Abstract
This paper deals with the way Philip Roth depicted writers in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s in his novella The Prague Orgy, the final part of the Zuckerman Bound tetralogy. Researchers often read The Prague Orgy in the context of the entire tetralogy and accentuate the contact with Jewish topics. The primary focus of the paper is how Roth views Czech writers and their lives through the eyes of his long-term hero (and fictional alter-ego) Nathan Zuckerman and how he perceives life in a totalitarian state. The Prague Orgy is discussed as a somewhat abstract story about the writer’s freedom and responsibility of their work. There are three types of writers in The Prague Orgy: The émigré (Sisovsky), the dissenter (Bolotka), and the pro-regime (Novak). Each of them, in an interview with Roth’s hero, formulates his attitude to the regime. Zuckerman is fascinated by the life of opposition artists, their experience of freedom (realized in the private sphere), and the social response to their work. Although the reality of life in Czechoslovakia under communism is not the main topic of the novella, the paper concludes that the depiction of life of Czech underground intellectuals interested mostly in sex is in consonance with the picture of Czech dissent in official regime propaganda.
Highlights
In August 1968, the invasion by the Warsaw Pact troops ended the “Prague Spring”, an all-society movement that aimed to reform socialism
Czechoslovakia.” (Bryla 2013, p. 17). Roth sums up his Czech experience in an interview with the Paris Review in 1983: “When I was first in Czechoslovakia, it occurred to me that I work in a society where as a writer everything goes and nothing matters, while for the Czech writers I met in Prague, nothing goes, and everything matters
Prague Orgy, misreading becomes a function of the relationship between the individual and the state
Summary
In August 1968, the invasion by the Warsaw Pact troops ended the “Prague Spring”, an all-society movement that aimed to reform socialism. Kafka became a symbol of the era of “normalization”, and his symbolic meaning was “reinforced by the fact that in the communist era his works were removed from bookstores, libraries and universities throughout Roth sums up his Czech experience in an interview with the Paris Review in 1983: “When I was first in Czechoslovakia, it occurred to me that I work in a society where as a writer everything goes and nothing matters, while for the Czech writers I met in Prague, nothing goes, and everything matters. No other American writer wrote about the gloomy fate of Czech writers and Czech culture the way Roth did This was the reason why the Czech authorities refused to grant him another entry visa.” This was the reason why the Czech authorities refused to grant him another entry visa.” (Klíma 2010, pp. 169–70)
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