The Attempt

Abstract

vagrants and eccentrics cling to existence in medieval tenements and in café-bars around tiny squares in front of Renaissance churches; the modern, peripheral bits of Genoa, where settled people live, do not interest Ilja. His vignettes illustrate an old, local culture in which the show matters more than the finer points of the script and family more than society; where honesty ranks much lower than the ability to make people laugh or cry. Still, once you forget about expecting rectitude, it is a tolerant, fun place—regardless of how you like your fun. Wouldn’t you enjoy hearing the story about the literate transvestite prostitute whose leg was cut off? Or the complicated one about Ilja trying legal and semilegal means to crack “the system” and get a permit to buy an unsaleable theater, only to be fooled (again) by a fraudulent old society tart? The snapshots of Ilja’s colorful Genoa are gradually replaced by insights into its darker places that house criminality and despairing rootlessness. The Europeans once knew loss of homeland well but have chosen to forget about it; the people-smugglers who send their customers off to live or die, as luck would have it, have been around for generations . The survivors without identity tend to end up in places like Genoa where strangers shelter in ancient networks of alleyways. Many are brutalized, but for as long as there is life . . . or, as the one-legged transvestite says: “I had to invent myself. . . . I dreamed myself up and then granted myself the freedom to exist.” Anna Paterson Aberdeenshire, UK Magdaléna Platzová. The Attempt. Trans. Alex Zucker. New York. Bellevue Literary Press. 2016. 224 pages. Anarchy has not quite yet faded into the history books. This politico-philosophical movement, which espouses self-governing societies and opposes corporate greed, shows its vitality in The Attempt vis-àvis Occupy Wall Street rallies. Magdaléna Platzová, a contemporary Czech novelist , opens and closes her latest story at encampments with this protest group. Many readers may feel intimidated by a text about anarchy, but Platzová offers up a lively story via three interconnecting vignettes in this slim paperback. Jan Schwarzer, a thirty-nine-year-old Prague native, is in Manhattan participating in the protests. You might say that anarchy runs through his bloodline. Jan could possibly be the great-grandson of Andrei B (the fictional version of Alexander Berkman , the Russian anarchist). Berkman’s 1892 attempt to assassinate Henry Frick, the Pittsburgh industrialist/financier, is the hinge on which the story revolves. Jan’s late friend, a writer named Josef, had been obsessed with Andrei and fellow activist Emma Goldman (“Louise”) and was convinced that Andrei’s 1924 affair with Jan’s great-grandmother resulted in Jan’s secret family line. Combing through Josef’s belongings after his death, Jan runs across a notebook entitled “Anarchista,” an unfinished manuscript on Andrei’s life. Penned on the inside front cover was “Everything was easier under totalitarianism .” Jan feels a compulsion to finish “Anarchista” whether Andrei proves to be his relation or not. The second vignette concerns the Henry Frick family (Kolman) and their old family letters. The final third of the story centers on letters between Andrei and Louise , which he reads between the lines, hoping for clues about his great-grandmother. Platzová’s use of letters throughout the story is an interesting maneuver, granting us a painless history lesson along the way. A native of Prague, the author was teaching in New York while writing The Attempt and admits to sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street movement. Another sentiment Islands of Protest: Japanese Literature from Okinawa Ed. Davinder L. Bhowmik & Steve Rabson University of Hawai‘i Press Drawing from poetry, fiction, and drama, this collection of Okinawan literature highlights the island’s nearly 150 years of resistance against Japanese and American interests. Highlights include the play The Human Pavillion, about an exhibition of Okinawans in Japan in 1903, and poems dealing with Okinawan women who were forced to serve as “comfort women”for the Japanese military. Klaus Hoffer Among the Bieresch Trans. Isabel Fargo Cole University of Chicago Press Following a family tradition, Klaus Hoffer’s protagonist Hans returns to...