But Maya, in the writing workshop she had signed up for, actually got a lot of compliments on the ending. There was something depressing about that part, Aviad thought. It was a good story, except for the ending. She had reached the age of eighty and, despite constant social pressure, insisted on not splitting. The heroine of Maya’s story was splitless. Others would wait until they’d established themselves professionally and financially and go for it only in middle age. Some chose to do this when they were young for instance, an eighteen-year-old might split into two nine-year-olds. In that world, every person could, at any given moment, turn into two beings, each one half his/her age. The first story Maya wrote was about a world in which people split themselves in two instead of reproducing. & A.: Etgar Keret discusses “Creative Writing” with Deborah Treisman. But perhaps most satisfying to the less sensitive among us, the tinge of narcissism and betrayed hopes of distinction and even public fame which attend such efforts to escape common anonymity, not to mention lack of recognition by one’s live in loved one, are pointed up with secret relish. A deadpan account of a wife and then husband sucked into “creative-writing workshops” with rather remarkable results, there is a delicious note of mildly tragic irony throughout as a comment on the human condition, domesticity-wise.

The polished turn of “Creative Writing” a short story on p67 of the New Yorker Januissue, out just before Christmas, deserves celebration of an unrestrained, New Years Eve kind.

New Yorker surprise Christmas present for all

לא באנו להנות by Etgar Keret