16) The Nimrod Flipout: Stories
by Etgar KeretThis is a collection of short stories, some absurd, some pointless, some funny, some dull.
It's really hard to figure out how much I did or didn't like this book. The cover alone sold me on reading the book, and there are times when it almost reaches the heights of absurdity that a picture of a short man in a bunny suit who has just shotgunned a bunch of fat birds promises. With the exception of the story about the guy whose dog wakes him up in a peculiar way and one or two others, none of the stories really stand out as especially great or memorable. It's probably time for me to pick up a regular old novel.
As is most often the case, a conversation with McB did make me ponder something while reading this. Keret's work is translated from Hebrew and what if what I love most about the book is how the translator did their job of interpreting the words as opposed to the original author's? This book isn't a good example of that idea, obviously. But what if I only like The Stranger because Stuart Gilbert did a great job of translating it into English as opposed to how Camus actually wrote it?
