Disguising Reality with Fiction

Editor’s Note: We‘ve all read stories that keep us enthralled the whole way through. For me, “Empty Pages” is one of them. Since readers interpret stories in their own ways, I asked Joram:

What inspired this story of crime and love, and what message do you hope to relay with your fictional works?

I had just started writing and Empty Pages was one of my first short stories. I was in Florence, Italy on my way to Norway for my son’s wedding, and my wife Lona was doing a three-week course on printing. I found a spot in a hotel overlooking the red roofs of the city and I started writing. I had no preconceived plot in mind. I don’t remember the earliest versions, but the story evolved with things I did and saw during the day. I turned my days and my thoughts into fiction, and created, Gentel, who also had the desire to write. It’s autobiographical to some extent, except for the woman and the crime scene. The part about the bookstore and the storeowner who refuses to sell one of his books on display really happened. What Gentel tells the young woman bleeding in his arms in the story were really my thoughts.

Fiction and reality for me are interchangeable and have blurry borders. At times they seem like the same thing. Empty Pages is partly an expression of who I am. The story ends without a clear resolution, leaving a certain hope, and yet frustration. The result is ambiguity, much like our lives. There’s an unfinished character to it.

Disguising reality with fiction and vice-versa – the frustration, the fortuitous happenings, the optimism, the pessimism – it’s all part of creativity for me. It’s full of hope but never seems quite finished. You can’t throw in two pinches of sugar and one of salt and have it all turn out the way you want it, or imagined it; that’s not how it works. It’s the trial and errors, the accidents, the obsession. Empty Pages really does relate to my life, at least in a metaphorical sense, just like Jellyfish Have Eyes relates to La Parguera and the science I did there. I suppose Empty Pages questions reality.