THE STORY BEGINS: Essays on Literature.

• Author: HYATT, RALPH
• Position: Review

THE STORY BEGINS: Essays on Literature BY AMOS OZ HARCOURT BRACE & Co. 1999, 188 PAGES, $20.00

You may know of an event or person fascinating enough to be written about and published. Perhaps there is a novel within you that seeks to be created. Hundreds of such fascinating stories hit bookstore shelves each year. Imagine for a moment that you're about to embark on such a journey. Exactly how would you begin? What form would your first few paragraphs take?

Some writers (and readers) may find it disrespectful, perhaps wrong, to interfere with the inspiration and spontaneity of a creative author, but not Amos Oz, a prolific Israeli novelist, critic, and teacher. Not only does he not find any difficulty in such analyses, he strongly believes that therein lies much of the fun, delight, and excitement.

The beginning of a story, he holds, is "kind of a contract between writer and reader." The promises of that contract are not always fulfilled, however. At times, it is delivered in unexpected ways. The details of that contract will be lost if one reads speedily. (He warns of the tendency these days to rush through everything in order to save valuable time, including speed-reading and skimming.) "The pleasures of reading, like other delights, should be consumed in small sips," he advises.

Oz surgically dissects 10 stories created by such great authors as Franz Kafka, Anton Chekhov, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He compares one with the other, showing the similarities and differences in the contract each makes with the reader. It feels as if one is taking a course with a superb teacher who is...