In The Nimrod Flipout, Keret creates intelligent and imaginative stories around themes that hit a little too close to home… sort of. Many young men can identify with tales of dogs lost to patriarchal tyranny and friends to the dreariness of life in the military. But in this collection, reality is matched equally with the bizarre. A boy finds the meaning of life in a newspaper advertisement, a talking fish keeps its mouth shut, a civilization of moon inhabitants destroys a rocket ship built only with carefully-shaped thoughts. Half of each story is silly, the other half serious. That said, half of this book is silly, the other half serious. But the collection itself is nothing less than 100% genuine. Keret doesn't miss a beat, writing with the satiric aloofness that most young people use to deal with the disorder of the modern world. Like life, these stories are as happy and hopeful as they are horrific. It’s a good thing life isn’t as short, however, as the stories average out at only a couple of pages each. But the cunning, of whom Keret is absolutely included, need no more than three paragraphs of theatrical, often wicked narrative to reveal a vignette of true wisdom. Just read the first page.

Review of Etgar Keret's The Nimrod Flipout

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An unconsummated childhood love leaves our narrator, an attractive French littérateur pseudonymed Humbert Humbert, victim to the temptation of seductively playful nymphets. Lolita documents Humbert’s relationship with himself, rather than that with the 12-year-old Dolores Haze. Although H. is too overwhelmed by his eroticism to actually care for the object of his affection, his charm is so great that the reader finds himself sympathizing with H.’s deviant romantic needs. What starts as mildly masochistic fetishism (for postponed desire) culminates in a desperate act of violence. Though tragic in plot, humor abounds in Nabokov’s style, which is pregnant with the wit of literary punnery and double entendre.

Review of Nabokov's Lolita

The Pit of Babel

Es muß ein Fortschritt geschehen...
Wir graben den Schacht von Babel.

Some progress must be made...
We are digging the pit of Babel.
(Franz Kafka)

I am Katie Sharrow-Reabe and I am interested in structural and social architecture. Linguistic and cultural translation. Progress through retrospection. Subliminal and subterranean connections. And I would like you to help me put these fragments into a hole.

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