On requests – Ronen Tal interviewing Etgar Keret in Haaretz:

‘The reality of the past eight-plus months has brought Keret a flood of messages and requests from people for whom the war is truly a matter of life and death. The messages come to his private WhatsApp account and he tries to reply to all of them, even if it takes a few hours each day. "An officer messaged me before entering Gaza with his unit and asked that, if he were to die, that I speak to his ex, who had left him, and tell her that he went to war still thinking about her," he relates. "I say to him, 'We don't know each other, don't you have a brother or a friend who will do it?' And he says, 'We ended badly, and she likes your books,' and he sent me her phone number."’

(…)

‘A few years ago I read two opinion pieces in Haaretz. In one of them a woman wrote that men who pee on a tree in the park are committing sexual harassment in the public space. The second piece stated that the most contemptible people in the world are vegetarians of conscience who don't preach to others to become vegetarians like them. I've been a vegetarian since the age of 5 – since I saw a Bambi movie, and my father said they were going to make schnitzel out of Bambi – and I have an opinion that I am ready to share with other people, but I don't preach.’

(…)

‘When life is something you don't entirely understand, writing is the stable thing you can lean on. I always felt that writing for me was my way to survive, and I still feel that way.’

Read the interview here.

The (popular) writer as a messenger for the wounded, the fearful, the heartbroken and everyone in between. Who doesn't want to be such a messenger? While the author himself is insisting that writing is just a tool to survive, which of course it is, it gives meaning to a life. But the plumber might find meaning in unclogging toilets.

And who understands life entirely? Is life there to be understood?