Here’s something to lift the Monday morning blues, maybe even get you a little high: The New Yorker has just published a new short story by Israeli writer Etgar Keret. (And it’s translated by Nathan Englander, no less—a literary twofer!)

In ‘One Gram Short,’ a nameless, neurotic, curiously passive Keretian protagonist goes on a quest for some weed to impress Shikma, the waitress at his local cafe who is a “fan of recreational drugs.” (Because asking her to a movie would be “too in-your-face,” ‘course.) This quest leads him to the apartment of a lawyer with cancer, a dramatic court appearance, a violent confrontation, and an… interesting ending. Look, no more vague spoilers. You can read the story—and listen to Keret’s lovely lispy reading—right here.

(Image: Martina Kenji)

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It was a smart move to ask beloved Israeli weirdo Etgar Keret to co-edit Tel Aviv Noir, Israel’s entrée into Akashic Books’ expansive series of noir-themed fiction anthologies. Keret—aided by compatriot Assaf Gavron—allows his fantastical leanings to push beyond the genre’s typical boundaries. As a result, only a few stories invoke the genre’s classic tropes: more often than not, the streets are not rain-slicked, the dames not long of leg, and the mysteries not so compelling. In fact, the more memorable characters in this collection would be markedly out of place on the streets occupied by Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled heroes.

The upshot of this thematic liberalism is an anthology of startlingly varying quality. The stories that stick to Chandleresque modes of storytelling are often weaker than those that attempt subversion, perhaps because it’s so difficult to improve on the masters—I found myself torn between wanting the stories to hit the genre notes and then, when they often did, wanting them to subvert the clichés.

In the clunky opener “Sleeping Mask,” Gadi Taub’s protagonist narrates the story in relentless exposition; on the same page, we read that his “sex was like a tornado,” and that “everything was up in the air. [They] were playing with fire.” Lacking are the whimsies of The Big Sleep, or Michael Chabon’s Yiddish Policeman’s Union. Instead, we’re given stock characters and stock plot set in motion by a conspicuously authorial voice.

The other stories in ‘Encounters,’ Part I the anthology, fair slightly better. In Matan Hermoni’s “Women,” a failed novelist meets the ghost of an obscure Polish poet while attending the funeral of famed Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever, and they become roommates. “The Time-Slip Detective,” by Lavie Tidhar, is a particular highlight. Tidhar is a ghostly presence in the story itself: the protagonist, a journalist, is on assignment to interview Tidhar about his recent World Fantasy Award—which he won in 2012 for Osasma. The journalist finds himself magically transported to 1930s Mandate Palestine, where he is chased by a fictional detective from a series of Hebrew pulp novels. The disorienting and propulsive story allows for cliché—eyes are frequently twinkling and sparkling—but it feels earned in the context of smarter language: our journalist describes cars moving “like tiny beetles,” an unsettling image that calls to mind the surrealist shrinking of tilt-shift photography. A story of fused identities, disruptions in time, and literary parlor tricks, Tidhar’s piece is not the only one in the anthology to borrow heavily from Borges.

Part II, ‘Estrangements,’ falls flat, but contains a jewel in “Swirl,” by Norwegian journalist and critic Silje Bekeng. Her story finds the wife of a seldom-home foreign diplomat encountering the strange, spectral man who has been subtly misplacing objects in her apartment, whilst riots on the streets of Tel Aviv threaten to spill over into her world. Sandwiched between misfires from Gon Ben Ari and Julia Fermentto, “Swirl” shines.

If hints of noir seem absent from many of these stories, a pervasive sense of terror and violence certainly is not. In Taub’s story, one character warns another against hitchhiking, saying, “There are Arabs out there, trying to abduct soldiers.” The hero of Tidhar’s “Time Slip Detective” is comforted by the threat of terrorism when he returns to modern Israel. And in Alex Epstein’s eccentric and sadly too-short “Death in Pajamas,” the Grim Reaper visits a café while missiles erupt near Hadera, a double car bomb detonates in Jerusalem, and a pregnant Palestinian woman miscarries her twins because of a delay at a checkpoint. (It’s curious—and disappointing—that from a roster of international authors, including a Norwegian, a Colombian, and an Iranian, no Arab or Palestinian writers are represented.

Sensibly, Keret and Gavron save themselves for Part III, ‘Corpses,’ offering strong stories that finish a wildly uneven anthology on a high note, and illustrate the problems inherent in opening up the definitions of noir.

Keret’s “Allergies” is the story of a couple who can’t conceive, so they adopt a dog with a picky appetite and violent tendencies. The dog, as you would expect, threatens to derail their relationship. But smartly, Keret pivots from the obvious, and the story ends with a touching and absurdist twist. Though it’s dark, you’d be hard-pressed to identify a single detail that evokes the concept of ‘noir.’

Meanwhile, Gavron’s “Center” is noir subversion at its finest, featuring two renovators who pretend to be private detectives for a few days and wind up solving a gory murder mystery. Gavron brilliantly allows amateurs to take the reins in his story, perhaps signaling to the reader that he himself is an amateur in the genre. Instead of trying to best Chandler at his own perfected game, Gavron gives us lovable fools running amok in a noir universe. The result is a story that gleefully calls to mind the absurdist, hard-boiled logic of a Coen Brothers film.

Despite the unfortunate ratio of clunkers to winners, Tel Aviv Noir evokes the mood, sensitivities, and neuroses of Israeli life to good effect. As Keret asks in the introduction, “Tel Aviv is one of the happiest, friendliest, most liberal cities in the world. What could possibly be dark about our sunny city, a city nicknamed ‘The Bubble?'” Turns out, plenty—even if isn’t actually noir.

Zachary C. Solomon is a Brooklyn-based writer and fiction M.F.A. candidate at Brooklyn College. Follow him on Twitter at @z_solomon.

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Four Palestinian boys between the ages of 9 and 11, all cousins, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Gaza beach on Wednesday morning. The Washington Post‘s Israel correspondent William Booth is stationed in a hotel close to the location of the strike, and wrote a graphic eyewitness account of the event:

We saw a small fisherman’s shack on the quay, churning with gray smoke.

Then we saw a gang of kids running from the shack, down the breakwater and onto the sand, hurtling toward al-Deira. A couple of waiters, the cook and a few journalists started waving at them. Run here! Then a second strike landed right behind them.

The staff were yelling, “They’re hurt!”

A half-dozen kids made it to the hotel. A young man also reached safety and fainted. He was bleeding from the abdomen…. Two young terrified kids were bleeding and injured, and they were quickly bandaged on the floor of the terrace, where guests usually eat skewers of grilled chicken, suck on water pipes and watch the sun go down.

Meanwhile, the first Israeli victim of the conflict, Dror Khenin, was buried in the city of Yahud today. Sophia Jones, The Huffington Post‘s Middle East correspondent, posted a picture of the funeral on Instagram with the caption: “Sobbing relatives. Many ppl here to mourn. Meanwhile in Gaza, over 200 people have been killed, mostly civilians. Anger on both sides.”

Amidst this bleak news, it’s worth reading Etgar Keret’s July 14 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, in which he suggests redefining the way we talk about the resolution of the conflict. Instead of calling for peace—a romanticized, “debilitating word”—Keret suggests that Israelis and Palestinians use the term “compromise” instead:

Peace, by definition, is compromise between sides, and in that kind of compromise, each side has to pay a genuine, heavy price, not just in territories or money but also in a true change of worldview.

That’s why the first step might be to stop using the debilitating word “peace,” which has long since taken on transcendental and messianic meanings in both the political left and right wings, and replace it immediately with the word “compromise.” It might be a less rousing word, but at least it reminds us that the solution we are so eager for can’t be found in our prayers to God but in our insistence on a grueling, not always perfect dialogue with the other side.

True, it’s more difficult to write songs about compromise, especially the kind my son and other kids can sing in their angelic voices. And it doesn’t have the same cool look on T-shirts. But in contrast to the lovely word that demands nothing of the person saying it, the word “compromise” insists on the same preconditions from all those who use it: They must first agree to concessions, maybe even more — they must be willing to accept the assumption that beyond the just and absolute truth they believe in, another truth may exist. And in the racist and violent part of the world I live in, that’s nothing to scoff at.

Perhaps that’s the best we can hope for now.

(Image: Smoke rises after an Israeli air strike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip July 16, 2014. Credit: SAID KHATIB/AFP/Getty Images.)

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Israeli writer Etgar Keret is known for his entertaining short stories, and now they’re getting the animated video treatment, thanks to a new project called Storyvid.io.

The first is for his story “What Do We Have in Our Pockets?” and it’s pretty cute:

Want more Keret? Here’s the writer on how his son helped him vote in this week’s Israeli elections.

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• Here are some overly descriptive descriptions of Bob Dylan’s voice on his latest album, The Tempest.

• Brad Pitt is in talks to produce a film based on the 2001 book, IBM and the Holocaust.

• Etgar Keret’s super-skinny home-to-be in Warsaw is being built.

• Jack Black doesn’t seem to mind the dentist. Here’s a picture of him posing with a fellow patient who had just gotten her braces off.

• A heated discussion over pork semantics left one man dead and his uncle in police custody, the Scroll reports.

• Tavi Gevinson teaches Jimmy Fallon the art of the bitchface:

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• Kiryat Shmona, Israel’s top soccer team, lost to Belarus’ BATE in the qualifying rounds of the Champions League.

• Woody Allen says he was a good basketball player in high school.

• Another Etgar Keret gem, this one about an especially harrowing post 9/11 plane ride.

• Bob Dylan does not like street dancing scenes.

• The rabbi of a long-deteriorating Lower East Side Synagogue is hoping a developer will convert the building into residential units—with a small sanctuary.

• Happy Endings’ Adam Pally (the anti-Joey) goes out of character to discuss co-star Elisha Cuthbert’s scent with The Indoor Kids.

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• Designer Donna Karan is set to re-open her London DKNY store.

• Israeli writer Etgar Keret is about to move into the narrowest house in Warsaw.

• The Jewish Museum in New York will show the Jack Goldstein retrospective that was previously canceled at LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art.

• One of the architects of Auschwitz was trained at the Bauhaus, beacon of sophistication.

• Jewcy contributor Adam Lustick is a Casino Virgin:

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• Fred Karger, the gay Jewish Republican presidential candidate, is a Top 10 Power Gay Republican.

• Rachel Shukert on the under-watched television show GCB: “as if Gilda Radner was starring in a Tennessee Williams play.”

• Etgar Keret, Shalom Auslander, and Dara Horn discuss Jewish fiction.

• Omg, our girl Shoshanna totally namechecks Camp Ramah on Sunday’s episode of Girls:

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• ‘Kosher’ ham sandwiches served on an airplane.

• The riots in Yemen are starting to intensify.

• Is marriage becoming obsolete?

• Etgar Keret talks about disgraced Israeli Gen. Yoav Galant.

• Those silly, socialist Brooklynites, always sending their babysitters to work their shift at the Co-Op.

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