I Served the King of England – A Captivating Social Satire

“He answered, pulling himself up to his full height, Because I served the King of England. The King? I said, clapping my hands. You mean you actually served the King of England? And the head waiter nodded his head in satisfaction.”

The renowned Czech novelist Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997) has lived through the most tumultuous periods in his country's history, first enduring the occupation of Nazis and later the Soviets. Although Mr. Hrabal finished a degree in law his primary interest was at writing poems. In the post-war years, he was part of an underground literary club where he would read aloud his poems, and later his stories. His earlier novels – Dancing Lessons for the Advanced Age & Closely Observed Trains – were published in the mid-1960s, the later turning into acclaimed movie by Jiri Menzel in 1966. In 1970s, after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Hrabal was often at odds with the communist government, forcing him into a period of silence. In 1971, the author had type-written his novel I Served the King of England, but it was only in 1983 the novel was officially published, and the English translation by Paul Wilson was done in the year 1990 (most of Hrabal’s works were translated into English after the Soviet Union collapse).

Paul Wilson says this translation was his response to Czechs claim that 'Bohumil Hrabal is untranslatable'. And he seems to have done a good job, preserving the writer’s unrestrained, flowing style (full of long sentences and page-length paragraphs) which allows us to closely comprehend his central character’s stream-of-consciousness. The chief characteristic of Hrabal’s writing is his ability to focus on the surreal and comic oddities within ordinary human life (I had previously read only one Hrabal’s novel although I have seen all the faithful movie adaptations by Czech film-maker Jiri Menzel). I Served the King of England tells the picaresque story of Ditie, a short, young waiter with prodigious carnal appetite. Divided into five chapters, Hrabal describes Ditie’s sexual awakening, naïve dreams, small victories, and resilience with a mix of farce and poignance that eventually comes off as the intimate portrait of an individual in a particular time and place.

Fifteen-year-old Ditie starts his adventures as a busboy in the Golden Prague Hotel. Like every other adolescent caught in the space between reality and dream, Ditie desires for sex and money. He spends the generous tips he receives on prostitutes. He also likes decorating the naked lap of the prostitute with flowers. Ditie means ‘child’, and much of his action reflects the innocence and absurdity of a child. Ditie is enthralled by ludicrous innovations of the era. He gushes about the salami slicer, and later he marvels at a tailoring firm’s allegedly revolutionary fitting technique. Ditie uses such absurd thoughts as a sort of escapism to forget his own strangeness and isolation within the community. He works in various hotels, raises to the position of waiter, but the jealousies of fellow-workers often keeps him on the move.

At one hotel, Ditie is trained by the esteemed head-waiter who has served the King of England, and subsequently Ditie himself serves the Emperor of Ethiopia, who provides him a medal for the service. The story takes a surprising turn when Ditie falls in love with a Nazi woman named Lise (commander of the nursing corps), whom he marries after intense examination of the Reich authorities on whether his sperm is worthy enough of impregnating a 'Teutonic Aryan vagina' and bring to the world a race of ‘New Man’. Labeled as a German sympathizer and wholly ostracized by the Prague community, Ditie now works in a hotel in the mountains and lives in a ‘breeding station’ which the Nazis has established to develop a ‘pure race’ of humans. Naturally, the war and the subsequent occupation of Soviets drive him to reach rock bottom, even though he finds opportunities in the harshest conditions; amidst laughter and despair, he tries to live life to the fullest.

A still from Jiri Menzel's movie adaptation

Bohumil Hrabal’s flights into magical realism avoid the novel from becoming just another uniformly bleak story on the modern East European history. Hrabal shows greater sympathy for Ditie, an ignorant comman man whose naïve enthusiasms and tall dreams deflate alongside the broader inhumanity. By turns sad and hilarious, Hrabal’s minuscule, insecure protagonist learns how every one of us and our grandiose ambitions is rendered tiny in front of the death’s inevitability and volatile historical forces (which always make the ‘unbelievable come true’). Yet it seems like Ditie who served the Emperor of Ethiopia and trained by the man who served the King of England, one mustn’t allow their indomitable spirit to be crushed.

P.S.: The novel was adapted into a movie by Jiri Menzel in 2006 who also turned Bohumil Hrabal’s novel Closely Observed Trains (1965) and short stories -- The Snowdrop Festival (1978), An Advertisement for the House I Don't Want to Live in Anymore (1965) which was adapted as 'Larks on a String' -- into feature-length movies.Mr. Hrabal had also co-wrote the script of Menzel's 1981 comedy 'Cutting It Short'

 

Primeval and Other Times – An Intense & Deeply Poetic Fiction

“God sees. Time escapes. Death pursues. Eternity waits.”

On the outset, Polish author Olga Tokarczuk’s Primeval and Other Times (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) looks like a historical novel, chronicling the turbulent century of war and political transition in the Polish countryside. But after relishing few pages of Tokarczuk’s prose, one filled with deftness and lyrical grace, it would be natural to hail the novel as a complex parable of human condition on the whole. The novel’s mystical note very much resides in the title ‘Primeval’. This imaginary village is described to exist near the Poland-Czech border and the tale spans between the World War I period (1914) and the beginning of Solidarity Movement (in 1980s). Yet the village name ‘Primeval’ and the early description of its surroundings bring up a sacred, mythical feeling as if the place itself stands outside the constraints of time and space. The borders of the provincial village are said to be guarded by the four archangels Michael, Uriel, Raphael and Gabriel, and two rivers – Black and White River – flow through the village, which remains as a symbol of dichotomy that preoccupies human existence (joy & sorrow, masculine & feminine, light & darkness, etc).

Primeval describes the trials and tribulations of three generations of Polish families in a morally, socially, and physically transitioning landscape of the Polish countryside. The story consists of numerous characters and each chapter unfurls from the perspective of these different individuals. Each characters showcase how the bucolic lives of the people of Primeval was tainted by the First and the Second World War, the Nazi and Russian occupation. The collective voices reflect the complex reality as the fate of one individual narrator is casually expressed in the words of another narrator and so on. Niebieski & Boski families occupy a prominent place in the narrative. Nevertheless, even spirits and objects turn into omniscient narrators, telling us their observation of humans. All chapters start with the word ‘The Time of…..’ which conveys the limitations and unfettered desires of people with respect to time. But after reading the lives of these different generations of people portrayed within 200 plus pages, we get a sense of timelessness; almost as if the events of past, present, and future exists in the same plane and the people repeatedly gets torn part by the malevolent forces of history.  

 Olga Tokarczuk

While the experiences of the peasants, squires, Jews, Catholics, children, etc are captivating, what sets it apart is Tokarczuk's inquisitory language, her magnificent metaphors, her wealth of imagination, which rejects many of the conventional traits of historical and cultural narratives. The author's whimsical and rueful prose reminds us of the magical realist techniques of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and dirtiest, distorted-realism of Laszlo Krasznahorkai. With one beguiling episode after another, 'Primeval' interestingly re-imagines history, ruminates on the cyclical nature of time, man's relationship with God, and death's inevitability.

Originally published in 1996, Primeval was translated to English in 2009 (by Twisted Spoon Press). The release immediately established Tokarczuk’s international reputation, which is bound to soar higher after the recent Man Booker International Prize (for ‘Flights’, shared with translator Jennifer Croft). In 2014, the author published an epic novel ‘Ksiegi jakubowe’ (‘The Book of Jacob'), which despite receiving acclaims and awards also attracted hostile reactions from Polish national-conservative groups. Amidst controversies, hate mails, and death threats, the craving for Olga Tokarczuk’s novels among readers around the world has increased substantially. Primeval is my introduction to the author’s mythical tone of writing and has initiated a fixation to hunt down for all of her translated works and read it as soon as possible. Overall, Primeval and Other Times (248 pages) is a pretty mesmerizing novel which withholds the nuggets of historical and existential truths.

 

The Changeling – A Mesmerizing Fairy Tale on the Horrors of Parenthood and Internet

“There are no secrets anymore. Vampires can’t come into your house unless you invite them. Posting online is like leaving your front door open and telling any creature of the night it can enter.”

Insanity, madness, and horror have always thrived beneath the surface of our normalized societies. But it’s the 21^st century life that’s increasingly making us aware of the hallucinatory or illusory facade concealing the real horror show around us. From childhood, adulthood, marriage, parenting, and old age, we are achingly acknowledging the existential pain, which was somehow hidden by our deep self-delusional notions. While this vividly reveals the entire horrific stuff going inside us and around us, it also makes life infinitely complex and unbelievably rich. We all might be living a tedious routine life, just existing on a purely mechanical level, yet the little revelatory moments gathers around and eventually makes us see not simply the horrific or repulsive things, but also the sense of wonder that drives life. There might be horror and darkness all around us, but I think we must stay optimistic and keep on shining the light of life upon it. Good literature and cinema can really put us on a fast-track to become aware of how things truly are: from addressing the madness of the world to its opulent beauty. But more than ultra-realistic narratives, it is the realm of speculative genre fiction I feel gets to the bottom of this contemporary reality. Sometimes myths and supernatural forces can adequately address the reality of our globalized societies. It’s what Victor Lavalle’s recent novel The Changeling (published June 2017) best does. It’s a dark fairy tale, rooted in ages-old folklore and myth, which actually takes a subtly profound look at racism, fatherhood, paternal anxieties, marriage, and most importantly the dark crevices of internet universe. The book’s veneer of magic plunges us into chaos as well as the grace of life.

Apollo Kagwa, the protagonist of The Changeling, would remind us of Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby and Stephen King’s The Shining; the literary characters whose desperation to be good parent literally set them in a path towards insanity. The novel starts in 1968 New York (“This fairy tale begins in 1968 during a garbage strike” – the novel’s opening line), detailing the courtship between Parole officer Brian West and receptionist Lillian Kagwa, a Ugandan immigrant. They eventually get married in 1976 and Apollo, named after the Sun of God, is born in 1977. But when Apollo was 4 years old, the father West disappears from his life. Apollo suffers from nightmares after his father’s disappearance. One day, a box adorned with the word ‘Improbabilia’ is delivered to the boy. Inside the box, Apollo finds mementos of his parents’ time spent together and a single children’s book, Maurice Sendak’s “Outside Over There”. The box is obviously left by his father. Later the name on the box becomes the name of Apollo’s used-book business.        

In his 30s, Apollo Kagwa falls in love with and marries Emma Valentine, a librarian from Virginia. He seals his bond with her by cutting a red string bracelet she wears around her wrist which she hopes will realize her three wishes. Before cutting the string, Apollo says: “With me, all three of your wishes will come true.” Their yearning to be a parent comes true with the birth of baby Brian West. Apollo fancies himself to be the cool ‘new dad’ who does the dishes, laundry, and takes tons of pictures of his child and posts online for instant likes. While, Apollo wears fatherhood with enthusiasm, Emma seems overly tired and they become estranged from each other. She claims to receive disturbing texts and photos about the boy, but claims it is immediately vanishes before she shows to any one. However, Emma’s two wishes – having a good husband and strong child – were realized. Six months after the birth of baby Brian and before Apollo learns what Emma’s third wish is, the unbelievably horrific thing happens. Apollo’s life would never be the same. The brutal violent act takes Apollo on a journey into the undiscovered and magical corners of New York City.

Author Victor LaValle

 

The Changeling adroitly mixes folklore with the travails of modern existence. Goblins, Rapunzel, the myth of Askeladden play as much an important tale as do the Facebook, mobile apps, etc. LaValle depicts both the mythical monsters as well as the identity-masking trolls inhabiting the realm of social media (I don’t remember reading a fairy tale where the threat of police violence looks imminent). The scenarios often literally unfold in subterranean spaces – subway, basement, caves, tunnels, etc – to constantly keep us on the edge. At its best, LaValle’s prose is as simple, raw and powerful as the works of Haruki Murakami and Neil Gaiman. The early portions of the novel have one of the honest and realistic accounts of the new-age parenthood. LaValle says in an interview: “The people who raised us are often just human beings trying their best. That’s not a young person’s understanding, necessarily. It’s not something I understood when I was young, I was just angry at my father. It wasn’t until I was in my 40s and really thought things through, and had a kid by that point, I could see that all these things I dismissed as complete failures of character, I could see small versions of them in myself, whether it was impatience or the desire to escape.” There’s due reference to Atticus Finch of Lee Harper’s To Kill a Mocking Bird to indicate how boasting the image of benevolent parent is futile and illusory, since parents too are vulnerable individuals like us; they can try but can’t always protect their children from cruelty of the world. In fact, Apollo’s magical journey is about understanding his frailties and culpable behavior as a parent.

“A bad fairy tale has some simple goddamn moral. A good fairy tale tells the truth”, says a character in the novel. LaValle weaves an improbable tale to get to the truth about our contemporary society. Without delving into didactic mode, he likens the social media to the myth of vampires and witches, and emphatically conveys the ultimate emptiness of these technologies. Apollo’s baby photo-sharing obsession is duly perceived as a mixture of selfishness and vanity, not as certified sign of good-parenting. The Changeling ultimately might be a fairy tale that pushes towards ‘happily ever after’ ending, but these profoundly developed characters provide us immense space to understand the prejudices and false assumptions that broods over our society. It asks us to question the old wisdom and conformist standards relentlessly thrown upon us. Riddled with irony, fury, deep compassion, and psychological insights, LaValle’s prose breaks the myths about our post-privacy, post-truth world. Altogether, The Changeling is a poignant novel that flawlessly blends the gritty reality and magical charms. 

Victor LaValle on Changelings, Literary Horror, and Racist Book Reviewers