Musical Moment: And Other Stories [Hardcover]

Yehoshua Kenaz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 6, 1995

YOUNG MEN DISCOVERING the magic of evil and the beauty of sin are the subjects of these novellas and stories by the author of The Way To the Cats (Steerforth Press, 1994). In the title story a boy repays his mother and his violin for all of the trouble they have caused him. His mother becomes his arch enemy, and in their war he wins his manhood. In "Between Night and Dawn," Yigal, the fascistic youth leader at an ROTC-like summer camp, initiates a eucalyptus planting contest among the other boys that culminates in an episode of precocious sexual abandonment. Rites of passage and the erosion of innocence are the prominent themes in all of these stories, but in the hands of Kenaz each takes its unsentimental turn. The themes and richness of these coming-of-age tales will bring to mind the works of such masters as James Joyce, Franz Kafka, and Isaac Babel. Much like Schubert’s "Musical Moment," so do Kenaz’s stories become like a musical moment, staying and expanding in the reader’s mind long after the last page has been read.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Written with great sensuality and passion, these potent stories portray young misfits wandering through a nightmarish adult world. In seamless, rhythmic prose, Israeli novelist Kenaz (The Way to the Cats) portrays the artists as young men in four stories of boys coming of age against a subtly rendered political backdrop of pre-independence Israel. Torment takes many forms: one boy endures the brutal display of a three-legged chicken; another is shown his sister consorting with British soldiers; for a third, playing the violin becomes torture, because he cannot "hear the whispers of another's heart" or "understand the murmured implications." In the last story?with a stunningly imaginative ending?a detached adolescent narrator witnesses the evolution into young adulthood of his peers, one of whom, "a savage young animal", is made into a hero against his will, even as the narrator sadly observes, "We've all been defeated... in a war whose outcome was determined in advance."
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Translated from the original Hebrew, these tales feature a young narrator who comes of age during the 1940s and 1950s. In each story, distinctly faceted childhood experiences are revealed as encounters and ordeals mired in a complex web of emotions. But at the same time, Kenaz's writing is imbued with an enigmatic quality that overlays obvious surface realities and alludes to even more deeply layered truths--about the loneliness of youth, the unhappy effects of unformed friendships, and the inevitable skirmishes resulting from family loyalties. Overall, this satisfying collection of stories conveys a sense of quiet authority. Alice Joyce

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Steerforth Press; First US edition. edition (April 6, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883642183
• ISBN-13: 978-1883642181
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,811,442 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars a strange sadness, September 12, 2007

By 

Eric Maroney (Trumansburg, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Musical Moment: And Other Stories (Paperback)

Kenaz's Musical Moment is a series of interrelated short stories beginning in the early youth of the narrator and ending in his adolescence. Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of this collection of stories is the extremely intimate nature of the first person narration, balanced by the ever present social pressure of Israeli society in the early years of the nation, with its smothering demands of collective action and life. Behind the rah-rah optimism of the early Jewish state, still at war with its Arab neighbors, yet sure of its ultimate triumph, was an unsparing pessimism (a pessimism which would become a hallmark of segments of Israeli society by the 1980s). On page 107-8 of my edition, the narrator displays his existential despair without mitigation: "I was overcome by a strange sadness I sometimes felt without knowing where it came from. A sense of the pointlessness of everything and not belonging to anything. I wondered if they felt this too or if it was only my own defect, that every minute of happiness had to be paid for with hours of sadness. Everything around me seemed to be fading, dying, lost... And there was nothing to long for or really believe in." Is this the Israeli predicament or the human? Musical Moment never lets us know, but a close reader must suspect it is both.