Art & War by Lavie Tidhar

Author:Lavie Tidhar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Art and War
ISBN: 9781910924051
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2015-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

Shimon

My initial instinct is to put aside the questions about editing and suggest a slightly different angle on the science fiction issue. But I realise that: a) my recollection of my years as an editor is still painful and this would be just an avoidance tactic; and b) my take on the issue would be – I hope – more potent if I address the editing question first.

So, editing – I was offered a position as an editor in chief of the Hebrew literature department of a major publishing house at a young age. I was 28 years old and completely inexperienced. I was working on my thesis at Tel Aviv University, teaching there and writing on a weekly basis for a cultural supplement of one of the newspapers. I was an author of one poetry collection. The rock band I used to play in broke up after releasing one album. Not a rich, proven record.

But the times were changing in Israel. No, a paradigm shift was slowly taking place. For more than two decades the publishing scene was controlled by famous editors, who made a name for themselves during the 70s and 80s (back in the previous century – talk about the imagined future of sci-fi works arriving quicker than the consciousness can process its implications). The problem was that these editors had never really taken into account that they would grow old and detached from contemporary interest and being. They never thought about training the next generation of editors, never had any apprentices or interns.

In a way, one can argue that the blame for this delusion didn’t lie with them, but with the literary atmosphere and the position of editors in Hebrew culture. Editors played a main role in orthodox Judaism (whenever I use the term ‘orthodox Judaism’, I hear my father’s cry, “It’s the only form of Judaism there is”;, and I have to quash it) at its formative stages: the ancients editors had the last say on what was to be canonical and what was to be discarded, turned to apocrypha, which books were to be included in the Tanach, for instance. Some of the inclusion and exclusion discussions are recorded in the Talmud and are fascinating. The Song of Solomon would have been deemed unworthy for its erotic nature had it not been for Rabbi Akiva arguing for its sake and pointing to the fact that the erotic streak can be read as an allegory for the union between the Virgin of Israel and God. The Book of Ezekeil had been feared for containing a dangerous mystical knowledge, the work of the Chariot and Hashmal (literally – electricity). A story about a boy who had become learned in Hashmal and has been consumed by fire is brought during the discussion. My novel The Wedding Gifts alludes to the two Talmudic discussions, maybe because it deals with canonical models of perceiving reality, or maybe because I’m still subconsciously vexed with my past as an editor. It’s

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