In “Żebry Adama,” (Adam’s Begging) the first story in Wojciech Kuczok’s Widmokrąg (widmo – ghost; krąg – circle; widnokrąg – horizon), a naked beggar catches hold of the narrator and forces him to divest himself of first his (Armani) suit jacket, and then his trousers. It’s not meant, of course, to be an entirely realistic […]
Interviewed in Polityka (Oct 3rd), Jacek Strzemieczny of the Civic Education Centre in Warsaw speaks in favour of sending your children to public, socially mixed schools. They prepare you better for life than “prestigious” schools where middle class children interact only with other middle class children. Asked how primary school principals detect the “good” pupils […]
“Just have any old handsome face, cut in any old tattoos, pierce yourself more than the others, shave designs into your stubble, tilt your hat, carry a puppy in your arms, say controversial nonsense, swear, be more vulgar than the rest – and you’re a star.” Those are Michał Witkowski’s instructions in his latest book, […]
A couple of weeks ago Jacek Dehnel had an article in Polityka in which he described his visit to Vienna. This week it’s Michał Witkowski’s turn: he was in Jerusalem and writes an interesting piece on it, on Polish-Jewish relations and on stereotypes. Here are the last lines: “What is the truth? What is a […]
What with Sylwia Chutnik, Michał Witkowski and Dorota Masłowska’s Między nami dobrze jest, I’ve had quite a run of luck with books and plays by young writers lately. It’s not all good news on the young writing scene, though. Take novelist Jacek Dehnel (b. 1980), who wrote an article for Polityka a couple of weeks […]
Michal Witkowski’s Lubiewo (2005) – though much concerned with the passage of time, especially from communist Poland to the present, glorious, third republic – probably fits the description of “queer literature.” The Lubiewo of the title is a beach he goes to where he meets, among many others, a group of complex-free, open, right-on, emancipated […]
Sylwia Chutnik again: “All the time the old gits are blowing their big noses into flannel handkerchiefs and snorting the leftover phlegm back into themselves, into their lungs. Maybe it’ll come in useful later? Maybe, when that rainy day comes, you go for the phlegm and eat it for dinner.” Chutnik easily avoids the intellectuo-philosophising […]
Olga Tokarczuk, my most favouritest writer of them all, has an article in the latest Polityka. It’s travel literature, my most favouritest genre of them all. She’s been to China: “His [Mao’s] face is found in the most unlikely places: on the walls of buildings–” Hold on, hold on a minute there. The wall of […]
Sylwia Chutnik, who has been looking out at us from numerous magazine covers and newspaper interviews over the last few months, is a feminist and a radical. She also likes punk and wrote a book called A Pocket Atlas of Women, which is actually very good. Depressing as all hell of course but a welcome […]
The Eastern Europeans are at it again: getting all coy and mystical about The Meaning of Life and language’s inability to grasp it. Eastern European writers have the Big Questions tapped, you understand, but language can’t cut it. Yes, I’ve been reading Sandor Márai again, this time a collection of short stories called Magic, which […]
