Customer Reviews

Fima

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Fima the clown, father of no one but an abortion, finds himself fathering(grandfathering) a sickly albino child with coke bottle glasses and capable of only a botched sacrifice, is forced to ponder- is this child the new Israel, the Israel of the Left? The Israel fathered by American and European intellectualism? This child that is not Israel's child, is this all that is set to inherit the success of the fathers who scrambled and built the nation? Fima who is so close in age to Israel itself is paralyzed and inept, and worst of all aware of it. Perhaps most interesting of the subjects addressed in the novel is that of abortion. Although there is an attempt to portray with some realism the subject and emotion of abortion, it is the symbolism of the defeated Israel, the Israel that might have been, that is carried most successfully in the material. Not that this weakens the novel, it just carries the reader away from the personal and to the national. Published in 1991, Oz predicted correctly that a peace must be reached, but that it would have to be the butchers and the gangsters who broker it.

There are many people who suggest that Amos Oz is actually a political activist, not a writer. In fact, I think he is both. He has very clear political views (and, incidentally, I completely agree with him and admire him for them) and is a very skilled writer, who has good ideas for fiction books and is able to lay them out in very transparent prose, which makes the result infallibly a pleasure to read. And not only a pleasure, but a food for thought.

"Fima" is a book where at least two planes are immediately discernible. They are in agreement with the "double identity" of the author - one is a great critical view of Israel's political situation, with an acute analysis of nearly every fraction and orientation, the media, the traditions, the language; the second one is a great portrait of the main character, Efraim (Fima) Nisan who expresses all the layers of the first plane. Probably one of the greater protagonists in the contemporary literature, Fima has a complex personality, which makes him rather difficult to deal with. Difficult for his friends and family as well as for the reader - he is not easy to classify in any way, he is neither a hero nor a villain... If anything, he might be called an anti-hero of our times.

A middle-aged man, Fima lives alone in an apartment in Jerusalem. He is divorced, practically lives off his father, who owns a successful cosmetics factory and at every visit slips some money into Fima's pocket. Although he missed nothing in life, being from a well- off family and having received a solid education in humanities, Fima cannot be called successful himself. At least not in the American sense of the word. I cannot blame the American readers who wrote the reviews below for perceiving him as a loser - by their standards he is one. He works at the reception desk in the gynecological clinic. Sometimes he does not show up to work at all. From time to time he writes an article to a magazine, mostly expressing his political views, proof- reads the scientific papers of his friends - professors, and helps the nurse at the clinic with more difficult crossword clues. Intelectually, he is missing nothing. Still, he is absolutely lost in his relations with people, in the daily life, a mess of animated and unanimated surroundings, he takes things as they come but does nothing with them. He ponders on every detail, every smallest event cause him to stop on his way or change completely the course of his day. Everything can be a beginning of a small philosophical treatise.

Oz puts in Fima's mouth the criticism of Israeli political course, the never ending war with the Arabs, which are probably his own views, but being uttered by Fima, an absolutely passive being, who does absolutely nothing to change anything (in fact, he is an emotional parasite), they become a criticism of the Israeli left as well. In fact, I know a lot of people who opposed the system in exactly the same way as Fima does, by passive resistance and this helped them to stay sane and support the change when it came, therefore they are not completely useless. Nevertheless, someone else had to initiate the change.

Amos Oz's "Fima" as translated by Nicholas de Lange is the story of Efraim Nison, son of a cosmetics manufacturing industrialist, and an intellectual and poet whose life never quite gets off the ground. He spends half his time working as a lowly receptionist in a clinic and the other half struggling to stay in one piece, if not boring his friends to death pontificating about the dismal state of politics prevailing in the modern state of Israel. He engages his family and friends but is succoured by them. His relationships with various women including his ex-wife are also frankly ludicrous. But Efraim's incoherent and wasted life cannot be interpreted as anything other than Oz's metaphor for the moribund state of Israel's moral authority after securing its own nationhood. He questions the hardline Jewish approach to its Arab neighbours today by drawing parallels with the mentality of the Nazis in the 30s and 40s. The lurking blood hound in man is humourously but no less chillingly portrayed in the episode with the cockroach. Dimi's shattering confession to Efraim about the dog is equally poignant. Oz, though cynical about the lasting effects of positive action on future generations, ends on a quietly optimistic note. "Fima" isn't exactly an easy book to digest. The symbolism is a little heavyhanded in parts, but the undeniable sense of humour in Oz's writing carries the book. Oz is in fine form for most of the way but gets distracted and loses focus towards the last third. Still, "Fima" makes an intellectually stimulating read and is definitely worth checking out.

Amos Oz, along with David Grossman, are two of Israel's finest living authors. They craft good to great literature in its own right, and couple it with the twists and nuances that define the Jewish identity. Moreover, it is the identity of those who have chosen to forego the "diaspora."

I first recognized Oz's talent after reading a collection of his non-fiction vignettes of Israel in the `80's, entitled In the Land of Israel (Harvest in Translation). Fima is his first work of fiction that I've read. Reviewers have called the protagonist, Efraim (Fima) Nisan, a Jewish "Walter Mitty." James Thurber, in Secret Lives of Walter Mitty and of James Thurber (Wonderfully Illustrated Short Pieces) (No. 1) introduced this term into the English language to denote a generally ineffectual individual who lives his life in daydreams and fantasies. Oz draws a fascinating portrait of this archetype, rooted in the Land of Israel. Fima is on the cusp of late middle age, working as a receptionist in a gynecology clinic, still surviving on handouts from his father. For sure, his fantasies involve women, especially the ones neglected by their husbands, who may or not be an easy "mark." The novel is "dense," with the personal insights of good literature, surrounding islands of scathing political commentary, which only a Jew "of the land" can readily and safely make. A couple of right-wing Israeli reviewers have inferred that Fima's ineffectual nature is an apt symbol for the entire Jewish Left. But before the politics, consider the depictive touches that require the turning on of the bathroom faucet in order to encourage what is only a thin trickle.

As for the politics, Oz is clear-sighted, and pulls no punches. For example: "Although in fact it might be a healthy and wholly laudable sense of shame that prevented us from announcing simply: a Jewish solder has shot and killed an Arab teenager." Rather, with the corruption of language that Oz denounces, it was a "plastic bullet" that killed the Arab, and only "presumably" by the Jewish soldier. Oz has Fima rant even, about the idea that Auschwitz should be a Jewish site. Instead, he would rather saddle the place with Christendom in general, and Polish Catholicism in particular. More scalding still: "Why the hell are we all brain-washed into believing that the concept of human equality is something alien to Judaism, a flawed goyish commodity, tainted Christian pacifism, whereas the muddle-headed mishmash brewed up by some messianic rabbi, the grandfather of Gush Emunim, who has cobbled together a patchwork of scraps from Hegel, Judah Halevi, and Rabbi Loew of Prague, is suddenly considered to be the pure elixir of Judaism, straight from Mount Sinai? What is this? Sheer lunacy!"

Ah, and there is the perennial subject of, in this case, man's relationship with women: "We've had to put up with so much bull**** from the poets, with their Beatrices, their earth mothers, their gazelles, their tigresses... and all that nonsense. Let me tell you, being a man strikes me as a thousand times more complicated than that. Or maybe it's not complicated at all, all that lousy bargaining. You give me sex, I'll give you a bit of tenderness. Or an impression of tenderness."

Oz assumes his reader is well-read, and there are numerous references to the world's literature, and a bit more challenging (or educating) for the non-Jewish reader, to Jewish history and tradition as well. After all, how many non-Jews know what Rabbi Loew of Prague is famous (or is it infamous) for?

A joy to read, with prose that "goes down smooth." A solid 5-stars.

In Fima, Amoz Oz plays with an age old theme in Jewish literature: the over-intellectual ne'er-do-well who cannot quite get his life on track. In Yiddish, this person is known as a luftmensch (literally an air person): someone with big schemes and little ability to put them into practice. Add to this Efraim's (the Fima of the English title) physical dishevelment, his vacillation between gross worship and misogynistic attitudes toward women, and the picture is comedy without dipping into stereotype. Fima keeps his humanity in the novel, despite Oz's obvious play with a well-known Jewish stock character. Also in Fima one can sense Oz trying to come to terms with women: with the problem of women in male literature and with his own writing about them. Oz has seldom written well-rounded female character, and in Fima there is a tacit acknowledgement of this. The novel's title is a man's name, but really the book is about, in great part, an exploration of male attitudes toward women.

Fima was my introduction to the writings of Amos Oz. This wonderful translation retains the humor and poetry of his book, allowing the reader to step into his world, his Israel. If you like the writings of Milan Kundera, you will like the writings of Amos Oz, and Fima is a wonderful starting point.

Amos Oz's " Fima " talks about the daily life and thoughts
of a 54year-old Jewish grown up . While our central hero's life goes
on , the writer takes the chance to introduce us his character and
give us a clue of what is he like through various flashbacks. Some of
them include spicy trip campings in Greece , past discussions with his
father and memories of women he dumped and got dumped from . Fima
seems to be confused and quitte frankly , not really interested of
what he wants from life . He is obsessed though with politics . He
spents hours and hours talking about it with his friends , family and
collegues . The chaos in Fima's life seems somehow strangely connected
with all this mess in the Israeli state. Through insignificant ,only
on the surface ,chats like the one with the taxi driver , Oz is trying
to speak once again about the vital need for peace in the area . The
problem is that his book will bore someone who is not interested or
informed about the Middle East crisis and furthermore , it lacks a
certain plot to keep the reader entertained.

While Oz, the admirable peace activist, may have intended to symbolize the state of Israel with his loveable, yet senile protagonist, and while this symbolism rings true, he also succeeds in brilliantly depicting Israel's left or pro-Palestinian Jews as so seriously demented one wonders how society can fail to commit them to some type of institution, where, one hopes, treatment can be found.

Even if the reader has no sympathy for the plight of our neighbors, our cousins, the Palestinian people, no feeling of remorse for the degradation and cruelty inflicted upon them by the IDF, by the end of the story, some sympathy/remorse will emerge. As Amira Hass wrote recently in Haaretz, it is difficult for us to criticize, never mind condemn our soldiers, for they are our brothers, our sons, our friends, and we know their experiences. We know their fear. Yet Oz, by calling himself a demented lunatic who rightfully ought to be committed, wins us over, somewhat. Perhaps, out of fear, we do go too far. Perhaps Hass is right - for the Palestinian degraded by "routine" inspections, the soldier is Israel - and we choose to ignore and disregard the Palestinian perspective. Yet even most of us in the "right wing" know that the Palestinian is not our enemy. Their "government", their "system of education", their censored "media" and of course Hamas - these institutions and the people behind them are our enemies.

However, the Jewish left goes far beyond Amira Hass's reasonable suggestions. As Fima rightly understands, over ten years ago, even reasonable demands (such as an end to demolitions unless they've been proven in a court to have smuggling tunnels below them or to be homes that harbor terrorists, or an end to the degradation of Palestinians at checkpoints and an open door policy on anyone in need of medical assistance), demands most of us would otherwise be ready to agree to, fall to the wayside as our mouths hang agape, in shock at the absurdity that groups like B'Tselem churn out like McDonald's hamburgers - you know it's not kosher - in fact, you know that it's crap, but it's omnipresent. Fima argues with himself that if only the right knew that the left wouldn't go too far, wouldn't give it all away and leave us, again, with nothing, that we'd all give the Palestinians most of what they want (what Barak offered them) and that would be the end of it. And to some extent, he's right. But there would have to be some trust, and Israelis, well, we can't have any trust right now. Stop bombing our buses and cafes for a while, give us a chance to rebuild that trust. The interaction between Palestinians and Israelis does slowly build that faith, but when Barak offered up whole towns as "goodwill gestures" during Camp David and the Palestinians responded by bombing women and children, well, that trust evaporated and the warm area where it had grown froze over. Barghouti says that the Intifada arose from anger over "failed" Camp David accords mixed with indignation over the Temple Mount riots. Barghouti, get with the picture. We offered you everything you'll ever hope to get and you killed our children. An Intifada on Your Intifada. A massacre on your massacre. Do you know the Purim story, Barghouti? (Bush announced that there would be a war on Purim, this year) When the Persians thought they'd massacre us, we turned the tables on them. The same things happened to you. Do you think we don't know how many of us you'd kill, had you the power? Had you the "weapons of mass destruction"? We know, and that's why we don't ever want to let you have your own port, your own airport, your own direct path to importing the means of our total destruction. Take a lesson from Saddam's current experience, it's not a good idea to encourage suicide bombers. Now that such actions are condemned as "terrorism" and now that there's a "war on terrorism" - perhaps you should rethink your own dementia during the days of Ehud Barak and the Golden Opportunity. Your move to Intifada then makes George W.'s strategies seem pure genius. Your line of logic elevates Bush's to the level of Albert Einstein. Barghouti, Jewish Left, time to get some thinkers on your side. All you've got now is RainMan and the WaterBoy. So lost, like Fima, in distracted and disjointed thoughts on three thousand different topics that one coherent sentence seems like a miracle.

Yes, Oz, you've wrung some sympathy from my heart. Some for the Palestinians and yet far more for our Jewish Left, who can't get it together enough to form a sentence, and get us all to agree to what we've all been ready to give for a long, long time.

While the world is aware of how the Palestinian lack of a free press, lack of freedom of speech has resulted in a propaganda machine no more honest than your average reporting on al Jazeera, our Jewish Left swallows it whole and is blissfully oblivious. Like Fima, smiling widely while wandering aimlessly in the streets.