Cheshire

“… And then came September 11, just one year later. For some, that televised imagery alone was revelation: this is pure American Death, and redemption and deliverance absolutely must lie beyond it. For others — and I know some of them — the planes were belated proof: the End of Days is now. But for most, that great fall was something like a last apocalyptic straw. A terrible collective sigh went out and up with all that shockwave and ash. Death is coming, yes, but at our own hands. A cosmic version of the NRA bumper sticker: Gods don’t kill people, people kill people. That great mutable wish-vision ‘The American Dream’ certainly did not die, but death sure cast a darker shadow on it dreamers.”

“Etgar Keret’s first collection of very short stories (and in the original Hebrew they would be even shorter) was translated into English in 2004. The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God wasa hit in his homeland of Israel and became something of a cult book here in the States. That book and the five collections that followed are all, by turns, as manic as they are moving and as funny as they feel philosophically motivated and morally complex. Keret’s latest story collection, Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, is not only his best book thus far but his most cohesive statement yet…”

“In Hasidism and Modern Man, Martin Buber, the great philosopher and folklorist, tells of a traditional account between a Jewish zaddik, a person of outstanding virtue and piety, and his young son. The zaddik asks his son, “With what do you pray?” And the son, perhaps in an effort to impress his righteous father, responds: “Everything of great stature shall bow before Thee.”  When the son asks the same question of his father, the zaddick dryly says, “With the floor. And with the bench.” The anecdote, especially the zaddik’s practical approach to divinity, is an apt metaphor for the fiction of Nathan Englander…”

Tottenville Review is a new review of books focused on debuts, translations, and all works that would otherwise go undetected. It is a collaborative of authors, translators, and reviewers bound by one purpose: to contribute to the dialogue of literature.

Chamber Four: I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you first about the story’s setting. The Racetrack is real, correct? And stones really do move by themselves across it? Do people really go out to watch?

Scott Cheshire: The Racetrack Playa is in Death Valley, a very flat and now dry lake surrounded by mountains. And the stones are sometimes referred to as “sailing stones,” they’ve been studied since the forties. There are still only theories as to how they move. No footage has been captured. But they do move, depending on size, some as much as ninety miles an hour and some only a few inches each year. To my knowledge, watchers, as I imagine them, don’t exist…