Customer Reviews

Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century (Eastern European Literature)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Europeana -Patrik Ourednik
At the end of Europeana Ourednik observes that, "memory is renewed wheras history removes the legitimacy of the living past by fixing it in time." I say observes because hardly in this unique work could I say that Ourednik writes, yet, at the same time, his observations have such ringing aesthetic dignity to them that this is undoubtedly a work of art rather than a textbook or any other expository chuck at history. Ourednik has created a memorial rather than a museum, living in the flux of memory rather than the stronghold of history. His observations are so quick and poignant that they are more caustic than nauseating (MTV) and more unsettling than tedious (CNN). I compare him to television not because he resembles it, but because he comes close to what in television is possible yet rarely attained.
Ourednik attends detailed horrors and tongue-in-cheek sidebars with the same cool, glib composure, for example, "Above the entrance to the Buchenwald concentration camp was the sign EVERYONE GETS WHAT HE DESERVES." A note that is read so quickly and so deeply ensconced in a two-page paragraph that it is almost glossed over. But it's not. Rather than glossing over these thousand and one facts, it is the unpartisan details that gloss over the reader, showering us in horror and humor alike. The potency of the Buchenwald sign is given no precedence over, "And no one wanted to be poor anymore and everyone wanted to have a refrigerator and a cordless telephone and a dog and a cat and a tortoise and a vibrator and take part in sports and attend psychoanalysis."
or,
"And young people looked toward the future and the wind ruffled the ears of corn and the sun rose on the horizon."
And the book reads in about two maniacal hours.

Born in 1957, Ourednik grew up in Prague under the Communist regime. This short volume is a history of the 20th century; the narrative is presented from the point of view of one who has lived under politcal duress. The plot: the relationship between the individual, institutional and political events that determine his or her interaction and place. Ourednik does a fantastic job of describing a large scale event, the Holocaust, and then descends into the particular. One of the most horrifying moments is when a young man, German returning from the war, discovers that his ex was Jewish. His friends tease him that he has been washing himself with fat made from her dead body. He goes mad and is institutionalized. A cheery bedtime story for all.

Note, this is a narrative, not a "novel," but is well worth the read.

One of the most original and surprising pieces of writing I've read in a long time. If you like daring, inventive work that's often completely hilarious, don't pass this one up.

Absolutely unique! Facts are assembled as "lists"; the aggregate listing
is like poetry, bringing together disparate aspects of the same time
and same world that are normally never experienced together. The
collision of facts yields kinds of perspective on that world that would
not happen in traditional history. I didn't want to finish it!

What were the beliefs that drove behavior in 20th century Europe? This book, written almost in a gee whiz, can-you-believe-it, stream-of-consciousness style, catalogs all of the crazy things human beings believed during the last century. The book provides a basis for understanding subsequent behavior generated by those beliefs. For example, this is the first text I've ever read that gives a plausible explanation for how the Nazis were able to get a whole nation of Germans to behave the way they did during WWII. The most valuable question generated in the reader's mind while reading the book is "what are our generation's crazy beliefs?" "What will make future generations shake their heads at us at when looking back at our times? And what are we doing about changing our behavior when we discover our beliefs are wrong?

Yeah, sure, I'll admit that author Patrik Ourednik knows his stuff.

Even in translation, the crux of his argument shines through. Power to Mr. Gardner for the witty translation into English, and for keeping the spirit of the piece alive from the original Czech language. I enjoyed the style of this write, and Ourednik definitely takes the enjoyment of his audience seriously. Not only does he know his stuff, but he also knows how to present it in a form which is not merely informative, but entertaining as well. You can just tell from the opening lines that this one's going to be a winner.

But not all entertainments are just. Ourednik puts across a manipulative agenda, "par excellence," folks, inside these here pages.

And so that's where my enjoyment of his EUROPEANA ended. My interest suddenly wore off as the number of liberties Ouredink took with his false prose shot up into the stratosphere.

In that style so typical of his countrymen--and by "countrymen," I'm referring to France, not the Czech "Republic" (<--whatever the you-know-what *that* means?)--Ourednik is obsessed by the Jewish phenomenon. So great is Ourednik's fascination with Jews, that he puts across a number of alarming presumptions that--left to the whims of a potentially impressionable young and hungry readership--would lead an ignoramous to believe that what Ourednik jots in black and white is actually true.

In proportions which totally stagger, Ourednik invests inordinate amounts of time debunking what he seems incontrovertibly convinced is the false attribution of the Holocaust by the global Jewish collective as one of the 20th century's singularly heinous crimes committed in Europe. Jews are deluded, Ourednik says, and so is the world lobby of the Jewish community for instituting ritualized rememberance of the tragedy.

Shocking.

So let's see...does Ouredink concentrate at all on the atrocities committed in the following locales:

** Cambodia and Pol Pot of the late 1970s?
** Nigeria, and the 1960s civil war (Biafra)?
** Argentina's "dirty war" during the late 70s?
** Idi Amin's purges of Uganda's then populous Asian community?
** Aceh in Indonesia?
** the Balkans?

Nope.

In that xenophobic style which is the so-called French "republic's" perennial calling, Ouredink has gobbled up the Gallic drivel "hook, line, and sinker" and prances these various falsehoods around within the pages of this short read like a proud peacock. Masquerading as scholarly discourse, Ourednik's take on Jews would make the likes of David Irving, Norman Finkelstein, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Noam Chomsky proud. All of them together in a hottub, in fact.

Why is Europe so obsessed by Jews? Destroying, persecuting, baiting, emasculating and obliterating the precious Jewish communities which dwelled in its midst for centuries doesn't seem to be enough. Leaving Jews to their own devices in their homeland of Israel isn't enough either.

Ourednik performs the maestro's work of dragging the memory of the millions perished over the centuries through the proverbial muck--couching his clear-cut Jewish resentments in high-falootin' discourse that dare to appeal to the intellect. The most dangerous kind of propaganda, in my opinion. And who else but the French, yet again, who are the most strident proponents of this of this doctrine?

So I have the following things to say in conclusion.

France? Thank your lucky stars for Uncle Sam. Without him, your goose would have been cooked several times over during two global conflagrations.

The rest of you? Read this piece of garbage, but don't buy it. See if you can get someone else to shell out the funds for you, preferrably some clueless boob, or perhaps even get Ourednik to send you a copy at his expense, complete with autograph. Don't waste money on this (and wait until I take my copy back to the man who recommended it to me...and I'm going to place it where photosynthesis doesn't happen!).

Read this yarn to know how the "other side" thinks.

Read it to know how--if left to the devices of men like Patrik Ourednik--the world would go on thinking that the Holocaust never happened, and it was one big falsehood which so-called World Jewry wanted to lay over the rest of us, and how Jews are responsible for every single miserable thing that goes down in the world, or how when you can't find a suitable enough causation for why something bad happens, just pluck the old Jewish bugaboo out of the ether and suffocate poor embattled (or isolated) Jewish communities with it.

A four-star read, only for its salaciousness. EUROPEANA is pure rubbish. Ourednik--jdi do prdele (muzu tykat, hajzl?)--and go back to school.

Where is Masaryk when we need him?

--ADM in Prague