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October 8th, 2008
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Literary revival

By Frank Kuznik
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
May 7th, 2008 issue

A proud expat tradition was revived at the Globe bookstore last week, when volume 8 of The Prague Revue debuted to a packed house — nearly eight years after the publication of volume 7.

“The editors got distracted by families, kids, leaving the country, that sort of thing,” explained Max Munson, one of the founders of the literary journal. But the long hiatus didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the 100-odd fans, contributors and entertainers who packed the Globe’s back room for an evening of readings, music and too much to drink.
In the heady days of the ’90s, when Americans arrived almost daily in Prague with backpacks and visions of joining a new Left Bank brimming with artists and writers, literary readings were a staple and center of the expat community. Many were held at the Globe, which in its heyday as the only English-language bookstore in town attracted visiting authors such as Richard Ford and Amy Tan, and a steady stream of amateur poets.
Munson also hosted readings at his pub, Jáma, which gave rise to the Jáma Revue, which morphed into the Prague Revue for an inspired seven-issue run. Only two of the journal’s five founders and original editors — Munson and Will Pritts — are still in Prague. But with the advent of the Internet and the appearance last year of an enthusiastic new managing editor, Stephan Delbos, the Revue came back to life.
Though not on schedule. The vagaries of long-distance communication and various technical problems delayed the latest release by about five months. And even then it was down to the wire, with freshly printed copies of Revue 08 arriving at the Globe just hours before the launch party.
“I called the printer last week to make sure everything was OK,” Munson confided. “They told me the format was the wrong size and we would have to re-format the entire book.” This after an earlier scare, when the printer called to say that 150 pages of the book had gone missing.
But the Revue editors are a determined lot and, by the time of the launch party, Delbos declared, “Everything’s under control” — though he didn’t sound as if he totally believed it. “I certainly envisioned a much shorter process,” he said. “But if we had published earlier, the book would not be nearly as good.”
The new Revue offers 223 pages of poetry, short stories, plays, essays and reviews, and for anyone missing American ghettoes, some particularly bleak photographs of inner-city Philadelphia. The authors cover a wide stylistic and geographical swath, from local luminaries Ivan Klíma and Louis Armand to American playwright Joe Sutton and Irish fiction writer William Wall. Among the readers at the launch party were American Elizabeth Gross, Canadian Jessi Tabalba and Scot Chris Crawford, offering verse between noisy musical interludes.
The Revue editors are also a practical lot, which means they know their publishing venture ultimately has to pay for itself. So their speeches and readings were peppered with sales pitches (“Buy one now and get this Prague Revue pen!”). They’ve put a reasonable price tag of 190 Kč ($11.70) on the book, which is available at Prague’s English-language bookstores (the Globe, Big Ben, Anagram and Shakespeare and Sons).
As for the launch party, it devolved in typical Prague fashion, with the beer segueing to whiskey, Delbos dancing at the mic in a funny hat and Munson nailing a sale at the front counter (“Where can you buy a pen like this? Nowhere!”). A hard-core group moved on to Jáma and drank way too late, as evinced by some faces the next day that matched the title of one of the short stories in the new Revue, “A Certain Kind of Hurtin’.”
And Pritts offered a final bit of hard-earned wisdom. “The first time we did this, in our youthful naivete we thought it was going to blossom into an international hit,” he said. “Now we’ll be happy to tend our own little garden.”
    
   

Frank Kuznik can be reached at fkuznik@praguepost.com


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