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Doctorow, Snyder, Yehoshua headline writers' fest

Gathering of marquee authors includes a new look at Bohemian Dada

By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
May 30th, 2007 issue

 

Prague Writers' Festival

When: June 3–6
Where: Divadlo Minor, Municipal Library, American Center
Tickets: 50–150 Kč, available at the venues
For individual events, see the Calendar listings in Night & Day; for a complete schedule, check www.pwf.cz
All events are in English with simultaneous Czech translation

Authors’ readings have become an integral cog in the publishing PR machine, though the wheel is rusting. Writers read from their latest efforts, answer a few prying or irrelevant questions from the audience, then scrawl meaningless personal dedications on hundreds of title pages and flyleaves before shuffling off to a hotel for a few hours’ sleep before starting the process over in another city.
From this garden of tortures has grown the book fair and festival — events where huge clumps of writers are confined in one patch to chat and sell books to what’s left of the reading public. There is seldom a theme to these literary sideshows, thus awarding self-help gurus equal billing with serious novelists. “I have a term for such gatherings,” Prague Writers’ Festival President Michael March says. “They are exclusively second-hand.”
There is nothing second-hand about March’s festival, now in its 17th year. Far from an incongruous congress of scribes shilling their wares, it’s a forum where writers and thinkers can collectively prod and probe subjects in an atmosphere that is probably best described as a starkly public salon. In short, it’s a festival of ideas.
This year’s theme is a substantial one: Dada. And the festival will not myopically focus on the fabled immaculate conception of the movement in Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire, but will explore proto-Dadaist work from Eastern Europe (primarily Romania) as well as forgotten Dadaist work within Czech culture.
In his new book, Dada East, the Swedish scholar Tom Sandqvist has traced Dada back to Romania, which shouldn’t be too surprising considering that many of the principal Dadaists — Tristan Tzara, Arthur Segal, the Janco brothers — were Romanian. Yet, before Sandqvist, no one seriously dug around these roots. He will be on hand to reveal not only a Yiddish connection to Dada, but also such salient facts as Tzara’s birthday falling on the feast day of an obscure religious mystic, Saint Dada.
The Czech connection is even less known. Though it was never embraced as fervently as Surrealism, there was some Dadaist activity in the country, especially in Prague. Two Czechs, Jindřich Toman and Ludvík Kundera, lead the way into Bohemian Dada.
Kundera, a cousin of Milan, wrote an important samizdat anthology on Dada’s presence in Czech literature in the ’80s, though the book still awaits proper publication. Toman, now based in the United States, is a leading authority on the age of Dada in Czechoslovakia, and has rediscovered a number of forgotten writers and artists. He also found that the more vibrant Yugoslav Dadaist movement was founded by Croatian and Serbian exiles on the very street where The Prague Post roosts: Štěpánská.
Yet the Prague Writers’ Festival isn’t just a conclave of specialists. March has again assembled an exciting roster of well-known writers to participate in the discussions. This year, a holy trinity has been formed with poet Gary Snyder and novelists A.B. Yehoshua and E.L. Doctorow.
Dharma bum Snyder, whom Ferlinghetti dubbed the Beat’s Thoreau, is one of America’s greatest poets. In his work can be found the historic, syncretic union between Eastern Zen and West Coast culture. In future Pacific Rim cultural studies, Snyder will be studied as a sage.
Best known for his novels Ragtime and Billy Bathgate, Doctorow is another American literary titan. Winner of the 2005 National Book Award for his monumental novel The March (a study of the U.S. Civil War, not of the Prague Writers’ Festival founder), Doctorow’s voice is as lyrical as it is uncompromising.
Yehoshua is one of the leading figures in Israeli literature, and one of the contemporary age’s finest novelists. He is also fearlessly outspoken, not so much ruffling feathers as plucking them.
Joining Snyder, Doctorow and Yehoshua are a number of younger writers quickly gaining reputations: the Dutch novelist Arnon Grunberg, Romanian poet Elena Stefoi, Austrian novelist Peter Stephan Jungk and British novelist James Meek. Another writer to watch for is Aleksandar Hemon, a Bosnian writer who has become a master stylist in English, like some modern-day Conrad.
“I’d like to think that the festival is creating culture, not just commenting on it,” March says. “On the subject of Czech Dada, we will finally bring the matter to the world in a coherent sense. As for the writers participating, we are introducing many important writers to Czechs for the first time.”
In short, it is a festival that is highly exclusive, while being thoroughly inclusive. There is nothing second-hand to be had.
Steffen Silvis can be reached at
ssilvis@praguepost.com

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


Other articles in Tempo (30/05/2007):

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