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Living Section of the San Bernardino SUN January 19, 2003 Issue 
Prague by Arthur Phillips 
Forging a New World "Why did fully 48% of the entering freshman girls at McGill University bring with them from home a framed copy of Robert Doisneau's photograph The Kiss" and "another 29 percent of the girls bought the print within six months of matriculation," Mark Payton, one of the characters in the currently hot novel, "Prague" asks and hopes to find out during his sojourn in post-communist Budapest. I read this and I was hooked. I too wanted to know the answer to this question, for then I in turn might discover why I, an aging baby boomer some thirty plus years removed from my undergraduate days, still display on walls from office to office the very same dreamy, black and white Doisneau photo. "Prague" by Arthur Phillips, acclaimed as one of the best books of 2002, is hard to put down. It is a complex novel where every part of the story, every character's utterance and every occurrence have a deeper meaning. In 1990, the euphoria about the collapse of communism still palpable, five Americans in their mid-twenties find themselves in Budapest, Hungary. They sit in cafes deriding the East Europeans' shortcomings and fumbling forays into capitalism. They are America's new lost generation and in the manner of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, the Murphys and the rest of the now-famous American expatriates who went to post-World War I Paris to find themselves, they have come to Eastern Europe to trade American comfort and ennui for post-communist world adventure. Payton, a moneyed Canadian with a new Ph.D. is researching his book on the history of nostalgia. Emily Oliver, with midwestern wholesomeness and smile, works as a gofer for the American ambassador in Budapest. Scott Price, handsome, blond and fitness-obsessed, teaches English to Hungarians. His brother John, who has come to Budapest to mend fences with him, ends up writing for the expatriate newspaper BudapesToday as a sort of "historian of the moment". Charles Gabor works for a venture capitalist firm. But that's the surface. Underneath they are all trying to come to terms with their past and to find their future. As the book progresses John and Charles become more central to the story. When the group disperses at book's end, we sense that only John has come to understand the complex relationship between the past, the present and the future of Eastern Europe. He has come a long way from his initial cocky days as a journalist. "Who won the Cold War?" John writes in his first newspaper article. "We did. Our Generation. Our sacrifices broke the Communist behemoth...And never forget that we were the generation that inspired MTV and CNN; no Berlin Wall could keep them out and no red-blooded East German could look at the choice of Madonna or Erich Honecker, Miami Vice or the Stasi, and not think it was time for a change." "Does he think it is true, he saved us from Russians by liking to watch MTV?" ask Scott's bewildered English-learning students upon reading the article. Charles Gabor is the American born son of Hungarian immigrants who had fled the Revolution of 1956. His childhood is steeped in everything Hungarian. His first language is Hungarian, his best friend is a cat named Imre Nagy (the martyred hero of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution) and the air around him vibrates with longing for a free Hungary. Then at the age of 12 Charles tosses away everything Hungarian and becomes as American as apple pie. But when communism crumbles and American venture capitalists invade Eastern Europe, Charles, bent on getting rich, resurrects his Hungarian language and heritage and goes off to Budapest in search of a fortune. Charles Gabor's childhood resonated with me. In his parents I recognized political émigrés from all over America. They came and immersed themselves into American life becoming fierce patriots for an America that was, is, and has always been the ideal, the unreachable dream. No, not the dream of money and economic prosperity. They hankered after the liberty and pursuit of happiness thing. They sat in National Homes or National Cultural Clubs amidst cigarette smoke, pungent smells of spicy ethnic foods, bitter coffee in demi tasses and slivovitz or some other fiery ethnic spirit in shot glasses, discussing with passion historical events and all the while dreaming and longing for the day when they would return to a free motherland to reclaim their ancestral homes and lands. Perhaps it is an act of charity that most of them died in their new country, for as Thomas Wolff said and as "Prague" shows us - you can't go home again. We see this in Nadja, the seventy-plus year old Hungarian pianist in a jazz club who bewitches John, a woman of faded beauty and poignant memories that echo of the life of political émigrés, memories of narrow escapes, flights and returns and unrecovered losses. And we see it in Imre Horvath, the owner of a publishing house and recipient of American capital. The pursuit of liberty and happiness is what has filled the lives of both Nadja and Imre with a meaning and a purpose. At the end we begin to suspect that liberty and the pursuit of happiness are only an abstraction, impractical rhetoric in a world where the only thing that counts is still the survival of the fittest. "And now we are the occupying army, benevolent, offering our vanquished erstwhile foe an open hand and a fresh start: smart investment opportunities, top-notch language instruction, and a whole generation of neo-retro-hippies, bad artists, and club kids. Just like MacArthur in Japan," writes John in his first article. And he is right. Eastern Europe has traded an occupier with guns for an occupier with money. Did I find an answer to my question? Not directly, but obliquely - yes. And one more thing, you might ask - why is the novel named "Prague" if all the action takes place in Budapest? Because Prague is the Mecca - the place they all long to be, because of the grass is greener on the other side thing. "Fifteen years from now people will talk about all the amazing American artists and thinkers who lived in Prague in the 1990s," John says to the rest of his compatriots in the café. "That's where real life is going on right now, not here." Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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