New Yorker Fiction Review #276: "Mitzvah" by Etgar Keret

 Review of the short story from the June 27, 2022 issue of The New Yorker...

Israeli writer Etgar Keret is another of the handful of writers who can get me out of retirement to review another New Yorker short story. Why? Because his stories are gritty, honest, and angst-filled. His characters are funny, bitter, and real. And he deals often with adolescence, a period in people's lives (mine included) that is awkward and frustrating but which we can never stop referring back to for the entire rest of our lives, looking for some explanation as to why we are the way we are today.

Not that the story "Mitzvah" is that weighty or complex -- it's about a pair of friends sitting around their drug dealer's house talking about girls until finally getting high and going out to (unsuccessfully, as it turns out) try and hit on some of them. 

There is nothing particularly consequential about this story. It is unlikely to be anthologized or dissected. And if it has, and I'm wrong, please feel free to not bother to tell me. So why read it? Why care? I don't even have an answer for that. Maybe if you want to be reminded -- for 20 minutes -- of what it's like to be a horny, under-sexed 19 or 20 year old struggling to find your place in the world, with friends/associates beside you who, although they may care about you and want to help you, don't really know how because they haven't learned how to help themselves, so they cast about for things like alcohol, drugs, and random meaningless sexual encounters, because they think that will redeem them and that's all they know how to do anyway. 

If, on the other hand, you'd rather remain in adulthood, where things make somewhat (but not actually much more) sense and we all act like we all have a lot invested in acting like we know what we're doing...then please don't bother reading this story or pretty much any of Etgar Keret's work.