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PARTISAN REVIEW
this in the foreseeable future . There is not enough in any alternative
to attract me.
ASG:
How has being there influenced your writings?
AO:
It
has in every way possible. Certainly it evoked and fed my
curiosity about the strange phenomenon of flawed, tormented hu–
man beings dreaming about perfection , aching for the Messiah,
aspiring to change human nature . This perpetual paradox of mag–
nanimous dream and unhappy reality is indeed one of the main
threads in my writing.
ASG:
On a practical level, was it difficult to juggle writing and work
on the kibbutz , or did it come naturally?
AO:
There was a process of creeping annexation for a time. You
can't just stand up one bright morning and tell the rest of the com–
munity , "No more picking cotton or weeding the fields or driving a
tractor because I'm a writer." What I actually did was first appeal for
one day off work each week, and eventually, with the publication of
a book and then another book, appeal for another day off and yet
another day off work . It's all based very much on trust and a kind of
family relationship. I had time off for writing even before I became a
source of income for the kibbutz.
ASG:
You've published fiction in a variety of styles and forms .
Is
there a literary prose form that you'd like to attempt that you haven't
already?
AO:
I'm working now on an epistolary novel, consisting entirely of
an exchange of letters between a cast of characters -letters, tele–
grams , a couple of legal documents, no narrator whatsoever. I find it
difficult and fascinating . This one is set in the second half of the
1970s ; to be more precise, in 1976.
ASG:
You've said on previous occasions that you don't like to talk
about your work in progress.
AO:
I said then and I'd repeat it now : I'm frightfully reluctant to ex–
pose my pregnancy to x-rays.
ASG:
Do you ever write poetry?
AO:
Yes, I do , but I don't publish it; I don't have any motive . I'm
satisfied with what I can do in poetry, and yet I don't have the
slightest urge in me to share it with others . Maybe when I'm sixty–
four.
ASG:
How do you start a novel? What comes to you first ?
AO:
Characters, characters . It's a type of possession . Characters
whom I don't especially like and whom I sometimes try to resist with
