Another letter to Martin. Got Aldous Huxley’s On the Margin from the Consul Library where I spent an hour and a half browsing. Read part of a Paris Review interview with Gabriel Garcia Marquez but it wasn’t very good1. Decided not to return Ovid’s Metamorphoses, though I had it with me. I always start reading it on the Metro when I’m taking it to the Consul to return it, and I get a little hooked and decide not to return it and then it sits on my shelf for another two weeks2.
There’s been a definite change in Czechoslovakia since the elections. The posters came down, all on one day and slowly the photos of Havel have come down from the shop windows. Those of TGM are still there. It’s now only tourists that wear OF badges and there are little stalls on the street selling Havelobilia. (Apparently Havel ordered the OF offices to stop selling posters of him with the comment ‘I’m not Mickey Mouse.’) I get the sense that the country is rolling up its sleeves and preparing to get down to some hard work. There is a lot less obvious euphoria. I wish I’d been here for the revolution, and before. I’m really only catching the second reel3.
Bought two expensive tickets to the Rolling Stones, who are playing 18 Srpna 1990 at Praha Spartakiadni Stadion4. That’s the day Paddy arrives so will start his visit in a good way.
I’ve returned to it many times, and always find it almost completely uninformative. How did this man write those books?
I confess, I have still not read the whole of the Metamorphoses.
If young-Toby had been there for the revolution, this period would be one of watching the last gleams of euphoria wink out. There are new possibilities, and a great sense of freedom, but the general concern now is with making money quickly rather than creating an open, imaginative, innovative society. Those two things are confused, deliberately. The belief in the air is that any private business start-up will be dynamic and liberatory, rather than merely another small incursion of capitalism into an undeveloped market.
Young-Toby, like many others, is impatient for change. And he hasn’t been waiting since 1968, or 1948. It’s not surprising that many Czechs and Slovaks feel they are up for anything that isn’t what they had during those years. If that involves selling off the family silver, or Bohemia crystal, so be it. That junk was just gathering dust.
Note: Young-Toby does see coach parties of Americans who have come to town with the sole purpose of buying crystal and cut glass.
Strahov Stadium. Total capacity 250,000. When built it was the largest sports venue ever. The flat part fits in nine football pitches.