Time's Magpie : A Walk in Prague

Rating:
Summary: Self-consciously conveyed, best for return visitors
Review: This is not meant as a travel guide like "Prague Walks" or a collection of essays about the city like Paul Wilson's slim anthology. Like John Banville's recent "Prague Pictures," it offers one author's own perspective. If you have not been to Prague, the cityscape conjured up here will be elusively imagined as you read Goldberg's energetic digressions. Having lived there a decade ago, when the formerly cheap cost-of-living lured Westerners, she brings no autobiographical recollections but a sense of the savvier long-term resident. She avoids many of the familiar tourist sites such as the Jewish quarter, Hradcany and the Castle, and the Charles Bridge. She favors, as this series stresses, the off-beat locales.

It's a quick verbal repast, edible in one or two sittings. Like dumplings and alcohol (as she notes after three decades of this diet the sudden, irreversible transition from ruddy youth to slumped middle-agers among its citizens), it fills you up for the moment but leaves you wanting more nutritious content soon after. She notices a lot more graffiti than I did, but offers insights about the pedestals and skateboarders that remain after the statues topple. (I'm surprised she did not visit the park where the statues loll on display for tourists.) Goldberg marvels too much at the system whereby the Metro's riders go on the honor system amidst plainclothes fare-checkers--maybe as a Brooklynite she finds this unbelievable? She helpfully lets you know that both the Strahov and Clementinum libraries rope off or keep at a distance from casual visitors much of what beckons enticingly from brochures. The chapter on the bell-ringing at noon sags into archness, however, and that on the nondescript suburb of New Karlin post-flood also adds little to the volume.

That on the Strahov's curious cabinets of wonder, by its title, echoes Laurence Wechsler on LA's Museum of Jurassic Technology. It tells you pretty much all you need to know about this once-monastic library, and what in fact can (and mostly cannot) be seen by visitors. Apparently, as with many sights seen through Goldberg's point-of-view, they are better envisioned by armchair travellers rather than in person!

Anti-war protests against the second Iraqi invasion seem so recent that it's a bit of a jolt to find a couple of protests by American ex-pats and the Euro-left already committed to bound pages. Goldberg, with her basic command of Czech, uncovers some of the ironies and miscommunications as the Yanks earnestly try to convince the Czechs about their common opposition in a city so marked by popular protests in past decades. (A small mistake on pg. 82: she gives 1944 as the date for a four-day savagely fought uprising against the Nazis when in fact it was just before liberation in early May 1945.)

Her chapter on falling into the clutches of the police for a pedestrian infraction is by far the best part of the book. The theatrical nature of the Czech character enacted in public, aided or weakened by Goldberg's limited skill in the cops' own language, only adds to the confrontation and its complications. Here, she's excellent at casting herself in an impromptu role!

Then, brief excursions to Karel Capek's grave at Vysehrad and Kafka's at the New Jewish Cemetery (about the only mention of this topic in these pages) add poignancy but appear anticlimactic after the previous chapter, which should've ended the collection.

The final chapters, one on the parks along the shore north of the city, another on pubs and clubs and drunks, offer little noteworthy outside of the proclivity for Czechs either to have amazing bladder control (especially considering the bargain price for superb beer) or a tendency to avoid the old lady manning the jakes. This observation dovetails into her earlier related response to fearsome matrons guarding Strahovian artifacts which could have been models for Lewis Carroll's bestiary : "Officiousness is one pre-glasnost keepsake Prague is loath to disown--it is one of the few pleasures working-class Czechs can still afford." (71)

All in all, a nervous reverie for those who have visited or have no intention of visiting the city. But not for those who have yet to travel there. Best to check out standard guides, talk to veteran itinerants, and read "Prague Walks" and Ivan Klima's essays collected as "The Spirit of Prague." Goldberg, like her book-jacket picture reveals as its contents affirm, remains too showy an interpreter--she dresses in black, but the loudly-striped leggings give her away instead of camouflaging her presence.