Thursday, June 04, 2009

What is Ehud Havazelet reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Ehud Havazelet, author of two critically acclaimed short-story collections, What Is It Then Between Us? and Like Never Before, and the novel Bearing the Body. His stories have appeared in such journals as DoubleTake, New England Review, The Southern Review, ZYZZYVA, Iowa Review, Ontario Review, and Crazyhorse, and have been chosen for the Pushcart Prize.

Havazelet is the winner of both the California Book Award and the Oregon Book Award for fiction.

He is an Associate Professor at the University of Oregon where he teaches creative writing.

One book from his Writers Read entry:
The Years, by Virginia Woolf, which I’ve never read before. I return to Woolf over and over to help me remember what writing’s about. She makes you slow down, makes you listen and look around and with her inimitable (believe me, I’ve tried) music makes you, finally, see the endless strands of connection and the endless isolation they can’t manage to supersede, makes alive everything you thought you’d seen, understood, and in your smugness set aside. She creates worlds to enter—scenes, weathers, cultural moments--but so much more important, the interior landscapes of characters like nobody has since Shakespeare.

The Years may not be her best book—the challenge she sets herself may be unconquerable--but matching Mrs Dalloway, let alone writing it once, is too much too ask, like beating Fitzgerald over the head with Tender is the Night because it isn’t Gatsby....[read on]
The Page 99 Test: Ehud Havazelet's Bearing the Body.

Writers Read: Ehud Havazelet.

--Marshal Zeringue