My Review Of (And Some Notes On) David Grossman’s “To The End of the Land”
By now, most literary types have read news coverage of what happened at VQR, so I won’t rehash that here. (I also never worked in the VQR offices—I blogged from my perch here in LA—so I don’t have anything to add.) But it looks like the magazine’s shutdown means that the Fall 2010 issue won’t appear online. If so, this is a shame, because what I’ve seen of the issue looks great (I’m still waiting to pick up a copy at a bookstore). It’s called “The Price of Paperless” and examines the manifold geopolitical, social, and economic issues attendant with mining for the precious minerals used in computers, cell phones, and other high-tech devices. There are reports from Bolivia, the Congo, Canada, Peru, India, Afghanistan, Montana, Kosovo, and, in a timely coincidence, Chile.
The issue also presents the magazine’s usual mix of fiction, poetry, and reviews, including an essay I wrote about Israeli novelist David Grossman and his latest novel, “To The End of the Land.” The book has been getting mostly ecstatic reviews in the U.S. and U.K.—the ever helpful complete review has aggregated links to some—but I’m not as high on it as most critics.
While I welcome opinions diverging from my own, I think many reviewers have allowed Grossman’s life story to color their perceptions of the novel, whose protagonist, Ora, leaves her home so as not to hear news about her son engaged in an IDF operation in the West Bank. Grossman’s son Uri was killed in the 2006 war with Hezbollah a few days after Grossman, A.B. Yehoshua, and Amos Oz had called for a ceasefire; and Grossman has been widely lauded for his peace activism, his support for the Palestinian cause, his evenhanded political writings, and his participation in the weekly protests at Sheikh Jarrah. All of this makes him an exceedingly admirable man, as well as a tragic figure, and in the British media, for whom he often writes op-ed pieces, Grossman seems to occupy the role of the Zionist it’s okay to like.
I share that admiration for Grossman and I respect what he’s tried with this latest novel, which seemingly can’t help but be intertwined with his own family’s story (even if he wrote the first draft before Uri’s death). And there are, as I wrote in VQR, some wonderful sections in “To the End of the Land.” But there are also some major problems that have been mostly glossed over. The complete review offers a representative quote from the Financial Times’ Justin Cartwright:
“Ora’s observations are often moving and sharp, but can also be repetitive and banal. The poor translation doesn’t help. The improbability of Avram stumbling along silently as he is assailed by Ora’s memories and her evocation in detail of Ofer and Ilan, becomes oppressive. Oddly, in this monologue, we occasionally get Avram or Ilan’s point of view, but never any alleviating Joycean irony or humour. (…) For all that, this is a deeply serious, utterly honest work about the state of Israel. And because of this I am sure that many will take it for a great novel.”
I think Cartwright puts it well. Grossman’s empathy, his ability to enter the minds of others, is one of his greatest strengths as a novelist and as a political activist. But his Ora, so suffused with emotion and anxiety, is too trapped in her own mind. She often embarks on wandering anecdotes that yield little insight or are repeatedly interrupted by descriptions of the (admittedly beautiful) Israeli landscape. Part of the problem is that she is trying to tell Avram everything she can about Ofer—a son he’s never met—and in trying to recreate an entire life, she fails to leave out the boring parts, the ephemeral details that might interest an absent father but are utterly uninteresting to a reader.
And then there’s the problem, as I alluded to above, of how these hiking sections are narrated. Flashbacks are generally best presented as if they were happening in the present, right in front of the reader. “To The End of the Land” is a novel heavily reliant on flashbacks, and yet most of them are presented not as uninterrupted scenes but rather in this frustratingly digressive, overly conversational style. The result is a lack of “tension on the page,” to use E.L. Doctorow’s phrase.
For those who have read the novel, contrast these fragmented sections with the long, uninterrupted flashbacks of a hospital ward during the Six Days War and the later section set in Egypt during the Yom Kippur War. The scenes are vividly described, full of action and interesting dialogue, and immersive—which is exactly what many of the hiking scenes lack.
I think Grossman is an extraordinary writer and a brave, eloquent activist, and this still may be a worthy novel for those who want to take the time (it’s more than 600 pages). But it is almost certainly not a “great” novel, nor should its status as an anti-war book earn it any special laurels. (Though sadly, in the U.S., the term “anti-war” has become so denatured by our perverted political discourse that some people see being anti-war as a bad thing.) In my view, “See Under: Love” is a more impressive imaginative feat—also a deeply emotional work but one that presents its story with brio and confidence.
Notes