From Publishers Weekly
Just before Skvorecky turned 70, his friends urged him to write his memoirs. He decided instead to publish this collection of short stories, in which "nearly everything worth telling," as he writes in his preface, is present in one form or another. Taken together, the 24 tales work as both biography and history, tracking the literary life of one of the former Czechoslovakia's premier writers and the fate of his country under Nazi rule and Communist repression. The initial stories, which go by such self-explanatory titles as "How My Literary Career Began," "My Uncle Kohn" and "My Teacher, Mr. Katz," offer brief snapshots of the author's early years, and the specter of Nazism constantly hovers in the background as various characters are spirited away to the concentration camps. The most effective items in the collections are the longer, mid-career entries: "The End of Bull M cha" is an unusual look at political repression, in which a former jazz musician is thrown out of a club for his outrageous jitterbug dancing, while "Spectator on a February Night" tracks the chaos that occurs when Prague's left-wing journalists are forced to leave the country during the 1968 student demonstrations. The romantically oriented stories are a bit muddled by comparison, and a couple of the late-career stories that revolve around Skvorecky's teaching career are pedantic and ineffective. Skvorecky displays the tongue-in-cheek irony that is common to many Eastern European writers, but his unique compassion, humanism and wisdom in the face of relentless, unspeakable political horror makes him consistently engaging and intriguing. This collection should serve as both a summary and a point of entry for readers who wish to explore the shorter works of one of the finest international writers of his generation.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Skvorecky (Dvorak in Love, etc.) has lived through some of the most egregious times in European history. In this semiautobiographical collection of stories, he recalls his life: his childhood during the brief First Republic; adolescence under Nazi occupation; adulthood in the Communist era; and finally middle age as an expatriate in Canada. The author paints indelible portraits of himself and his friends, young men struggling with their sexuality while doing battle for freedom of expression. In "My Teacher Mr. Katz," a boy observes the Nazis' increasing humiliation of the Jews in his community until they are finally loaded on a train for the camps. "The End of Bull M cha" is the portrait of a jazz lover's last defiant jitterbug under the Communist regime, and "Filthy Cruel World" is a heartbreaking portrait of disaffected youths, unable to commit to each other or to love. These cynical, often grim stories oppose the charmingly na‹ve pictures of the author's childhood and amused snapshots of his Canadian life. This portrait of the 20th century by one of its finest authors belongs in all libraries. Andrea Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
