Memory distorts reality, often failing to capture events as they truly occurred. The metaphor compares memory to clothing that loses its original qualities after repeated washing. The author, Giyora Shiro, contemplates this idea while waiting to enter the afterlife. Etgar Keret, through his short stories, encapsulates this theme with absurdist and surreal elements, utilizing a metaphysical wit. His works are varied universes, with each story presenting unique perspectives. Keret’s narrative style includes sudden, unexpected conclusions and thoughts that challenge conventional storytelling.
People are not very good at remembering things the way they really happened. If an experience is an article of clothing, then memory is the garment after it's been washed, not according to the instructions, over and over again: the colours fade, the size shrinks, the original, nostalgic scent has long since become the artificial orchid smell of fabric softener.
Etgar Keret's short stories certainly qualify on that count. He's not always or even often trying to make you laugh, but everything he writes is suffused with a wan metaphysical wit: you come to expect the rug-pull, the sad trombone.
Every story is its own universe, and the 200-odd pages of each of his collections are a multiverse. The stories in Autocorrect are gleaming splinters: multum in parvo.
People, by the way, became extinct a short time later, we're told halfway through the last paragraph of one story — that flamboyantly casual by the way being very Keretian.
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