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Some may remember political satirist and journalist P.J. O'Rourke who died last month as one of the co-editors of The National Lampoon High School Yearbook, or as the author of Parliament of Whores (1991), or his appearances on the NPR radio show Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me! But when I think of him, I think of this piece from decades ago, which I kept stashed in my Witty Stuff file.
For a better understanding for what life is like under totalitarianism (and what the Ukrainians are fighting for/against) check out the works of Josef Škvoreckؘý (1924-2012). I just finished reading two of his novellas Emὃke (1963, tr. 1977) and The Bass Saxophone (1967, tr. 1977), which are combined in a single volume with an introductory piece "Red Music." Škvoreckؘý played saxophone with a jazz group Red Music growing up in Czechoslovakia. In 1968, the Soviets removed the Czech reformist government with an invasion of a half-a-million troops, crushing the budding Prague Spring. Škvoreckؘý and his wife emigrated to Canada where he became a professor and started a publishing company that made the works of banned Czech writers available throughout the world and to his fellow countryman.
This is not the first time I have read the prolific Škvoreckؘý. When my partner Denise and I were in the Czech Republic in the fall of 2019 on vacation, I took a copy of his short detective novel The End of Lieutenant Bovurka (1975) with me. After reading it and I picked up a copy The Return of Lieutenant Bovurka (1991) at the English language bookstore Shakespeare near the Franz Kafka Museum. In each book the melancholic detective Bovurka must walk a tightrope of solving crimes and resisting the Communist regime. These books reinforced the sentiment expressed by our middle-aged tour guide over drafts of Pilsner Urquell as he described the suppression in Czechoslovakia under the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Memorial to the Victims of Communism (shown above) in the Lesser Town Area of Prague serves as a reminder who disappeared during the Soviet regime.
Last fall when I went to Germany (the former East German cities of Cottbus and Dresden) to visit my older daughter Cynthia, I took a copy of Škvoreckؘý’s most well-known work the voluminous The Engineer of Human Souls (1977, tr. 1984) The narrator Danny Smiricky (considered Škvoreckؘý’s alter-ego in many of his novels – like Philip Roth’s Zuckerman) has emigrated from Czechoslovakia and is a professor in Toronto. Smiricky mixes his recollections of living under German occupation with ex-pats in Canada wrestling with their guilt in leaving Europe. Because of all the characters and the time switches, the book is a challenging read and I’ll admit I did not finish it. (More my shortcoming than the book’s).
Despite the grim settings of oppression under totalitarian regimes, there is an element of humor/absurdity in his many of writings and in the links below there is a prime example from The Bass Saxophone.
Related Links
A lengthy tribute to Škvoreckؘý from Paul Wilson in the Guardian who translated The Engineer of Human Souls to English. (Its title refers to Stalin's description of writers),
A Škvoreckؘý passage from the introduction to The Bass Saxophone listing the Nazis 10 Rules to Combat Jazz. Note: The best way to buy this out-of-print book is through Alibris. Make sure you get the copy that includes the Introductory "Red Music". The easiest way to get the correct copy is type the ISBN number 0-671-55681-9 in the search bar at Alibris Books.
And The Book Shopper Blog has a couple of postings that mention similar books. “In Best Books Read of 2019"I write about sending a book about Trump’s impending impeachment over the Ukraine scandal to then Georgia Senator David Perdue. Another posting "Tyranny, Voting and Making Love for the Last Time" is a shoutout to Timothy Snyder’s book On Tyranny (2017). (Since then, a graphic version of the book is available at Destination: Books, a reluctantly proud blog sponsor.)
Be vigilant, especially here in Georgia where they have made it much more difficult to vote.
