Amos Oz's most frustrating, inane, gross, boring, and conceited novel may also be his most brilliant, erudite, funny, and deeply profound work.Let me be frank: this book is absolutely tortuous to get through at times, actually, for most of its length it seems to be everything a book shouldn't be. The protagonist is almost completely unsympathetic sometimes being so self-obsessed and condescending to those around him that you want spit on the page just to spite him. And the few spots of potential evolution and even personal redemption planted throughout the text serve only to cause more frustration as he, inevitably and (kind of spoiler I guess) falls right back into the same annoying character patterns that the reader has come to know and scream at.The eponymous protagonist Ephraim "Fima" is surrounded by characters equally unappealing as each, in turn, serve only to enable and exacerbate Fima's issues while simultaneously using him as a distraction in their own misguided and frustrated lives. Fima to them is basically the dumb ass clown who, they do admit, is smarter than most if not all of them with the potential to be 'better' but is kept from being so by his numerous failings, namely his lack of direction and near pathological apathy.On the surface the story drags and drags. Similar to Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" Fima, for thirty chapters, alternates between rising and falling actions. Fima fails, usually because of himself and even despite his infinitesimal and occasional efforts, but unlike Joyce's book the victories and defeats depicted in the story are almost all universally mundane and apparently meaningless. From the trials of a filthy apartment with dead bugs, spoiled food, and dirty laundry, all the way up to the biggest issues regarding the state of Israel's involvement with the 'territories' and how these issues affect the way people act, dress, and even speak, down to the most minute changes in the language used to describe both it and simple everyday life, Fima lives as a slug, observing and commenting but doing nothing otherwise despite his stated (and well described) boundless potential.The intellectual analyses running throughout the story serve as commentary both for the main character and the various situations he finds himself in, but are all crushed under the inherent apathy and disappointment of not only the inaction and frustrated confusion of the aging 'modern' generation of Israelis but of the condescending and sanctimonious attitude of the previous generation of 'founders' who seem to now exist only to be disappointed.Now, the story is clearly more than just the basic story. The metaphor between Fima and his friends and family as both characters and concepts is well shown, and Oz navigates the cast admirably.But where this book not only shines but eventually explodes in literary incandescence (and I only really felt this way after finishing the last page though there were pangs and tremors of this feeling brewing from a little after the first quarter or so of the book) is in its depiction of the liberation of a tired intellect from the atrophied confines of disinterest, disappointment, and frustration. Fima's mind goes from being mired and listless in a purgatorial swamp to (after repeated attempts both half hearted and otherwise) being forcefully pulled out of the sludge and the quicksand (I can't help but think of a bright and glorious star somehow being magnificently pulled by a man barehanded from the deepest foulest most filthy and disgusting pit and being placed in the heavens) not only finally accepting responsibility for the future of both the individual (Fima) and the nation (Israel) but also to acceptance of both man's limitless potential seemingly counterbalanced by some ineffable negative truths about the human condition, namely the before mentioned pit falls of apathy and ennui along with a shattering evaluation of both what the achieving of the Zionist dream accomplished along with not only what it failed to do but what it was doomed to failing at before the whole enterprise even started.At first I thought this book was just an established author trying something 'a little different' and would be just a quiet and enjoyable bit of literature from a man who, I feel, is a "writer's writer". But, whether intentionally or not, Amos Oz has produced a work that through the struggle of not only the mind of the reader but of the main character himself, has successfully navigated the pitfalls of the most popular understanding of nihilism and emerged from that pit, wearied, near dead from exhaustion, but infinitely brighter in every sense of the word. Think of a man battling the world of Camus' "The Stranger" with Dylan Thomas' 'Do Not Go Gently into that Good Night'as an, at first, quiet refrain, but eventual warriors call to victory.A mammoth frustration but a brilliant and mandatory read for all lovers of fine literature.
"Sta cercando qualcosa?""Sì, sto cercando il domani"Quant'è brutto fare i paragoni. Imbarazzano sempre. Forse perché, sotto sotto, sai che c'è un fondo di verità.Per tutta la lettura (lenta, annoiata, svogliata, disattenta) di questo romanzo, non ho potuto fare a meno di operare un confronto con un altro libro di un autore israeliano, un'altra storia di crisi di mezza età, un altro cinquantenne smarrito alla ricerca di un domani mentre il presente sembra solo l'ombra gettata da un passato ingombrante (bella questa, me la segno!). Questo libro è Cinque stagioni di Yehoshua: una lettura ancora fresca, che si è posta con forza come termine di (migliore) paragone con questo vecchio libro di Oz.Entrambi illustrano il tramonto di un uomo, e che pure possiede ancora un guizzo di vita. Entrambi elaborano una mancanza: il lutto in Yehoshua, la separazione in Oz. Uno solo però ha successo, mentre l'altro fallisce. Le cinque stagioni di Molcho, il protagonista di Yehoshua, sono un capolavoro di realismo; il Fima di Oz è, spiace ammetterlo, una noia mortale. E qui smetto di proseguire con questo paragone.Fima è una noia mortale, davvero. Se non fosse che Oz rimane sempre e comunque nella trojka dei grandi scrittori israeliani, non esiterei ad assegnare una sola stellina di giudizio. E' un romanzo senza capo né coda, che si ostina ripiegarsi su se stesso e sulla sua estrema monotonia quotidiana. Certo, qui sta il genio, potrebbe dire qualcuno, perché ha perfettamente trascritto lo stato d'animo del protagonista, il collassare su se stesso di un presente immobile, i riti di una claustrofobica vita domestica. Ma Yeoshua (e qui torna il paragone!) l'ha fatto meglio, decisamente meglio, senza mai annoiare il lettore. Spogliamo Fima, spogliamolo di tutto, e che rimane? Rimane un povero vecchio che parla da solo e ogni cinque pagine va in bagno. Forse non tutte le quotidianità sono belle da raccontare. Certo non da leggere.
What do You think about Fima (1994)?
gosh, this one's hard to pinpoint -- a book about a very complex character: a loser with an over-intellectual mind; obsessed with political and philosophical intricacies and emotionally oblivious; a user and a leech who can't pay his bills or keep his trash from overflowing, but who is deeply compassionate and yearns for the unattainable grace of being he calls the "third dimension"; at once pathetic and somehow impossible to hate...and all this set in jerusalem, with all the intricacies and contradictions of life in israel. the main character "fima" is perhaps himself a symbol of the paralysis of some israeli left-wing intellectuals -- who have all the solutions for peace in their heads or on paper, and yet can't seem to make anything happen in reality.
—Marianna Evenstein
Hubiera podido fácilmente darle más nota, pero el último cuarto de la novela se hace pesado y repetitivo. Los personajes secundarios tienen razón: Fima es exasperante, y ni el cariño puede salvarle llegado el final. Ni su propia clarividencia puede. Claro que quizá es culpa mía, por haber llegado a creer que en algún momento sería capaz de evolucionar. Fima es así y así morirá. Lo único que una persona puede esperar al respecto es nunca convertirse en alguien como él. Y por supuesto, que Oz siga escribiendo mucho y por muchos años. Sobre lo que quiera, como le dé la gana, mientras escriba. Que me den quinientos Fima con sus quinientos dramas, mientras sea Amos Oz quien me los cuente.
—Carmen
I rate this book a 3.57 on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being best. Here is a sample of the neuroses oozing from this book: "Suddenly a cockroach came strolling toward him, looking weary and indifferent. It did not try to escape. At once Fima was fired with the thrill of the chase. Still on his knees, he slipped off a shoe and brandished it, then repented as he recalled that it was just like this, with a hammer blow to the head, that Stalin's agents murdered the exiled Trostsky. And he was startled to discover the resemblance of between Trotsky in his last pictures and his father, who had been here a moment before begging him to marry. The shoe froze in his hand. He observed with astonishment the creature's feelers, which were describing slow semi-circles. He saw masses of tiny stiff bristles, like a mustache. He studied the spindly legs seemingly full of joints. The delicate formation of the elongated wings. He was filled with awe at the precise, minute artistry of this creature, which no longer seemed abhorrent but wonderfully perfect: a representative of a hated race, persecuted and confined to the drains, excelling in the art of stubborn survival, agile cunning in the dark; a race that had fallen victim to primeval loathing born of fear, of simple cruelty, of inherited prejudices. Could it be that it was precisely the evasiveness of this race, its humility and plainness, its powerful vitality, tat aroused horror in us? Horror at the murderous instinct that its very presence excited in us? Horror because of the mysterious longevity of a creature that could neither sting nor bite and always kept its distance? Fima therefore retreated in respectful silence. He replaced the shoe on his foot, ignoring the rank smell of his sock. And he closed the door of the cupboard under the sink gently, so as not to alarm the creature."
—Adam Cherson
