362
PARTISAN REVIEW
Goodheart:
Who are the writers whom you read a nd who matter
to
you?
Oz:
My direct literary parents would probably mean very little to
you, except far Agnon, who is known outside Israel. But I would
say that, without knowing Russian - I don't know any Russian - I
owe more to the nineteenth-century Russian literature than to
Western literat ures.
Goodheart:
Dostoevsky, Tolstoy ...
Oz:
Tolstoy, above all Chekhov.
Goodheart:
There's a strong Gothic element in your work which some–
times makes me think of Dostoevsky. What are you writing now?
Oz:
I'm working on a novel. I've been working on it far two and a
half or three years. I'm very far from the end and I'm very reluc–
tant to discuss it.
The elections that took place in June did not have the outcome anticipated
in March
1981.
The campaign was characterized by a bitter division within
Israeli Jewry between Eastern European Ashkenazim and North African
Sephardim, a division that has not been common knowledge in America. The
bitterness oj the division was in evidence in the burning oj Labor party
headquarters (symbol oj Ashkenazi power in Israel) by Sephardic supporters oj
Begin during the election campaign. Should there be peace between J ew and
Arab, the drama to which Oz says Israelis are addicted could be displaced to the
conflict between East European Askhenazim and North Ajrican Sephardim.
No Israeli writer can be detached from the jate oj his country. So when
General Tal speaks
oj
Oz's distance jrom politics he means only a career in
politics. Oz is passionately engaged with the politics oj Israel.
If
one scrutinizes
Oz's rhetoric in the interview as Oz had scrutinized Dayan's, one is struck by a
militancy
~f
expression that makes this dove sound like a hawk. But no dove in
Israel can avoid sounding on occasion like a hawk. Unlike the reader oj
American newspapers, the dove knows where the borders oj his country are and
the threats that are posed on either side oj them. Until Arab and Jew can
recognize each other's reality, the dove can only vaguely hope jor peace. In a
crisis he stands with the hawk in defense oj his country.
