What is courage in American literature — a culture where either anything goes, or nothing goes anywhere? Too often we are led to believe that the courageous writer is the provocative one. But in a world where there are no more sacred cows, the provocative has become cowardly, obvious. Today, literary courage is something quite different: not a writer’s willingness to attack the sacred but to create it. It would be enough to tell you that Papernick brilliantly captures the Israel of recent years, down to the pictures certain bartenders tape to the mirrors behind them, with an accuracy and depth that few other American writers have shown before or since. It would be enough to tell you that Papernick is provocative in the way that is often shallowly praised — his writing is honest, blunt, sometimes even graphic. But the stories you are about to read offer far more than history, far more than travelogue, far more than provocation. He has built something entirely new here, and also entirely ancient.
What do You think about The Ascent Of Eli Israel (2011)?
