I've waxed enthusiastic on here before about Israeli writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret's sharply funny new story collection, Suddenly, a Knock on the Door. Between tour stops in California and Chicago, the very busy Keret kindly paid a visit to our Seattle offices to chat about storytelling, moviemaking, cake baking, serial killers, and trusting your instincts.

He also humored our request to read a piece aloud from the collection—look for the video at the end of this interview, and prepare to be charmed by his accent (warning for delicate ears: a couple of four-letter words are used).

Mia Lipman: You just came from the L.A. Times Book Festival. Were short-story writers well represented there?

Etgar Keret: Yeah, in my panel. It was very much like an AA meeting. “My name is this and this, and I write short stories. I don’t care! They tell me to write a novel, but I like writing short stories!” Then we all hug.

You’re one of those rare writers, like Raymond Carver and Grace Paley, who has stuck with stories throughout your career.

“Stuck” is pretty judgmental.

[Laughing] I didn’t mean stuck in a bad way, I meant that you’ve stayed with stories.

If your boyfriend would have said, “I’m stuck with you, but not in a bad way. In a nice kind of way…”

I love short stories, I’m a champion of them around here. Why does the short form work so well for you? What are you drawn to in that length?

When I sit down and I write something, I don’t say, “I want to write a short story” or “I want to write a three-page story”—I want to write something that is on my mind. Many times when I begin writing a story, I say to myself, “This is going to be my first novel.” And I think about the protagonist meeting his grandchildren in the park. And while I do that, a truck comes and runs him over after two pages. So it’s not intentional. For me, it’s very strange when people say, “Why don’t you write longer stuff?” The bottom line: You have something that you want to say or you want to write. And when it ends, it ends.

You’re also a filmmaker. Do you have a different creative approach to making films than you do to writing fiction? Is it a different state of mind?

I beg more when I make films. [Laughs.] Filmmaking is a collaborative project…when you write a screenplay, you should be able to know exactly what you’re doing, to be able to defend it, to be able to explain it to people. Because if a story is a cake, then a screenplay is just a recipe for a cake. If I make a cake and I don’t know exactly what ingredients I put in, but it comes out tasty, it’s OK. But if I have to write it on a page and somebody else has to make this cake, I have to be much more conscious.

So there is something about screenplay writing—it’s more conscious effort, more rational effort. I feel like I need another scene here, I need to establish that. But when I write [fiction], I really just sit down and write. I don’t know exactly what I’m doing, and it’s completely an act of letting go and losing control.

Short stories are a famously hard sell for publishers and, I’d say, for the average reader. Do you think that’s changing at all as a result of social media? Do you think people appreciate short pieces more because our attention spans are getting shorter?

You know, it’s funny because I’m saying it here at Amazon, but there’s something about the publishing world that finds it very difficult to deal with changes. And many times you feel there is something very petrified there. It’s like being in the ditches, you know, and kind of shaking in fear.

The idea is that traditionally, short stories were not a big seller because for printed media, you have to sell something that is 400 pages long, and it’s more natural to have a novel. But if you think about, let’s say, the difference between records that you used to have and a song that you can download on iTunes, then today you can read stories individually. If I’m on my way to work on the subway, and I have eight stops and I want to read something, it makes much more sense to read a story.

So I think the world is changing, and these changes can actually improve the situation of the short story. But I don’t think that publishers have internalized it. You know, people just love stories. When you meet somebody, you tell him a story, you don’t tell him a novel.

Right. It’s a bedtime story, not a bedtime novel.

There is something very distinctive about this. When you meet your parents and you say to them, “You know what happened? I met this guy, and he told me this.” All the time, we’re telling stories. And the thing that put short stories in the shadow was very physical and pragmatic, it had to do with the way texts were being packaged. And I truly believe that this could change.

What is the literary landscape like in Israel right now? Are readers different there than here?

Well, for good or for bad, it’s a small country. And it’s very warm people, so everybody knows you, or dated your sister, or beat up your brother. I once wrote this sketch for a comedy show about the fact that in Israel, you can’t be a serial killer because when you come randomly into a building and you want to kill somebody—

You know the doorman.

You know the doorman, you’ve been to high school with the guy. So there is something about this kind of intimacy in Israel that makes readers very different. When I go overseas, there is something kind of mysterious: Who is this guy? And I think that the stories are being read differently because they tell the story of a different place, maybe a strange place. You don’t have this feeling of familiarity that I bet many Israeli readers have.

What are you reading these days? Do you have different taste on the road than you do when you’re at home?

I must say that on book tours like this, if I had time to read I would shower.

Yeah, that’s fair. A different city every day.

But I've recently finished reading Nathan Englander’s collection of short stories—of course, I’m biased because he’s a friend and he translated some of the stories in my collection—but I think it’s an amazing collection.

In addition to everything else, you also teach at the university level. What’s the first thing you say to new writers, or the most important thing? Where should they start?

What I say is that when you choose a style, then the best thing would be not to imitate something that is successful, something that you like. Because the thing that you can ultimately be best at is being yourself. So if you write stories and they come from the way that you perceive the world, and you write them in the way that is most instinctive to you, then you’re kind of the world champion in being you. Nobody could be you more than you can. So basically the moment that you believe that what you are is interesting, you are halfway there.

There are authors who cut their milk teeth on short stories, and there are authors who dedicate themselves to the form with Buddha-like focus. Israeli writer Etgar Keret—nerds of a certain ilk will recognize his name from This American Life and The New Yorker—falls firmly into the latter camp, as his newly translated sixth collection makes clear.

The quirky, thought-provoking, often hilarious pieces in Suddenly, a Knock on the Door lend themselves to being read out loud, on your coffee break, or between subway stops. Keret doesn’t bother with a coat of sugar or even Splenda: His characters question themselves and screw up with such regularity that it’s easy for us to plant ourselves in the middle of their lives.

The tension in these stories comes from the sort of decision anyone might make on any given day, like what to stash in your pockets, where to go to lunch, and if you feel like getting a drink with that guy you fooled around with a year ago who didn’t call afterward. In Keret’s world, he’ll be flawed and you’ll be flawed, and whether or not it works out isn’t really the point. The point is to go along for the ride, however brief, and lose yourself inside other people’s moments.

To celebrate the English-language publication of Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, we’re thrilled to share two excerpts with Omnivoracious readers: an exclusive audio version of the title story, read by none other than Ira Glass (squee!); and, after the jump, the full text of “What Animal Are You?”

"Suddenly, a Knock…" – read by Ira Glass

What Animal Are You?

(This story originally appeared in the June 2011 issue of Harper's Magazine.)

The sentences I’m writing now are for the benefit of German Public Television viewers. A reporter who came to my home today asked me to write something on the computer because it always makes for great visuals: an author writing. It’s a cliché, she realizes that, but clichés are nothing but an unsexy version of the truth, and her role, as a reporter, is to turn that truth into something sexy, to break the cliché with lighting and unusual angles. And the light in my house falls perfectly, without her having to turn on even a single spot, so all that’s left is for me to write.

At first, I just made believe I was writing, but she said it wouldn’t work. People would be able to tell right away that I was just pretending. “Write something for real,” she demanded, and then, to be sure: “A story, not just a bunch of words. Write naturally, the way you always do.” I told her it wasn’t natural for me to be writing while I was having my picture taken for German Public Television, but she insisted. “So use it,” she said. “Write a story about just that—about how unnatural it seems and how the unnaturalness suddenly produces something real, filled with passion. Something that permeates you, from your brain to your loins. Or the other way around. I don’t know how it works with you, what part of your body gets the creative juices flowing. Each person is different.” She told me how she’d once interviewed a Belgian author who, every time he wrote, had an erection. Something about the writing “stiffened his organ”—that’s the expression she used. It was probably a literal translation from German, and it sounded very strange in English.

“Write,” she insisted again. “Great. I love your terrible posture when you write, the cramped neck. It’s just wonderful. Keep writing. Excellent. That’s it. Naturally. Don’t mind me. Forget I’m here.”

So I go on writing, not minding her, forgetting she’s there, and I’m natural. As natural as I can be. I have a score to settle with the viewers of German Public Television but this isn’t the time to settle it. This is the time to write. To write things that will appeal, because when you write crap, she’s already reminded me, it comes out terrible on camera.

My son returns from kindergarten. He runs up to me and hugs me. Whenever there’s a television crew in the house, he hugs me. When he was younger, the reporters had to ask him to do it, but by now, he’s a pro: runs up to me, doesn’t look at the camera, gives me a hug, and says, “I love you, Daddy.” He isn’t four yet, but he already understands how things work, this adorable son of mine.

My wife isn’t as good, the German Television reporter says. She doesn’t flow. Keeps fiddling with her hair, stealing glances at the camera. But that isn’t really a problem. You can always edit her out later. That’s what’s so nice about television. In real life it isn’t like that. In real life you can’t edit her out, undo her. Only God can do that, or a bus, if it runs her over. Or a terrible disease. Our upstairs neighbor is a widower. An incurable disease took his wife from him. Not cancer, something else. Something that starts in the guts and ends badly. For six months she was shitting blood. At least that’s what he told me. Six months before God Almighty edited her out. Ever since she died, all kinds of women keep visiting our building, wearing high heels and cheap perfume. They arrive at unlikely hours, sometimes as early as noon. He’s retired, our upstairs neighbor, and his time is his own. And those women, according to my wife at least, they’re whores. When she says “whores” it comes out natural, like she was saying “turnip.” But when she’s being filmed, it doesn’t. Nobody’s perfect.

My son loves the whores who visit our upstairs neighbor. “What animal are you?” he asks them when he bumps into them on the stairs. “Today I’m a mouse, a quick and slippery mouse.” And they get it right away, and throw out the name of an animal: an elephant, a bear, a butterfly. Each whore and her animal. It’s strange, because with other people, when he asks them about the animals, they simply don’t catch on. But the whores just go along with it.

Which gets me thinking that the next time a television crew arrives I’ll bring one of them instead of my wife, and that way it’ll be more natural. They look great. Cheap, but great. And my son gets along better with them too. When he asks my wife what animal she is, she always insists: “I’m not an animal, sweetie, I’m a person. I’m your mommy.” And then he always starts to cry.

Why can’t she just go with the flow, my wife? Why is it so easy for her to call women with cheap perfume “whores” but when it comes to telling a little boy “I’m a giraffe” it’s more than she can handle? It really gets on my nerves. Makes me want to hit someone. Not her. Her I love. But someone. To take out my frustrations on someone who has it coming. Right-wingers can take it out on Arabs. Racists on blacks. But those of us who belong to the liberal left are trapped. We’ve boxed ourselves in. We have nobody to take it out on. “Don’t call them whores,” I rail at my wife. “You don’t know for a fact that they’re whores, do you? You’ve never seen anyone pay them or anything, so don’t call them that, okay? How would you feel if someone called you a whore?”

 “Great,” the German reporter says. “I love it. The crease in your forehead. The frenzied keystrokes. Now all we need are an intercut with translations of your books in different languages, so our viewers can tell how successful you are—and that hug from your son one more time. The first time he ran up to you so quickly that Jörg, our cameraman, didn’t have a chance to change the focus.” My wife wants to know if the German reporter needs her to hug me again too, and in my heart I pray she’ll say yes. I’d really love my wife to hug me again, her smooth arms tightening around me, as if there’s nothing else in the world but us. “No need,” the German says in an icy voice. “We’ve got that already.” “What animal are you?” my son asks the German, and I quickly translate into English. “I’m not an animal,” she laughs, running her long fingernails through his hair. “I’m a monster. A monster that came from across the ocean to eat pretty little children like you.” “She says she’s a songbird,” I translate to my son with impeccable naturalness. “She says she’s a red-feathered songbird, who flew here from a faraway land.”

"What Animal Are You?" is an excerpt from Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2011 by Etgar Keret. Translated from the Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger. English language translation copyright © 2011 by Etgar Keret.

While on tour in support of 420 Characters, one of our Best Books of the Month for December, author and illustrator Lou Beach stopped by Amazon to chat about how a series of Facebook posts becomes a book, what it's like to live in a family of artists, and "the compulsion to create a narrative."

In his debut collection of microfiction, Beach builds tiny worlds inhabited by recurring characters who come to him, he says, in the space between dreaming and waking. We're not the only ones to be captivated by this approach: 420 Characters has been featured in the New York Times and USA Today, as well as (more than once) on NPR.