All posts in this series can be found here. And today糖心传媒檚 entry is from THA REALIST Edmund Wilson ³ on Michal Ajvaz.

The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland

Language: Czech
Country: Czech Republic
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Pages: 336

Why It Should Win: Nabokov + Borges + Swift = Ajvaz; Dalkey Archive is one of the premiere publishers of translations; praised by the Hipster Book Club; much better than Ajvaz糖心传媒檚 The Other City

糖心传媒淭he Book You All Must Choose to Win BTBA 2010, Unless You Are All Pompous Egoists Like That Ass Nabokov糖心传媒�

by THA REALIST Edmund Wilson ³

You know, the Kingdom wasn糖心传媒檛 such a bad place until that pompous ass Nabokov got up here. I had a nice run of about five years, just me and the deity talking over those really interesting questions of language and reality, the relationship between them, how this all pertains to novels. Wittgenstein would drop by from time to time. It was nice. But the inevitable had to happen sooner or later, that old 茅migr茅 son of a bitch had to die sometime. So Mr. Genius of all Geniuses finally kicks himself over, and here he comes floating up on butterfly wings糖心传媒擨 mean, puh-leeze, butterfly wings? where糖心传媒檇 those even come from?糖心传媒攁nd let me tell you, for any of you who think the deity is full of Him/Herself, you should have seen it when Nabokov floated on up to the Kingdom of God . . . 糖心传媒渙h, gee Mr. Nabokov, tell me how you channeled Pushkin for that糖心传媒攅xcuse the pun糖心传媒攇od-like translation. Tell me again how unconventional you were when you wrote Lolita . . .糖心传媒�

It was enough to make me sick, if sickness had any meaning up here, although I have to admit, it was plenty fun watching the old man get all in a lather over that 糖心传媒渋diot son糖心传媒� of his (his words, not mine) claiming to have spoken with his ghost. He was in such a rage, and impotent to do a thing! Guess real life isn糖心传媒檛 like 糖心传媒淭he Vane Sisters,糖心传媒� is it Nabby! Heh, heh, heh . . . You should have seen him the day T.O.O.L.糖心传媒攖hat糖心传媒檚 what he calls it, tool that he is糖心传媒攖he day T.O.O.L. was published. You糖心传媒檇 have thought the fallen angel had returned there was so much commotion. I have to give it to him, the Kingdom really shook that day.

But anyway, I digress. I bring up Nabokov糖心传媒攑ompous ass that he is糖心传媒攐nly to introduce The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, the book that hack Nabokov would have written if he had any real talent, instead of just ego. It takes little butterfly-boy糖心传媒檚 favorite conceit糖心传媒攖hat whole bit about language being reality and vice versa糖心传媒攂ut he transports it to an island world Nabokov couldn糖心传媒檛 have dreamed up if he wrote ten Pale Fires. He populates this island with a civilization that makes Zembla look like the little podunk backwater it is糖心传媒擨 mean, he describes it in detail for a good 150 pages, half the book, and I was riveted the whole damn time! Waterfalls inside of houses! Walls made of water! Telling time via smell! It was all so truly creative, and the best thing was that every one of these beautiful details doubled as a metaphor for the way language mediates reality. Oh, and no kiddy porn in the whole book. Imagine that.

The plot of the book is that years ago a European took a trip to this island, and now he糖心传媒檚 making a sort of ethnological study of it from what he remembers. At the center of their society is this Book that they hand around and all write in糖心传媒攍ike a pen and paper Wikipedia. And then after the narrator is done describing the society that gave rise to this incredible Book, then Ajvaz indulges in the Borgesian conceit (he hates Nabokov too, by the way), the Borgesian conceit of a book within a book that tunnels down into itself nearly down to infinity. The book as reductio ad absurdum糖心传媒攂rilliant! And we read this book alongside the narrator糖心传媒攚hich is a great book in and of itself, despite (or because of) it糖心传媒檚 near-infinite nature糖心传媒攁nd this book-within-a-book-within-a-book comes to reflect on the whole society the narrator has just spent the previous 150 pages describing in such staggering detail. It糖心传媒檚 all so brilliant. You can just turn to a page at random, and I bet you there will be a line or a sentence or a paragraph there that you could muse about for the rest of the day.

Really, if you extracted all the genuine talent in Nabokov (minus that cancerous lump of an ego) and tossed in a liberal dash of Borges and a touch of Swiftian satire, well, there you would have Michal Ajvaz. The book is surely the most staggering translation to be published in 2010.

The first volume, In-House Weddings (translated, like Vita Nuova, by Tony Liman and available from Northwestern), is set during the late 1950s in the Prague district of Libe艌, and covers the relatively short period between the couple糖心传媒檚 first meeting in the courtyard of the building where Hrabal lives alone in a small flat, and their eventual wedding celebration in the same courtyard. Vita Nuova, which covers the first several years of the marriage, picks up the story shortly thereafter but with a sudden, startling change in Pipsi糖心传媒檚 narrative voice, perhaps to reflect the 糖心传媒渘ew life糖心传媒� indicated by the novel糖心传媒檚 title. (The Italian is an homage to La Vita Nuova, Dante糖心传媒檚 collection of annotated poems about courtly love, but the content of Hrabal糖心传媒檚 book seems otherwise unconnected to Dante糖心传媒檚.) The relatively conventional paragraphs of In-House Weddings, though frequently made up of long and sometimes comma-spliced sentences, have given way to a series of pages-long paragraphs whose sentences, oddly, lack commas and periods but not initial capitals (although questions and exclamations are properly end-punctuated). A preface to the book acknowledges a stylistic debt to Molly Bloom糖心传媒檚 stream-of-consciousness soliloquy in James Joyce糖心传媒檚 Ulysses, but (at least in translation) Hrabal糖心传媒檚 prose is less disciplined and poetic than Joyce糖心传媒檚. After a chapter or two, the reader learns to rely on the capitals as the primary sign that one sentence has ended and another has begun, and the absence of periods becomes only the memory of an odd quirk that is never fully justified by the narrative.

Marriage has seemingly changed not just Pipsi糖心传媒檚 writing style but her personality. In the first volume, she is strong but also forgiving and somewhat na茂ve. Ethnically German, hailing from a well-to-do family in the Czech region of Moravia, a survivor of racially-motivated persecution and forced labor during World War II, and most recently having been abandoned by an unfaithful fianc茅, Pipsi is enamored of Hrabal and mostly indulgent toward his vices of procrastination and drink (though also quietly dismayed by them). In Vita Nuova she has suddenly become much flintier and more opinionated, much more open in her displeasures and dissatisfactions; as with the change in prose style, it is difficult to tell if Hrabal intends the contrast deliberately or has not exercised enough care in presenting the complexities of Pipsi糖心传媒檚 character. At times we seem meant to pity her; at others she seems as extravagantly fuming a witness to her husband糖心传媒檚 hapless misadventures as Margaret Dumont糖心传媒檚 characters were to Groucho Marx糖心传媒檚 shenanigans.

There are many misadventures here, most of them of a domestic nature. The most entertaining involve Hrabal糖心传媒檚 attempts at home improvement, aided by his diminutive friend Pep铆膷ek Sviatek. Even seen through Pipsi糖心传媒檚 judgmental eyes, a slapstick scene in which Hrabal and Pep铆膷ek take apart and clean a soot-clogged stovepipe is a match for anything in a Laurel and Hardy short.

But sometimes Pipsi cannot contain herself, and lets fly with an outburst that would have been unimaginable coming from her in volume 1:

And now [Hrabal糖心传媒檚 love-struck artist friend] Vladimir took the near-empty buckets and spun them in the air and whisked the last of the tar against the wall and then he cried out and collapsed in a heap and just lay there moaning like he糖心传媒檇 fallen off a cliff And [Vladimir糖心传媒檚 lover] Tekla leaned over him and clasped her hands and covered her eyes and my husband took a long draft from the pitcher and then passed it to Jirka and as they drank their eyes never left Vladimir who now sat up and raised that beautiful head of his and then he got to his feet and ran straight at the tar-wet wall onto which he糖心传媒檇 poured out his very soul and he struck it headfirst but that wasn糖心传媒檛 enough for him so he began to head-butt the wall like a ram and rivulets of blood flowed down around his eyes and Vladimir stood there and drove his head into the wall again and again and Tekla ran into the hallway and into the kitchen in tears implored Jirka and my husband to help and when they ran in Vladimir was already collapsed at the foot of the wall [. . .] unconscious and Jirka and my husband lifted his limp body and carried it into the hallway and Jirka brought a pail of water and knelt down and gently washed Vladimir糖心传媒檚 face and his forehead . . . And that was all I could stand and I screamed at Tekla at the top of my lungs . . . Are you crazy you糖心传媒檙e all out of your minds! For God糖心传媒檚 sake what kind of crap are you trying to pull? And I turned on my husband and yelled in his face And you! How can you stand by and watch your friend like this!

For the most part, however, Pipsi takes a sympathetic view of her husband and his travails, especially when it comes to his writing. (Hrabal at this time had published only a book of poems, and was working intermittently on the stories that would later appear in the collection Pearls of the Deep.) She offers on more than one occasion to support them both on the income from her job as a server in a hotel restaurant so that he can quit his own job at a paper-recycling plant and concentrate full-time on his writing, but he consistently refuses. Still, even at her most generous, Pipsi is forced to treat the childlike Hrabal with something like tough love, though leavened with genuine concern and affection for his idler糖心传媒檚 ways:

In vain I told my husband to drop everything to forget about going to work to concentrate on his writing in vain I told him to let me worry about the money but I guess my husband wasn糖心传媒檛 quite ready yet for the solitude for the grit required to confront himself every day and work on his own writing [. . .] my husband got into this habit of settling down to write just before I got home from work he hammered away at the [typewriter] and when I came home he pretended to just be hitting his stride but oh well he糖心传媒檇 have to pack it in now that I was home and pack it in he did because I had just about enough already I was sick of the standard excuse that he couldn糖心传媒檛 write when I was at home [. . .] it was the same old tired excuse that I always countered with . . . Forget the job I糖心传媒檒l look after you . . . And my husband always pretended not to hear and when I laughed and stared him down he always averted his eyes and for the rest of the night wouldn糖心传媒檛 utter a word [. . .] but with those oft-repeated words of mine I forced him to withstand that look to withstand and comprehend the full import of those words . . . Forget the job I糖心传媒檒l look after you . . . and somehow those words gave me strength I looked at my own reflection in the mirror and what I saw was a woman a waitress a cashier a fair woman who糖心传媒檇 been brought back from the brink by her husband and now that I offered to look after him he was terrified that perhaps I was right perhaps he didn糖心传媒檛 have the stuff to be alone to get down to writing all those things he went on about to others . . .

Although the Hrabal portrayed in Vita Nuova bears very little hint of his future status in Czech literature (this transformation will likely be described in the third volume of the trilogy, Vacant Lots, due out later this year from Northwestern in Liman糖心传媒檚 translation), Hrabal the author of Pipsi糖心传媒檚 糖心传媒渕emoirs,糖心传媒� looking back on himself from the vantage of a quarter-century, has masterminded a ferocious and fascinating tangle of narrative perspectives. Toward the end of the book, we get this from Pipsi:

he was scared of mirrors he never wanted to look into a mirror but ultimately he always convinced himself that perhaps his face had improved that maybe he wasn糖心传媒檛 as badly off as what he just saw in the mirror And then he looked at himself again at first just a guilty little glance and then he zeroed in and stared and as usual was alarmed by what he saw . . . How did he see himself?

It糖心传媒檚 a good question: just whose opinions of Hrabal are we getting here? Hrabal the character糖心传媒檚? Hrabal the author糖心传媒檚? Or Pipsi the narrator糖心传媒檚? It糖心传媒檚 impossible to know for sure. Whatever the answer, Vita Nuova gives us the opportunity to peer into Hrabal糖心传媒檚 funhouse mirror, deep within which, without a doubt, is a grateful tribute to a long-suffering but loving spouse.

Dan Vitale is a regular contributor to Three Percent—a program sponsored in party through a grant from NYSCA—and has written a number of thoughtful, interesting reviews for us.

Bohumil Hrabal is one of the all-time great writers. Closely Watched Trains, I Served the King of England, Too Loud a Solitude, all absolutely spectacular. It’s great that Northwestern has been publishing this “autobiographical trilogy,” which sounds both playful and captivating. The lack of commas and periods in this volume brings to mind the one-sentence which is effing brilliant and will soon be available from NYRB.

Anyway, here’s a bit about Vita Nuova:

Vita Nuova is the second volume in a trilogy of autobiographical novels based on Bohumil Hrabal糖心传媒檚 courtship of and marriage to Eli拧ka Plevov谩 (nicknamed Pipsi) and the first decade or so of his fame as one of Czechoslovakia糖心传媒檚 most beloved writers. Originally published in samizdat in Prague in 1986, not long before Plevov谩糖心传媒檚 death, and then in Toronto by Josef 艩kvoreck媒糖心传媒檚 Czech-language 68 Publishers, the trilogy plays fast and loose with the concepts of both autobiography and the novel, reflecting each in a kind of narrative funhouse mirror: the books are narrated not by Hrabal nor a fictional stand-in but by Pipsi. That is, they are an act of creative ventriloquism by a novelist imagining that his wife had written three memoirs about their life together.

The first volume, In-House Weddings (translated, like Vita Nuova, by Tony Liman and available from Northwestern), is set during the late 1950s in the Prague district of Libe艌, and covers the relatively short period between the couple糖心传媒檚 first meeting in the courtyard of the building where Hrabal lives alone in a small flat, and their eventual wedding celebration in the same courtyard. Vita Nuova, which covers the first several years of the marriage, picks up the story shortly thereafter but with a sudden, startling change in Pipsi糖心传媒檚 narrative voice, perhaps to reflect the 糖心传媒渘ew life糖心传媒� indicated by the novel糖心传媒檚 title. (The Italian is an homage to La Vita Nuova, Dante糖心传媒檚 collection of annotated poems about courtly love, but the content of Hrabal糖心传媒檚 book seems otherwise unconnected to Dante糖心传媒檚.) The relatively conventional paragraphs of In-House Weddings, though frequently made up of long and sometimes comma-spliced sentences, have given way to a series of pages-long paragraphs whose sentences, oddly, lack commas and periods but not initial capitals (although questions and exclamations are properly end-punctuated). A preface to the book acknowledges a stylistic debt to Molly Bloom糖心传媒檚 stream-of-consciousness soliloquy in James Joyce糖心传媒檚 Ulysses, but (at least in translation) Hrabal糖心传媒檚 prose is less disciplined and poetic than Joyce糖心传媒檚. After a chapter or two, the reader learns to rely on the capitals as the primary sign that one sentence has ended and another has begun, and the absence of periods becomes only the memory of an odd quirk that is never fully justified by the narrative.

Marriage has seemingly changed not just Pipsi糖心传媒檚 writing style but her personality. In the first volume, she is strong but also forgiving and somewhat na茂ve. Ethnically German, hailing from a well-to-do family in the Czech region of Moravia, a survivor of racially-motivated persecution and forced labor during World War II, and most recently having been abandoned by an unfaithful fianc茅, Pipsi is enamored of Hrabal and mostly indulgent toward his vices of procrastination and drink (though also quietly dismayed by them). In Vita Nuova she has suddenly become much flintier and more opinionated, much more open in her displeasures and dissatisfactions; as with the change in prose style, it is difficult to tell if Hrabal intends the contrast deliberately or has not exercised enough care in presenting the complexities of Pipsi糖心传媒檚 character. At times we seem meant to pity her; at others she seems as extravagantly fuming a witness to her husband糖心传媒檚 hapless misadventures as Margaret Dumont糖心传媒檚 characters were to Groucho Marx糖心传媒檚 shenanigans.

Click here to read the full review.

From the

Alex Zucker received the 2010 for his translation of Petra H暖lov谩糖心传媒檚 All This Belongs to Me (Northwestern University Press, 2009). The $5,000 prize is given annually to the translator whose work, by virtue of both its quality and significance, has made the most valuable contribution to literary translation. [. . .]

Zucker, a freelance translator based in the U.S., has translated two novels and numerous short stories, as well as plays, poems and song lyrics. His translation of Czech author J谩chym Topol糖心传媒檚 first novel, City Sister Silver, was selected for inclusion in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.

All This Belongs to Me chronicles the lives of three generations of women in a Mongolian family whose differing points of view reveal complex identities and dramatic secrets beneath the daily rhythms of nomadic existence and the modern realities of living in Mongolia糖心传媒檚 capital, Ulaanbaatar.

This is a book I’ve wanted to review on the site for a long time, but haven’t had time to do this myself . . . If anyone’s interested in writing about it, just e-mail me. I have a copy in the office I can send off to you asap.

Now don’t start drowning in nostalgia, I tell myself. It must be better here now than it was back then. In those days, the barracks across the street with the red star on the front was where Soviet soldiers used to take their meals. The Soviets with their tanks and rockets held their Czech gubernium on a tight rein, and with it one-sixth of the world, and that was horrendous; while this globalised tat 糖心传媒� well, it’s Freedom. The God-awful tackiness of city centres is evidence of the freedom to travel, I reassure myself. It’s the same here as in Florence, Kyoto or Lisbon. People want to be alike, since difference breeds only misunderstanding and violence. And it’s hardly overstating it to say that that year, 1989, when Eastern Europe rose in revolt, we shot straight out of Orwell into Huxley. But which is better?

In the end, this was definitely my favorite of the six stories in the series. And unlike some of the other writers featured by The Guardian, if you’re interested in reading more Topol, his novel is available from Catbird Press, and Gargling with Tar is currently being translated by David Short.

Probably more than any of the five pieces, this story would fit perfectly in an anthology of stories, essays, and images that we’re publishing on November 9th, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Words Without Borders (specifically Rohan Kamicheril and Sal Robinson) put together this fantastic collection, which includes pieces by Peter Schneider, Ryszard Kapu艣ci艅ski, Vladimir Sorokin and Victor Pelevin and new work from P茅ter Esterh谩zy, Andrzej Stasiuk, Muharem Bazdulj, Maxim Trudolubov, Dorota Mas艂owska, Uwe Tellkamp, Dan Sociu, David Z谩bransk媒, Christhard L盲pple, and a host of others.

You can preorder the title directly from us by clicking the link above, or you can order it from The Booksmith, our store of the month, by Or, for the biggest savings, you could just take out an Open Letter and receive the next six OL books for $65. (Or the next 12 for $120—just click the image below for more details.)

Between March and November (and skipping July and August), the club meets once a month (there are sessions both in New York and Brooklyn) to discuss a book selected by one of the participating cultural centers. The cost of participating is free—all you have to do is buy a copy of the book and read it—but from what I’ve heard, the sessions fill up really quick, so if you’re interested in attending you really should register online as soon registration opens.

The first book in the 2009 season will be a book that I’ve personally wanted to read for a while now . . .

Think one part Burgess, a little bit of Joyce, mix in some Kerouac, spiced with American Indian myth and . . . wahlah . . . City Sister Silver. Jachym Topol糖心传媒檚 novel rocked the Czech literary scene. Marked by rapid changes in syntax, style, spelling, grammar and dialogue Topol糖心传媒檚 style is both wild and brilliant. From one sentence to the next Topol shifts tone and meaning, mixing the vernacular with traditional literary form. Though not so radical to the English speaking world, Topol糖心传媒檚 style marks a turning point in Czech literature. City Sister Silver is the only book from the 1990s to be included in the list of the 100 Greatest Czech Prose Works of the Century.

The book kicks off soon after 糖心传媒渢ime exploded.糖心传媒� With the Velvet Revolution kicking, City Sister Silver is an account of one man糖心传媒檚 response to the new era. It is nearly impossible to summarize the many plot lines as the novel skips and jumps from dreams to drunken delusions to stark reality. In a very small nutshell: Potok is an actor, a black market entrepreneur, a drinker and a romantic. Potok and his droogs rule the underbelly of Prague and have their hands in nearly every public project and business venture. Yet, he has little interest in business; Potok糖心传媒檚 main agenda is to find his soul mate, his sister.

The book club will take place on March 23rd at the Czech Center (321 East 73rd Street), with a second session at the Brooklyn Public Library (not sure if that’s on 3/23 as well or not).

Registration isn’t open yet—as soon as it is, I’ll make another post for anyone who’s interested in attending.