fwriction

This nonfiction piece by Etgar Keret, taken from The New York Times Sunday Magazine, really stuck with me. There’s something about the way we interact with death, even on an international scale, with an unsatisfying mix of sadness and devilish curiosity, and Keret really nails it. At the end of this short essay, when the writing shifts to Keret interacting with his young son, I find the writing just perfect.

Enjoy today’s story of the day, Etgar Keret’s essay, “Tel Aviv Broadcast”:

My cursor hesitates over the frozen image of a desolate dirt path. Is this a newsworthy artifact or a gratuitous snuff film? The text below doesn’t clarify much, but I’m told again to watch the footage, and I give in. A film begins to play: a commercial for Tzabar hummus featuring the balding comic actor Jacques Cohen. “Hummus should be made with love, or not at all,” he says in Hebrew. Then there’s black, followed by the dirt path.

The camera is at some distance. It’s hard to make out the details. A man in light clothes approaches a man in dark clothes. Another man shows up. The dark one starts to run, and the light one chases him, then falls down. The one in the dark clothes runs. The light-clothes one gets up, then falls down again. That’s it. And then another commercial: this time for Pringles. A group of beautiful young people are enjoying life. They’re happy because they’re eating Pringles. They’re happy because they’re alive. The screen goes back to the beginning: the frozen image of the dirt path. I click to see it again because I had trouble deciphering it the first time. But instead of taking me there, the site asks for personal details. It wants to know my sex and age. I check the box next to my sex and lie about my age.