, between Etgar Keret’s stories and Quentin Tarantino’s films. He seeks to understands the pessimism of these creative young people, and the influence of American culture on them and their work; also why they have not formed a fighting avant-garde. Taub’s analyses are set against current ideas in contemporary Western discourse, and he tackles postmodernism as an ideology and moral argument, as well as the destruction of myths as panaceas for the malaise of mankind.

The book appeared after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, which is seen here as a possible watershed for an entire generation’s attitude towards itself.