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EUROPEAN FICTION, 2010
ed. by Aleksandar Hemon
Dalkey Archive Press, 2010, 425 pp, $15.95.
As a rule, few foreign writers are well-known in America. Here this inaugural issue offers an anthology of new
fiction from Europe. The stories are from England to Iceland, from Croatia to France. Included are famous writers as well as those who have never been published in English. The translated collection from thirty
countries is diverse and eccentric.
The story, Dida, by Michal Witkowski of Poland, is a story of a prostitute who left home in Bratislava in anger
for a better life, but is now living on the edge in Vienna, from one doorway to the metro, to local bars looking for a pick-up and some money to keep from freezing, to searching for coins on the ground, turning over
endless bottle caps instead. Uncouth Americans, slobs, come into the bar, throwing money around for drinks and food. They are loud, play billiards, drink and eat grotesquely. When a group of young Poles comes in,
Didi leaves, afraid of a fight, as they complain of their bad luck and no jobs. She leaves, shivering and hungry, once more on the cold streets, eating snow off lawns, hugging a building for warmth, avoiding the
police, until she is picked up by a lawyer, who for three months tends her chafed legs in exchange for apartment cleaning and sex. Soon he tires of her and once more she is thrown out on the street, where she cries
loudly to be let in. He finally drags her back to his apartment for the night, forcing her to sleep on the floor. Desperate, she goes into the bathroom and cuts her wrists.
Witkowski’s descriptions are realistic, vivid and shocking, drawing the reader into the story.
Editor Aleksandar Hemon, an author and recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003, was born in Sarajevo and
presently lives in Chicago.
GROTOWSKI’S EMPTY ROOM: A Challenge to the Theater
ed. by Paul Allain
Seagull Books, 2009, half tones, notes, 224 pps, $29.00.
Jerzy Grotowski (1933-1999), born in Rzeszow, Poland, was a Polish stage director, author and founder of the
Laboratory Theatre, who had tremendous influence on the acting world. His method of actor training combined rigorous physical work, exercises, preparation, physical conditioning with psychological spiritual
practice. This training went on for 12 or 14 hours at a time, with actors working into physical and mental exhaustion, which he felt necessary for them to transcend themselves. During a Paris workshop in 1968,
American students revolted against this type of teaching. However, it continues to influence many playwrights, actors and teachers.
He never owned a home, never had money, yet traveled the world—Moscow, India, China, France and Italy,
learning and teaching along the way. A character with a chameleon-like personality, his entire life was devoted to the Theatre and he is considered a genius in theatre method workshops. He produced theatre in small
towns with little or few props or costumes.
The book consists of an essay from ten people who corresponded, or worked with and knew him well, all reflected
on the challenges Grotowski provided the theatre or on his personal life.
A desirable book for serious actors and those immersed in the profession.
FADO
by Andrzej Stasiuk
tr. by Bill Johnson
Dalkey Archive Press, 2009, $13.95
First published in Poland in 2006, the book is an interesting series of European travel essays. This collection is not of famous places or scenic views. Rather, the traveler takes you through villages and small towns in Romania, Slovakia, Poland and Albania, on lonely roads, marveling at the lonely scenic beauty, or the cold devastation of old cemeteries, with lit candles on obscured gravestones. Or the memories of a six year-old, spending the summer with grandparents on a farm.
Stasiuk’s writing is poetic—silvery spider’s webs, pigs trotting along the sidewalk, shepherd
bells in the Bieszcazdy mountains, gypsy settlements in Slovakia, where children rolled balls of snow to clear the meadow for cattle grazing. The essays are a pleasure to read, unlike his book, Nine, a story of a
deserter in Warsaw under Communism during World War II.
Bill Johnson is a leading translator of Polish literature for many years and Director of Indiana University’s Polish Studies Center.
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