So, I wasn’t expecting much from Colm Toibin or Etgar Keret but Keret was definitely the winner in the battle of the foreign writers. Before I get into the awesomeness of Keret, I must say Toibin, through his understandable Irish accent, did attempt to make his speech interesting with various stories pertaining to his book Brooklyn. We can’t really complain though, most of the class did not enjoy reading Brooklyn so hearing the story behind the work of creative non-fiction wasn’t going to be a jaw dropper.

It turns out, for those who missed the speech or simply wasn’t paying attention, Brooklyn is a semi-true story. The plot of a young woman moving to America, leaving her sister and mother behind in Ireland is true. The young Irish transplant had worked in a department store in Brooklyn, lived in a boarding house and married a(n Irish not Italian) man  in America without telling her family.

To compose the tale, Toibin revealed that he did do extensive research, traveling to areas in Brooklyn where Irish immigrants lived in the early 20th century but he didn’t bother to take any detailed notes. “Anything that is important, I would remember.”

Worn out by Toibin, I hoped that Keret would be a bit amusing despite his thick, yet intriguing accent, and he certainly was. His introduction of where he’s from, his life and family got the crowd to giggle, something that rarely occurred during the Toibin talk. His readings from Suddenly, a Knock on the Door were captivating, even for a class who hasn’t studied his work. Even his short film “What About Me,” with a talking donkey and dog had interest.

I am having a hard time relating his talk “The Real and the Imagined…” to bioethics and our upcoming research paper. Keret mostly talked about the origins of the two stories he read, like the story of a German newscaster prompting him to pretend to write a story for television and the story of how he met up with the wrong person at a cafe. Maybe his talks were suppose to inspire us; that any topic can be formed into a good story if we relate it to a real life situation. We should focus our research topics on things that affect us or interest us, just like how Keret wrote two amazing short fiction stories based on non fiction situations, the real and the imagined.