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Patrik Ourednik: Ad Acta (Case Closed)
Patrik Ourednik does not write conventional novels. This one, like these others, may be described as post modern or perhaps an anti-novel. Yes, there is a sort of a plot or more than one, there are two main characters and quite a few other characters but we are not going to get a linear, chronological story.
We open on a park bench in Prague. It is not in the centre of Prague but somewhere not far away from the centre but in a more pastoral setting. Sitting on the bench is our first main character, Viktor Dyk. He is elderly and he spends his time crushing beetles with his cane and talking to other old people who may come and join him, as they do. A young woman passed on the way to the Academy of Fine Arts – she has somehow ended up in the wrong part of town, remembering her previous visit but that was to the Andy Warhol museum. You probably did not know that Andy Warhol was Czech, or more likely, Slovak. Later, en route to the academy, the unfortunate woman will be raped.
As for Viktor It was people in general that bothered him. Although it was true, the younger they were the more irritating . He had one interesting habit which was coming out with pithy sayings. Originally he took credit for them and no one was interested but now he appens a false biblical source to them and people, women in particular, are impressed. He had been married to Anna and they had a son. She died quite young and he would happily have put his son in an orphanage but of course the son was not an an orphan’ Al ocal lady, also called Anna, looked after him during the day. Viktor used the poor single father act to win the favours of the opposite sex but of course made sure it did not go any further. His son did all right at school but missed his graduation exam because he was in jail when he and some friends got seriously drunk and misbehaved.
Meanwhile Viktor asked himself whether human existence had any meaning. What had he got out of life?? He took up writing an even published a novel on the partisans. It was a total flop though he hoped that it would help him get women into bed.
The other main character is Vilem Lebeda, a police inspector, in charge of the Linden Street police station, a relatively quiet area except public signs and advertising are continually defaced by anti-capitalist propaganda which is something of a problem. But generally it is crimes such as petty theft and harassment that are the main crimes.Every now and again some idiots stabbed a Gypsy and every now and again some Gypsies stabbed an idiot. Vilem had been something of an exemplary child, always very polite and concerned with the downtrodden and it never seemed likely that he would become a police officer. But he changeIt wasn’t that Vilem abandoned his faith in a better world; he simply realised that a better world couldn’t be reached by a straight line. It took twists, turns, detours, loops, and backtracking. When he was forty , his father told him that he had a half brother, a character we have already met.
Vilem is somewhat obsessed with a forty year-old case of murder that took place in the mountains and that is well outside his jurisdiction. We will get quite a few hints about this case and it may well be, as the title suggest, that the case is resolved though nobody actually knows this. He was also investigating some mysterious fires that had taken place, which may or may not not be linked to other cases.
As well as the basic plots of investigating the rape and the forty -old murder, the fires, not to mention anti capitalist slogan what makes this book interesting are the odd characterss such as the testicologist who, under the pretense of preventing testicular atrophy, measured mens balls and prescribed vitamins and we often scathing comments, both by the author and by the various characters on the modern day Czech Republic. such as nowadays no one imagines anything. All they do is talk.” “That’s democracy for you. and Naiman was such a perfect example of Czech idiocy that he could have been an exhibit at the World’s Fair: jovial, cautious, adequately traditional, adequately uneducated, haughty, smug, and aggressive.
Yes, the book is rambling, and the author willingly admits it. Readers! Does our story seem rambling? Do you have the feeling that the plot is at a standstill? That, generally speaking, nothing much is going on in the book you now hold in your hands? Do not despair: Either the author’s a fool or you are; the odds are even.
So we are following the story of a detective inspector and the cases he was interested in, the old people who congregate on the public bench and discuss life and because of the fires, death the stories of Dyk senior and his son, neither of whom seem to have a particularly happy or productive life, unless you count the father’s failed novel and the author’s and the character’s often a acerbic and invariably critical comments on the modern day Czech Republic and its people. As the author says it may seem rambling but it is very enjoyable with the various stories intertwining , the cynical view of the world and the sort-of plots which sort-of put in a brief appearance, then disappear and then on occasion reappear. It is a definitely postmodern so do not expect clarity and an easy to follow plot but rather a very enjoyable ramble.
Publishing history
First published by Torst in 2006
First English publication in 2010 by Dalkey Archive Press
Translated by Alex Zucker