5: Text excerpt from article about Etgar Keret, “Life at a Louder Volume” by Maya Jaggi, 2007.

5: Text excerpt from article about Etgar Keret, “Life at a Louder Volume” by Maya Jaggi, 2007.

In this excerpt, Maya Jaggi provides a brief biography on Etgar Keret and records his take on Holocaust memory and the ways in which the Holocaust factors into his writing. Keret’s relationship to communal and personal history is on full display as he speaks about growing up in Israel with Holocaust-survivor parents.

Suggested Activity: Students may choose to read the entire article or focus on the excerpt that begins “Keret’s treatment of the Holocaust…” Ask students to think about what Keret says in this article in light of the short story “Shoes.” Do you think the story is working against what Keret calls the “rigid and petrifying” national memory of the Holocaust? What do you make of the fact that Keret has been criticized for being irreverent toward the Holocaust? And of his response that his Holocaust memories don’t “belong to the nation,” but to him?

The article also touches on the importance of the perspective of children in Keret’s work. In “Shoes,” how does the narrator’s perspective (that of a child) influence your reading? Ask students how they interpret the parenting that goes on in Keret’s story. Is it a case of the child wishing to remember what the parent wishes to forget? Is there a reversal of the “protector” role: the narrator compartmentalizes past and present and permits his parents’ divergent memory?

Source: Maya Jaggi, “Life at a Louder Volume,” The Guardian, Mar 16, 2007, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/mar/17/featuresreviews.guardianre...