Yoel Hoffmann (b. 1937) passed away in August 2023. That year marked the tenth anniversary of his book How Do You Do, Dolores, a work distinguished by a poetic prose style that consistently captivates with its enigmatic nature, veiled plots, surprising humor inspired by Southeast Asian philosophy, and invented nonsense logic—a style unlike anything else in Hebrew literature.
How Do You Do, Dolores belongs to a category of works that, before we can delve into specifics, must be characterized as unique artistic phenomena—indeed, as artifacts. The most striking aspect of this particular work is its visual appearance. The book lacks page numbers and is instead divided into brief fragments, numbered from 1 to 133. This fragmentary division aligns with a “geometric” writing tradition that includes Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz; with a tradition of the philosophical essay represented by Friedrich Schlegel, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein; and with classical translations of Taoist...
