Nextbook: Current Features

Nextbook: Current FeaturesAn interesting interview full of nuggets like the following which mentions the self-righteousness of European political criticism that I noted in a post a while back. "I think Europe ought to be much more directly responsible and helpful in world affairs, and much less moralizing and telling others how they ought and ought not to behave. Europe could have been a lot more helpful than it is in many, many troubled parts of the world." He also notes that there were attitudes and policies in place even before the Holocaust that abrogate a right to present-day self-righteousness.

My parents, my grandparents, they were not the people who drowned with the Titanic in the big, big catastrophe, no, they were the people who were thrown into the ocean in the dark, from the decks of the Titanic, while the dancing and the dining and the ball was still going on and everybody was happy. They never recovered from it.

In addition, Mr Oz tells how he deals with the transformation of the stomping grounds of his younger days into something unrecognizable which I wrote about in my second "Report from Riceville." He says:

I don't have the slightest problem with the fact that places change. The Kerem Avraham of my life is in my book, not where you have gone for a walk. It's in my memory, and it's in my descriptions, just like those shtetls in Eastern Europe where my parents came from. They no longer exist, and yet they do exist in the collective memories of those who came from there. So no, I am not going to lament the fact that my world is gone. It's not gone, it's elsewhere.