A diversion from the usual matters at hand…

Supposing you were in a gathering of strangers, and each person in the group was asked to take a few minutes and say something about themselves, what salient points would you mention when it was your turn? Some people tend to get flustered when they have to speak in public, but that sort of thing is easy-peasy for me. I’d mention my family and some of the things I’ve done in my life, but somewhere along the line, I would describe myself as an ‘American Jew living in Israel.’

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One thing I have done from time to time in these articles is make the assertion that my mind works in strange and mysterious ways, making connections that would not be obvious to the average dude or dudette walking along Broadway or Rehov Yaffo. For example, I’m taking out the garbage and my progress towards the dumpster is impeded by a car with a ‘lamed’ on its roof, meaning that the person behind the wheel is a student driver. Even if the car weren’t so identified, you could tell right away who is behind the wheel, not just from the tentative, slow motion of the vehicle in question, but the look of panic on the neophyte’s face as the car goes around the bend. And I think about Alexis de Tocqueville, the French aristocrat who visited the United States in the 1830’s to observe life across the Atlantic and to figure out what was going on with these Americans – as in how did they live and why were they so different from Europeans – and then to write about what he learned in his classic Democracy in America. We need someone like him these days to help us decipher the behavior patterns of average Israelis, which is so different from life in The States, not an easy task – if you ask me. My modest efforts are a halting step in that direction, but I’m not in the Frenchman’s league.

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Even if I didn’t let the cat out of the bag (metaphorically, of course), you would all figure out that what I’m about to describe didn’t actually happen in real time in the real world as we know it, where the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. It must have been a dream or a half-waking state – as when it’s 4AM and Pooms, the senior cat, has realized that her food bowl is empty or she needs her neck scratched – and we’re pulled from our bed and called into duty.

What I imagined is that I was standing on a step ladder going through the shelves of one of my bookcases, trying to winnow down my collection of novels to a manageable few. There I was, holding a copy of The Cornish Trilogy, three novels in one volume, by the Canadian novelist Robertson Davies, when I found myself in the following conversation. It was as if I were talking to the disembodied voice of the writer – which on sober reflection couldn’t have happened. (He died in 1995.)

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