I can’t say I like Israeli writer Etgar Keret’s short-short stories much. At least not the ones in The Girl On The Fridge collection. Most of them end too abruptly, just about the time I’m getting interested in the tale. Suppose to be the latest thing, these quickies, but most of them read like the writer ran out of imagination.
One of the few I do like is one that echoes something my Israeli pal Snoopy-the-Goon told me about young people coming off of their obligatory IDF active duty. Many of them leave Israel and light out for the Himalayas or somewhere else tough and adventurous, preferably somewhere no one else has been.
So, in The Journey, the hero does just that, winding up in the jungles of South America, satisfied that he’s finally found a place no other human has trod. Until he sees some secondary growth at the base of a large tree. It barely conceals something carved there. Something old. This: “Nir Dekel, August 5, Paratroopers Kick Ass.”
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 