On viable literature – Linda Grant in TLS:

‘Alter asserts that Oz was most comfortable when addressing an audience, engaged and eloquent, speaking of literature and his lifelong quest for a peaceful resolution to a conflict that he did not live to see deteriorate into its current tragic phase. The intimacy of one-to-one friendships was not, Alter says, his forte. He attached most importance to the privacy of family life, having run away as a teenager to a kibbutz where he was housed in a separate residence for children, who, left to their own devices, descended into Lord of the Flies-style bullying. But after his death, as Alter reports, Oz’s middle child, Galia, from whom he had been alienated for several years, accused him of sadistic behaviour towards her (an accusation denied by her siblings, Fania and Daniel). He was married to Nily, whom he met when they were both teenagers at the kibbutz, for more than fifty years, and she was certainly the most important woman in his life, but there were rumours about affairs. (The author refers to these, but does not give a view.) He was a great believer in the redeeming power of sex.’

(…)

‘A Tale of Love and Darkness revealed the central wound of Oz’s life: his mother’s suicide in 1952, when he was twelve. Alter proposes that Oz considered himself a fraud, inauthentic, going beyond what many writers experience as impostor syndrome. Towards the end of his life Oz told a friend, Nurith Gertz, that he felt a profound absence of self-worth derived from his mother’s shocking suicide: “Nothing can fill that pit. No success and no praise and no words … you are not worth anything because the most important woman in the world for you got up and slammed the door on you and went away”.’

(…)

‘And for a viable literature. The novelist must from time to time leave the house.’

Read the article here.

I met Oz once, I believe, in Düsseldorf in 1998, we did a reading together, he came across as a benign predator. Many things he had to see about the political situation didn’t go beyond cliches but I guess that’s the tragedy of most humanism, its preaxchings are utterly boring.

I admire some of his novels, I haven’t read all of them, I still have to read his magnum opus. Maybe this summer.

For viable literature you need to leave the house. Proust would disagree.
I agree.