We’d like to leave our readers with a great gift before they move on to other books. Perhaps a character. But we’re like a building contractor whose tools are limited. At most he puts up a wall or lays down a floor and says to the client that he should use his imagination to fill in the rest.
Assume for a moment that the criminal code applied to writers as well. We would be sued for negligence and the incompletion of characters just as suits are brought against contractors.
Your honor, we’d say, but we’ve given the reader the essential quality in each case. There is no such thing, the judge would reply, the reader’s entitled to all the particulars.
Once we knew a woman whom we could describe (on our own) down to the last of the thousands of hairs on her head. That’s how much care we took with her character. But if we were to do that now, our readers would sue us for excessive particularity.
So all we can offer our readers is this: a large mug with the words GOOD MORNING (in English) written across it. They can drink their morning coffee from it and picture a person in their mind’s eye.
[191]
In addition to the mug (as in a buy-one-get-one-free special) we could tell a beautiful tale:
In the beginning, when God was creating the heaven and the earth, the earth was formless and waste, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and a wind from God hovered over the face of the waters.
Imagine the loneliness of countless years. Like a giant, old autistic man, He stared into what was and saw not even a crack. And because of its tremendous proportions, not even an angle or a curve. And when He looked outside, on account of His great pain, He saw only something like a cloud or pale washes of color. How long could He remain like that, all alone?
The only consolation was His name (or, more accurately, His names). But when He uttered them, He heard (because of the absolute emptiness) not even an echo.
Copyright © 2010 by Yoel Hoffmann
Translation copyright © 2015 by Peter Cole
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Moods is published by arrangement with the Keter Publishing House and the Harris/Elon Agency of Israel.
First published as a New Directions Paperbook (NDP1306) in 2015
Manufactured in the United States of America
Design by Erik Rieselbach.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hoffmann, Yoel.
[Matsve ruah. English]
Moods / Yoel Hoffmann ; translated by Peter Cole.
Originally published as: Matsve ruah. Yerushalayim : Keter, c2010.
ISBN 978-0-8112-2382-9
ISBN 978-0-8112-2383-6 (e-book)
1. Psychological fiction. 2. Experimental fiction, Jewish.
I. Cole, Peter, 1957– translator. II. Title.
PJ5054.H6319M3713 2015
892.43'6—dc23 2015001270
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011
Moods Page 10
