Czech Session -- March 2009
The Book:
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's novel rocked the Czech literary scene. Marked by rapid changes in syntax, style, spelling, grammar and dialogue Topol's 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's 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 "time exploded." With the Velvet Revolution kicking, City Sister Silver is an account of one man's 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's main agenda is to find his soul mate, his sister.
Topol, through Potok, uses language with total control. As translator Alex Zucker notes in the novel's introduction, language is changed in response to the political landscape in post-Communist Czech Republic. With reality changing faster than language, Potok is forced to use atypical terminology to define the new dynamics in the world around him. Potok refers to his gang as his "tribe." In "City," the book's first section, the tribe sits in a circle and one by one they relay their dreams, which they regard as prophecies. In one such dream Potok and the tribe are whisked to Auschwitz in a magic carpet and are led by a slap-stick skeleton through a sea of bones. Another dream tells of the origins of the tribe, told in the style of American Indian oral-tradition.
The novel is laden with other American Indian references (Topol has since written a novella and numerous translations on American Indian myths). Implicitly Topol likens the European invasion on the American Indians to the barrage of freedom into Eastern Europe. In one flash back of his adventures in Berlin Potok reminisces:
"And as I stood around, picking up all sorts of words and expressions as the tribe mixed together in byznys to survive...stealn cash and words from each other... experiences an words...it struck me maybe something was happenin here, maybe the mixing was givin rise to a new toung...a Kanak one...and maybe it was a tounge of peace, a pre-Babylonian one...only most folks at the markets look pretty bad, shabby, emaciated or bloated... for safety and things...they would've had to mix with the handsome natives too... to put an end to the tribes...but they're not wanted that's obvious. Maybe unfortunately what it'll take, I thought...truly unfortunate, is another couple Auschwitzes, a Wall or two, a Gulag... or an even longer path...until it dawns on everyone."
Though overwhelming at times, once you get accustomed to the style City Sister Silver is surprisingly easy to follow. The use of Czech slang, and invented terminology just sneaks into your lexicon much like the language of A Clockwork Orange. There is a helpful appendix where the more obscure cultural, historical and literary terms are explained. Soon you'll find yourself seamlessly riding from dream sequence to the next. Once you stop trying to sift between reality and fantasy, the language tells and becomes the story.
About the author:
JÁCHYM TOPOL is convinced that the post-89 period is one of the greatest eras ever for Czech poets. 'The poet has warm clothing, fuel and food, no one's impaling him or locking him up. And no one's bugging him to serve the nation, like at the time of the National Revival in the last century, or during the Russian occupation. If there's no interest in him, that's his problem,' he adds confidently.
Today, at the age of thirty-six, Topol is studying ethnography at Charles University, but he has no plans to work in the field when he graduates. In fact he isn't thinking of any kind of regular employment. 'I've worked as a stoker, a porter, editor-in-chief of Revolver Revue and a reporter for Respekt. As the Italian poet Cesare Pavese says: 'Working is tiring'. Literary stipendia - like the one that he last got from a German publisher - he regards as useful, but not for creativity. 'When the conditions are right, I become a lay about,' he says.
The Reviews:
Newsday: "City Sister Silver is a first novel the way The Tin Drum and Midnight's Children were first novels ─ a prodigal astonishment; an emancipation proclamation." (John leonard)
New York Times Book Review: "Readers embarking on City Sister Silver are in for an exhilarating, exasperating journey... kaleidoscopic and ethereal, full of motion for its own sake, with many memorable stops along the route." (Neil Bermel)
Los Angeles Times Book Review: "Topol's book is a fervent effort by a post-Cold War writer to break away from the familiar dissident mode of his seniors and to stake out the fresh troubles that freedom--and, more to the point, a raw market economy have spawned since the Velvet Revolution." (Patricia Hampl)