What was she thinking?
I found these two interviews of Rutu Modan on youtube after I finished reading Exit Wounds. The novel itself is much like Aya in that the main plot line focuses on something we can all relate to: relationship conflict. Just like Aya, it’s set in a sort of unfamiliar setting–in this case, a tumultuous Israel Tel Aviv where suicide bombings are referred to as simply “another bombing.” In her words, the plot goes like this: there exists a taxi driver (Koby), he meets a girl who has just returned from service, a bomb went off, there are five dead bodies, she thinks its his father and her boyfriend who he hasn’t seen for years, he doesn’t believe her, they go on journey to find truth, truth is the father has run off and married another woman. Exit Wounds is about the relational anxieties we all have.
She reveals the meaning behind the title Exit Wounds, noting that when one is shot, the bullet can come out anywhere which means for her that we all carry wounds that shape us in unpredictable places with pains. In the other interview with BBC Collective, her comments suggest that her writing is extremely personal. She takes elements from her life and puts them into her work. She sees her work as a very narrow vision of life in Israel. Interestingly, she admits that in the past she was dating a guy who didn’t call her and instead of thinking that he wasn’t interested, she thought maybe he was dead.
Around 2:50 in the Pretty Cool People interview, we catch a glimpse of the simplistic style of her art, which adds a subtle tone of lightness to the novel. Such lightness is crucial to a story set in such a dangerous area, dealing with such poignant and painfully real relational issues. At 4:52, she notes that humor is something that can be added anywhere. Her response is voiced-over pictures of a dissection of a human body. As the guts are being pulled out, one asks the other about lunch plans. The next panel finds a man cutting a human brain in half with a motion that now reminds us of preparing food. We’ve seen this type of lightness in every novel so far this semester. Because the topics at hand are so grave, humor allows us to get through it and face our anxieties that are reflected on the page.
Somewhat hard to accept were her comments at the end of the BBC Collective interview. She says describes Koby as someone that holds overwhelming rage (at his father) such that he can’t live his life and that in order to live, he needs to stop looking for closure and to instead simply move on. If anything, she notes, this could be the political comment in the novel. The novel itself is certainly not transparent enough to make comments on the Israel / Palestine conflict, and I think she does a wonderful job of focusing less on the backdrop and more on the issues of being human versus the issues of being an Israeli, but such a political comment is fruitless. What does she hope to accomplish? The conflict is not such that it can just be let go and moved on from. A fitting end to the story as it is, but I think she may be grasping at straws if she hopes to say something substantive about the political climate in Israel.
Well, it’s hard to tell what it’s like to live inside that climate, and certainly, I think she’s referring to the way the conflict is, for all present, something inherited. And so many younger people are alienated by its concerns, or feel trapped by something they did not choose to begin.
Though, it’s interesting, as the artist, the things you can say in an interview to try to justify your work. I don’t think she set out in this to try to write something substantive about the conflict, per se. She saw herself as writing a love story that could only take place in Tel Aviv.