Meet Bohumil Hrabal, a famous Czech satirical writer (1914-1997). I know of him because, when I visited Prague in 2002 (for a pay-as- you-go conference on Evil and Wickedness!), my hostess recommended Hrabal's I served the King of England as the one Czech novel I should make sure to read. Read it I did, and love it, too. It tells the picaresque story of a tiny waiter who wants nothing more than to be rich - though he enjoys the company of ladies, too. He pursues his dream, oblivious to political changes around him from the 1920s to 1948, and nearly achieves it. But the joy of the novel is the absurd and tragic world around him, and the suggestion that Dite's experience and temperament are like that of the Czechs as a people, assistant waiters to the predatory fat cats among European nations. Somehow lovable without being admirable, amoral Dite is an antihero but an innocuous one; the world he manages to ignore isn't one you'd want anyone to be aware of.Well, I Served the King of England has been made into a wonderful film, directed by Jirí Menzel. It opened today in New York. The twinky Bulgarian actor Ivan Barnev is terrific as the protagonist, and Julia Jentsch (the Sophie Scholl of "Sophie Scholl") is hilarious in a terrifying sort of way as the true believing Nazi Sudeten-German girl he falls in love with. Martin Huba plays the omniscient maître d' at the Hotel Paris, the only really admirable character, the noble version of Czech identity - but still a waiter at a restaurant whose rich clients are from other countries.
The film is full of delights, though I'm not sure whether the particular absurdist cynicism of the larger story works over here - the audience at the Quad seemed flummoxed by it. Give it a try, though.
(Oh, and lest you think me an oblivious Dite, concerned only with what to serve up to my students: I thought the perfidious Clintons gave better speeches than true-hearted Obama in Denver, though his was strong enough. I share Vladimir Putin's suspicion that the Georgian-South Ossetian conflagration was encouraged by the White House with an eye to the upcoming presidential election. These guys are unscrupulous, and very good - look at the way they stole the thunder of the DNC by announcing McCain's Cylon running mate the very next day.)
