Czech of Ohio

American Czechoslovakian Club of Dayton, Ohio

other writers' Slovaks

And, finally, near the end of Journey, Celine arrives at his Slovak beauty, a far cry from the meth-infested psychotic "no-neck Slovak" of Robert Stone's "Helping":

Quite a few fine-looking girls applied for the job. In fact, so many strapping young women of all nationalities flocked to Vigny as soon as our ad appeared that we were hard put to it to choose among them. In the end we picked a Slovak by the name of Sophie whose complexion, energetic yet gentle bearing, and divine good health struck us, I have to admit, as irresistible.

In my imagined, or real, life of a Czech Kudera passing as a Slovak Soska (my father's father's true last name), my first literary sighting of any characters from the old country was late in high school and concerned the Czech girls on the American plains of Willa Cather's My Antonia, a book I remember enjoying very much. And, of course, Stone's "Helping" remains a favorite story nevertheless or because of its Slovak grace and wit.

As is our habit at L.U.S.K., we'll leave it to the next blogger to deconstruct the false binarism between the essential Slovak and constructed Czech in every man, neck or no.

Czech Lit in PA

I try to be modest and full of verve and self-deprecatory wit, and yet, if someone in Steeler Country doesn't fly me in on a private jet soon, whereupon I should be fed meats and starches and then led through the Prague Writers Festival on my own private donkey and greeted with flowers and asked to sign books, yours and mine of course, I'm going to feel snubbed, as if the Reigning King of Literary Pennsylvania's Slovak Nation has not been properly recognized (and don't give me that bull about Allen Ginsberg in 1965 or social-justice Czechs who worked in and wrote about steel mills and such, great uncles who "Slav-ed" so I could teach school and all that).