Total Fears: Letters to Dubenka

It's 1989. Bohumil Hrabal is old. He writes letters to a young American named April, called Dubenka, a young woman fascinated with Bohemian (capital B) culture and his writing, which he thinks is mostly in the past.

He writes about aging, about the grief over his dead wife, about the kittens he takes care of.

He writes – extensively – about the concept of killing yourself by jumping out of a fifth floor window. (Defenestration, after all, is a genuinely Pragueish concept.)

He writes about hanging out at his old pub, drinking beer. Really, there's an awful lot of beer in this.

He writes about literature, art, movies. He fanboys Hasek, Sandburg, Warhol and Kerouac, he ponders Kundera and Havel – the ones who went in exile (whether show more abroad or in jail) for their convictions, while he refused to sign the charter and stayed to be able to write brilliant, subversive but not overtly political books.

He writes to a young American who seems to have opened a window for him, a new way of looking at himself and his work. He writes about his life, his youth, his books, how unashamedly (and rightly so) proud he is of Too Loud A Solitude and what he had to do to be able to write it.

He writes about the American book tour she set up for him, a Spinal Tap-esque trip through a strange land filled with strange people (being cluelessly if benignly racist in the process), speaking at colleges where they only want to ask him about politics, trying to get photo ops with people he admires who may or may not have ever heard of a drunken, aging Czech genius.

And how it all seems to go out the window (and yet somehow becomes even more important) when the demonstrations start in Vaclav Square, when the velvet revolution comes, when students take to the streets and demand the freedom he always found in writing. Does he have the right to join them? Does he have the duty? Does he even want to?

He writes letters. He doesn't send them. Seven years later, after he falls out of a fifth floor window while feeding pigeons – it's ruled an accident, of course – presumably, she gets to read them. And I can't help but wonder if she recognises herself.

Everytime god – or the government, which pretty much adds up to the same thing in the 20th century – closes a door, people open windows instead. Bohumil Hrabal's books is one of the most fascinating ones, and his autobiography (if you can call this spontaneous, funny, matter-of-factly sad, self-righteous, self-deprecating collection of letters that) is no exception. I can't do the beauty of his prose justice with anything I could write, but you owe it to yourself to read Hrabal. show less

Only read the first two letters. The first one is soooo haunting yet beautiful.

"Memory makes the past into a new present." --Hrabal

3 brieven aan Miss 'Dubenka' April, een Amerikaanse studente die dweepte met Hrabal en waar hijzelf als een rotsblok voor gevallen was. Gelal en gezwets van de bovenste plank, een poëtische trepanatie. Maakt ons benieuwd naar meer brieven van Hrabal.

Drie brieven aan een Amerikaanse studente die tijdens een zomercursus Hrabal opzocht, na zes dagen weer vertrok, een dolverliefde Hrabal achterlatend. De brieven zijn nooit verstuurd, en dienen zowel de literatuur als de troost. Mercks geeft jammer genoeg in zijn nawoord niet mee hoeveel Dubenka-brieven er in totaal zijn, noch of er ooit een volledigere vertaling zal verschijnen.