ANITA SUSAN GROSSMAN
433
ASG:
One individual whom you interviewed was identified only as
"Z". His extreme position is announced with so much force and con–
viction that some Israeli writers have suggested that you invented
this character. Is that so?
AO:
No, how could
I?
Even if! wanted to invent such a character, I
couldn't. The man is as real as you or 1. The fact that he lacks the
courage to come forth and identify himself has given me a lot of
trouble. But he is alive and kicking.
ASG:
Stripped of its flamboyant rhetoric, his monologue doesn't
sound all that far removed from something you talked about during
your speeches in Berkeley and San Francisco last year, namely
about the need to accept Israel into the community of nations as no
better, nor worse than any other, and not expecting impossibly
moral things from it.
AO:
I am not entirely antagonistic to those opinions about the
hysterical moralizing attitude toward Israel.
ASG:
Getting back to your writing in general, you don't seem to be
on the whole what one might call a "realistic" writer, either in style or
subject matter. What are you attempting to do in your narratives?
AO:
In the first place, the term "realism" is meaningless because it
comprehends everything- dream, fantasy , nightmare. Everything
that humans have experienced, one way cr another, is part of reality .
Consequently, to me everything is equally realistic or unrealistic.
I'm trying to do exactly what a tribal conjurer used to do perhaps
twelve thousand years ago: tell stories in order to ease some of the
pains and soothe some of the fears of my fellow-tribesmen.
ASG:
Do you get feedback from your readers?
AO:
Oh, and how! Readers calling the author in the middle of the
night, asking him in bursts of fury, "How could you do that to this
character?" or worse still, "How could that character say or do such a
terrible thing?"
ASG:
How about your readers at Kibbutz Hulda?
AO:
The kibbutz is very tolerant. I have a milieu which is very frank
and candid with me, and I confront the whole range of responses.
On the other hand , I am not treated in the kibbutz as the novel–
writer; I'm rather treated as one of the quickest waiters in the dining
room . It's my standing reputation .
ASG:
Have you ever thought of leaving the kibbutz?
AO:
Many, many times, but I've never decided to do that. There are
hardly options which haven't crossed my mind, in any area , but so
far I haven't decided to leave the kibbutz, and I'm not likely to decide
