The Prague Orgy

Zuckerman Bound #4

by Philip Roth

In search of the unpublished manuscript of a martyred Yiddish writer, American novelist Nathan Zuckerman travels to Soviet-occupied Prague in the mid-1970s. There, in a nation straightjacketed by totalitarian Communism, he discovers a literary predicament marked by an institutionalised oppression that is rather different from his own. He also discovers, among the subjugated writers with whom he quickly becomes embroiled in a series of bizarre and poignant adventures, an appealingly perverse kind of heroism.

The Prague Orgy, consisting of entries from Zuckerman's notebooks recording his sojourn among these outcast artists, completes the trilogy and epilogue Zuckerman Bound. It provides a startling ending to Roth's intricately designed magnum opus on the unforeseen consequences of art.

Genres: Fiction, American, Literature, Jewish, Novels, The United States Of America, Literary Fiction

86 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Philip Milton Roth was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity. He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Philip Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America.
Roth was one of the most honored American writers of his generation. He received the National Book Critics Circle award for The Counterlife, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman, a second National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater, and the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 2005, the Library of America began publishing his complete works, making him the second author so anthologized while still living, after Eudora Welty. Harold Bloom named him one of the four greatest American novelists of his day, along with Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo. In 2001, Roth received the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize in Prague.

Reviews

[Guille · Rating 3 out of 5]

Esta novela se supone que es algo así como un epílogo a la trilogía Zuckerman encadenado, pero yo no he sido capaz de encontrar la relación con sus otras tres novelas, más allá de su personaje, al que utiliza para dialogar con autores checos sobre la situación de estos en su país tras la invasión rusa y la kafkiana (estamos en Praga) realidad de espionaje mutuo en el que parecen vivir los ciudadanos del país.

Tampoco importa mucho, sigue estando en la línea divertida, triste y provocativa de las anteriores, algo más corta, con tanto diálogo que casi parece una obra de teatro, y en dónde la vida y problemas de Zuckerman se apartan a un lado para que sean otros los que alcen la voz y tengan los comportamientos histriónicos a los que nos tiene acostumbrado el autor.

“Me encanta la palabra joder. ¿Por qué no tenemos nosotros una palabra así, Rudolf?... —Enséñame a decir joder. Está muy bien, la jodida fiesta ésta. Me quedé muy jodida. Maravillosa palabra. Enséñamela. —Cállate, jodida. —Precioso. Cállate, jodida. Más. —Que se jodan todos, a joderse todos. —Eso, que se jodan todos. Que se jodan todas las cosas y todas las personas. Que se joda el mundo, hasta que no pueda joderse más.”

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this short novel that closes the Zuckerman Unbound tetrology, Roth, well Nathan Zuckerman, gives us a look inside the communist police state of the Czech Republic in the 70s. He is trying to recuperate some manuscripts written by the father a Czech refugee friend of his in NY says his estranged (and sexually obsessed) ex-wife Olga has hidden in her flat. He experiences all the paranoia and insanity of life behind then Iron Curtain with his typically precise eye for detail. I recall visiting Leipzig not long after reunification and learning that the hotel I was in had thousands of cameras and microphones installed in all the rooms. I also was in Sofia, Bulgaria shortly after its move towards pseudo-democracy and people still had that terrified, paranoid look in their eyes. Like in the book, someone slipped me a piece of paper on the tramway scribbled with "Help" and a phone number. All that to say that I could definitely feel myself in Zuckerman's shoes and the only thing that disappointed me in this book was that it was so short.
RIP (1933-2018). One of America's literary giants has left us.

[Henk · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting reflection on dictatorship and what it does to society. The sex references being ubiquitous made it less powerful than it could be
You Americans think in terms of 1 year, or 2, Russians think in centuries. They knew instinctively that they live in their own time, and that the time is theirs. They know it deeply, and they are right.

The contrast between What Belongs to You and The Prague Orgy, which I read a day apart from each other, couldn't have been greater: Philip Roth excels in dialogue and banter, has sex without consequences throughout his novella, and in the end we get very little insight in his main character inner life. Garth Greenwell on the other hand. has almost no verbatim dialogue, we have sex between two persons and deep reflections on the consequences and morality of that, and we get to have a deep understanding of our narrator.

Not to say I didn't enjoy the Prague Orgy, its a book where an experienced writer definitely had fun with and the banter is hilarious at times. And the "realists saving the country" monologue near the end of the book is most chilling, since this hints at amoral world, a black hole, under society and civilisation. The sex is a bit much and not necessary, with debauchery and a lot of use of the work of fuck that don't add anything to the book, although in a sense the attraction an US passport holder would have on Czech woman is not too much to imagine in the period this novella is narrated in.

There are meditations on surveillance and distrust (and a hilarious story on being paid to spy on oneself by the state), and the contracts between narrative and reality. Memory (especially in relation to potential gains) is definitely also a topic touched on by Roth, with the underlying question: Virtue in suffering?

Being dropped into a book that is a kind of appendix to a trilogy is not the ideal start but the quality of dialogue Roth mentions to serve to us is excellent and the questions on society are profound.

Quotes:
Stronger on punishment than on restitution

Homeless beyond homelessnes

She loves loves

Human adaptability is a great blessing

A regime can only be so stupid until the other side comes to power

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

"No, one's story isn't a skin to be shed -- it's inescapable, one's body and blood. You go on pumping it out till you die, the story veined with the themes of your life, the ever-recurring story that's at once your invention and the invention of you."--Roth

The Prague Orgy is the epilogue to the Zuckerman Bound trilogy, and would be of interest I think primarily to people who have read that trilogy. It’s short, less than 100 pages, and deals peripherally with some of the issues Roth raises in the trilogy, though it takes place in the seventies, in the Czech Republic. Zuckerman goes there for a couple days to see if he can get the Yiddish manuscript of a half-Jewish writer who is the father of a friend. In the trilogy he self-deprecatingly deals with issues of the “oppression” (by critics, by his own family, by religious moralist Jews, and so on) of Zuckerman, but compared to the real life oppression from a totalitarian regime that writers in the Czech Republic face, well, move over, Zuck, and stop whining. On his visit he meets several crazy people, most of them outcast artists, but of principal interest are a couple of typical Roth monologists, including principally a sex-obsessed (for Zuckerman, of course) Olga and the minister of culture who drives him to the airport.

In the trilogy he is castigated by critics for not really caring about Jews, for satirizing them, but here he shows Zuckerman going to get a Yiddish manuscript, so this might be a bit of an answer to those critics. He’s also visiting those outcast artists, as I said, so this is almost Roth/Zuckerman as activist hero. The trilogy is also Zuckerman sex-obsessed, and so having a woman featured who is more into sex than Zuckerman (who in this book is not into sex at all) (!!) is also a kind of twist on the series. Prague Orgy is not really about an orgy, sorry, which after all the sex in the trilogy almost makes the title a joke Roth is playing on us. I loved Olga's rants about freedom and sex and not getting either.

If the trilogy is basically inward focused (solipsism of the artist Zuckerman), in this epilogue he makes a transition outward in his story to the struggles of others, preparing us for his truly great novels in the American Trilogy that also does not focus on Zuckerman but American culture and history.

The story per se here is less memorable than the total effect through a series of images of an almost dark political/literary farce that echoes Kafka’s Trial: Zuckerman manages to get both taken into custody and asked to leave the country. Like Kafka, he writes of a lot of crazy, paranoid people (and for Roth, adds sexual crazies) living under constant surveillance. It’s at turns hilarious, vulgar, and even hilariously vulgar, at its best. But I can’t give this 4 stars knowing the great novels that follow this one. It’s not quite greatness, though it is good.

[Darwin8u · Rating 4 out of 5]

“One’s story isn’t a skin to be shed— it’s inescapable, one’s body and blood. You go on pumping it out till you die, the story veined with the themes of your life, the ever-recurring story that’s at once your invention and the invention of you.”
- Philip Roth, The Prague Orgy



Today has been quite a Roth day. I went to Temple Solel in Paradise Valley this AM to hear Dr. Brian Goodman speak on the secret Czech files on Philip Roth. Roth visited Czechoslovakia four times between 1972 and 1976 and was eventually kicked out for good. He was kicked out primarily for 1) hanging with dissident Czech writers (Ivan Klíma, Milan Kundera, Ludvík Vaculík), 2) his work publishing dissident Czech (and other Eastern Block writers through Penguin's Writers from The Other Europe, 3) and his work getting money to Czech writers and attention to them through PEN.

Anyway, the Zuckerman Unbound tetrology (The Ghost Writer*, Zuckerman Unbound, The Anatomy Lesson, and The Prague Orgy) were all impacted with Roth's involvement with Czech writers and the post 1968 "Normalization" in Czechoslovakia. Roth's historical imagination was captured, and his writing was expanded. Roth might have been a completely different writer without his exposure and involvement with Czechoslovakia in the 70s.

As a reader of American fiction and a lover of Roth's writing, knowing what came after this period sent chills down my spine. Not only did Roth write his great navel gazing novels (see Zuckerman Bound, but he ended up writing some of the best American Fiction EVER. He grew, matured, and started hitting home runs (Operation Shylock: A Confession (93), Sabbath's Theatre (97), American Pastoral (98), The Human Stain (00)). Wow!

[Ubik 2.0 · Rating 3 out of 5]

“L’Atlantide ebraica di un infantile sogno americano”

Nemmeno un fan accanito potrebbe negare che complessivamente questa sia un’opera minore nella bibliografia del maestro di Newark: trama esile, consuete ridondanti meditazioni sull’ebraismo, personaggi pallidi intorno a un protagonista testimone, lo Zuckerman alter ego dello scrittore, che capita quasi per caso nella capitale cecoslovacca; e se la Praga del titolo nel romanzo c’è, mancano invece le orge, giusto un po’ di turpiloquio che oggi fa sorridere, ma il racconto è scritto prima della caduta del comunismo e ambientato una decina di anni prima.

Ma proprio quando si è un po’ rassegnati ad archiviarlo così, come un romanzetto scritto, per così dire, con la mano sinistra, emerge all’improvviso una pagina di grande bellezza, a circa tre quarti del libro, quando Zuckerman si trova a gironzolare perso per le stradine di Praga e assorto in riflessioni che gli inducono un corto circuito spirituale che coinvolge la Newark della sua infanzia, Praga e Israele.

A dire il vero di pagine memorabili se ne trova qualche altra, ma questa in particolare meriterebbe di essere trascritta integralmente: ho voluto rileggerla tre o quattro volte per assorbirne la profondità, la poesia e il riverberarsi di sensazioni e suggestioni che stimola, tanto che, come si suol dire, il brano dovrebbe essere letto nelle scuole o nei corsi di scrittura creativa, se non altro per come scaturisce magicamente quasi dal nulla in un contesto in apparenza poco rilevante.

Dal che si ricava, se mai ci fosse ancora bisogno di una conferma, che un grande scrittore rimane tale anche quando, non so quanto consapevolmente, si nasconde.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

Occasionally hilarious, this is the story of an American author Zuckerman going to Prague inorder to retrieve the writings of the father of a Czech author Sisovsky whose works are banned in America.

The manuscripts are in the custody of Sisovsky's ex-wife Olga. Most of the tiny novella is about how Zuckerman convinces Olga to give him the manuscripts.

The narration is interesting and funny at times. I felt that the book was too small for me to enjoy. It could also be because I haven't read the Zuckerman Bound trilogy yet. This is an epilogue for the series.

[Cymru Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

During college I lived in Prague for eight months, so I consider myself a god-damned expert on Czech culture. I’ve seen first-hand the grandmothers at the metro telling others (thankfully not me) to go fuck their mothers, I’ve been turned down with a flat out “zavreno” when trying to enter a shop that was obviously open. The Czechs are a dark people. My teachers said it was a legacy of communism and the constant surveillance and spying on friends and exile and threat or fact of being sent to Siberia. I believe it, but I also think the Czech is a culture forever in an intimate relationship with the absurd.

Roth nails that vibe perfectly. His Zuckerman is an instant hero when he gets to Prague, he’s treated like a celebrity from the first instant and from the moment he sets down at Letiste Ruzyne chicks are coming out of the woodworks begging to nail him. I truly believe that this is how Roth would be (or was) treated in real life. They love people like him over there: arrogant, dry, artistic, hedonistic (although Zuckerman is not really all that Bohemian). Roth gets the details right and he does it with superb eloquence and without wasting a single word. Regarding his arrogance, he gets that right too. People take pot shots at him for using a ten-dollar word but it's always the right word; he may be arrogant but he has the accomplishments and talent to be. And yet, something is always missing.

The thoughts on exile, the explanation by Zdenek that he could write his stories in America but in the US they wouldn’t be appreciated, that he could only get the reaction he wanted in the CZ, Zuckerman’s own introspection spawned by traveling to a prominent Jewish city… All these points are very intriguing and Roth handles them well but also with the emotion of a textbook. For all his poetic, rhythmic syntax, inside the heart that beats in him is “meh.” Roth, like this book, is capable of setting up an awesome story and explaining it so well it verges on sublime, but then just as sudden, the story ends and the magic vanishes. We’re left with the absurdity and the meaninglessness. I believe the absurdity, but I don’t think the themes are explored enough to qualify the meaninglessness.

[Carlo Mascellani · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sotto forma di appunti, Zuckerman propone un sunto di un presunto soggiorno praghese tra artisti prescritti al tempo della Cortina di ferro. Un'ode alla libertà d'espressione e parola qui ferocemente repressa da una cupa censura? Alla libertà negata? L'opportunità di trasporre in un contesto altrettanto repressivo la sorte degli ebrei durante la dittatura hitleriana? Non saprei, ma ho di certo preferito Roth in altri scritti.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of the same Zuckerman and more of the same Roth. Zuckerman finds himself in a Prague that is occupied by the Soviet. The crackdown on literature and anything in the arts, the turning of citizens into spies for the regime, the feeling in the air that the discussion of many things is unsafe… these all remind me of recent conversations I have had with my father regarding Iran and the totalitarian government that cracks down on the humanities in the subtlest of ways. Salman Rushdie, of course, is banned to all hell. The flaming turd that began this whole descent into the inferno was the one that made Mr. Rushdie’s life what it currently is. I have seen certain Persian-language websites that translate specific “Best of the 20th Century” literature lists from English websites, and they write out Rushdie’s name and book title as __________ and _________________________. Okay, so, someone in Iran who wants to read Rushdie and cannot read or speak English is reliant upon a black market translation with zero quality control. You will also see many in the same predicament who discuss having read Vladimir Nabokov, George Orwell, William Faulkner, and Toni Morrison. Unless you get a full-fledged English education, what exactly are you reading? The “official” translation of these works will cut and censor at will. What now?

Prague may not have been there, but all of this came about in my head because of what Zuckerman was told by a regime apologist during his time in Prague: “This is not the United States of America where every freakish thought is a fit subject for writing, where there is no such thing as propriety, decorum, or shame, nor a decent respect for the morality of the ordinary, hardworking citizen.”

Propriety. Decorum. Shame.

[robin friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roth's Epilogue To "Zuckerman Bound"

Philip Roth wrote three novels at three different times, "The Ghost Writer" (1979), "Zuckerman Unbound" (1981), and "The Anatomy Lesson" (1983) which, in 1985, he grouped together as a trilogy, "Zuckerman Bound". Roth also wrote and added a considerably shorter work to the trilogy, "The Prague Orgy" which he described as an "Epilogue". Usually printed as part of "Zuckerman Bound", "The Prague Orgy" was published as a stand-alone work in 1996.

The primary character in each of these four works is Nathan Zuckerman, a novelist from Newark, New Jersey who bears resemblances to Roth himself. Each of the three full-length novels take place in the United States as Zuckerman at various points in his life reflects upon his writing, the relationship between imaginative writing and experience, and sex. The series pivots on Zuckerman's successful novel "Carnovsky" which garnered both high praise and sharp criticism. On his deathbed, Zuckerman's father cursed his son for the book. "Carnovsky" is a thinly-veiled reference to Roth's own "Portnoy's Complaint".

"The Prague Orgy" extends its predecessors but differs from them as well. Roth sets most of the book in Prague, 1976, when Czechoslovakia was in the midst of the Soviet Union's communist domination. Much of the book turns on the plight of the writer under a ruthless communist regime and thus shifts from Zuckerman's preoccupation with his own writing and its relationship to his experience in the United States. The tension between the character Zuckerman and the author Roth also seems of less importance in this Epilogue than in the three books of the trilogy.

Roth tends to be an inconsistent writer with his strong and weak moments. Readers frequently disagree about the merits of his various works. With respect to "The Prague Orgy" Harold Bloom has praised the work highly as the climax of "Zuckerman Bound" while many other readers are puzzled by the book and find it a trifle. While the book is short, funny, and sharply written, I found it the most difficult work to read in "Zuckerman Bound". It is disjointed and episodic, deliberately so, and "Kafkaesque" to use an overworked term. The justification for the trite term is the prominent role given to Kafka and his Prague in the story.

Roth presents the story as drawn "from Zuckerman's notebooks" which gives it its rambling, draft-like character. Zuckerman speaks in the first person. The book is in three sections, the first of which is set in New York City in January, 1976, while the two subsequent sections take place over two turbulent days in Prague on February 4-5, 1976.

There is a tendency to rush over the New York section of the book as a prelude to what follows, but it is important in its own right. Zuckerman meets two Prague emigres,a man named Sisovsky and his female companion Eva Kalinova. Sisovsky wrote a book in 1967 which the communists suppressed, destroying his literary career. Kalinova was a renowned actress who left her husband for Sisovsky. The trio engage in much discussion about Zuckerman and the reception of "Carnovsky" while contrasting it with readers and the fate of writers under the communists. As the conversation progresses, Sisovsky says that his father had written several hundred stories in Yiddish that are hidden away with Olga, Sisovsky's ex-wife. He claims that his father had been murdered by the Nazis and asks Zimmerman to try to retrieve the stories so that they may be saved and published.

The remainder of the book recounts Zimmerman's efforts in Prague. The book opens with the "orgy" as disinherited and rejected writers and intellectuals meet clandestinely every week to commiserate and to engage in various forms of sex. Zimmerman meets Olga who immediately wants to sleep with him. In his brief sojourn, Zimmerman sees a society full of repression of thought, imposed conformity, but, apparently modest material prosperity on behalf of the populace. He is also followed and under immediate suspicion from the regime which deports him "back to the little world around the corner."

There is much in the story about the differing role of the artist in the United States and under communism, much surrealistic conversation among the many characters in this cluttered book, and much reflection by Zuckerman himself. The book is tinged with layers of irony. As the Czech minister of culture is about to throw Zuckerman out of the country he lectures on the nature of literature:

"In this small country the writers have a great burden to bear; they must not only make the country's literature, they must be the touchstone for general decency and public conscience. They occupy a high position in our national life because they are people who live beyond reproach. Our writers are loved by their readers. The country looks to them for moral leadership. No, it is those who stand outside of the common life, that is who we all fear. And we are right to."

This is the voice of totalitarianism stifling thought and criticism. The irony, however, is that the culture minister's discussion of the function of literature has a good deal to commend it in a free democracy. The book suggests that American writers, with their freedom, tend to be too quick to criticize their country without trying to appreciate the virtues of a free, open culture. In his experience in Czechoslovakia, Zuckerman learns somehow about both the nature of communist repression and about the role of the writer in a free society, a subject which is implicit in the three books of the trilogy.

This is my understanding of the short, elliptical Epilogue to "Zuckerman Bound". The work seems to me best read as initially intended as an epilogue to the three Zuckerman books rather than as a separate work in its own right.

Robin Friedman

[Gabril · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Quando una mattina Nathan Zuckerman si svegliò da sogni inquieti scoprì di essersi trasformato nel suo letto nell’uomo che spazza i pavimenti in un caffè della stazione .”

Nella patria di Kafka, negli anni 70, domina il totalitarismo sovietico; gli intellettuali puliscono i cessi, i servi mediocri salgono sul pulpito del potere e della fama, declamando in versi la loro nauseabonda piaggeria; il sesso orgiastico è la sola libertà praticabile... e perciò l’assurdo regna sovrano, insieme al terrore: formidabile coppia che offre l’occasione a Roth/Zuckerman di riflettere sul ruolo dell’arte, e della letteratura in particolare. L’orgia di Praga è il breve resoconto dei suoi taccuini.

Qui, per gli abitanti della Praga sovietica “le storie non sono semplicemente storie: è quello che hanno al posto della vita. Sono diventati le loro storie, visto che non possono essere quasi nient’altro. Raccontare storie è diventato una forma di resistenza”. Furono Le mille e una notte e il Decameron a inaugurare la narrativa come programma di salvezza, attitudine a resistere, obiettivo di trasformazione della realtà. Ma Zuckerman non è destinato a essere l’eroe delle storie degli altri. Dovrà tornare ben presto propria storia “sempre ricorrente, che al tempo stesso è una tua invenzione e l’invenzione di te”.

La ricerca della raccolta di racconti yiddish, per scovare la quale Nathan è volato a Praga, rappresenta tutta la letteratura occultata e proibita: operazione che ogni regime totalitario persegue come obiettivo fondamentale dichiarato.

Questo è un libro dominato dall’umorismo amaro e dal sentimento del grottesco che si può gustare solo alla luce della trilogia che lo precede. Anche se oggettivamente è meno riuscito degli altri, rimane pur sempre un grande stimolo a riflettere sui fondamentali, che non a caso sono le ossessioni di Roth: il sesso e la morte; la realtà e la finzione; la letteratura e la vita; l’io e tutto ciò che non lo è; la verità e la menzogna; e infine la relatività della nostra conoscenza che porta a riconsiderare i valori iscrivendoli nella soggettività dell’esperienza.

Qui, in particolare, si ragiona sulla manipolazione che il potere totalitario è in grado di praticare usando qualsiasi mezzo e qualsiasi schermo. Ad esempio, l’uso strumentale della testimonianza scritta di Anne Frank per emarginare un’artista invisa al regime, porta Zuckerman a fare una considerazione su cui si potrebbero aprire molti sipari:
“Più forte della spada? Questo posto è la prova che un libro è meno forte della mente del più arretrato dei suoi lettori.“

[Ned · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, this was one little gem of a dark, poignant nightmare. Roth’s story is laced with his personal diatribes which add color and poignancy to this romp through Prague. The third in the Zuckerman sagas, the acclaimed and shockingly successful Jewish author visits the otherworldly Prague in 1976 ostensibly to retrieve a recently americanized half-jew’s long lost stories from his father. He meets a society of paranoid misfits and sexual deviants who coerce and cajole through a long night of surveillance and oppression. He imagines not being able to leave, becoming a janitor as others in this land of communist oppression. State control over all thought and mutual self-distrust pervades the entire society in a bleak, dystopian city which is (I have no doubt) perfectly accurate for its time and place. Roth puts the views of those in power fairly alongside the deviants (in thought and deed, with nothing but the pleasures of the flesh to assuage their inability to express the truth of their art authentically). He tells of a time and a place in a riveting fashion, another testament to Roth’s prodigious gifts.

I had read this in 2012, and I almost never re-read, but needed a jumpstart back into the Zuckerman series….

[Erk · Rating 3 out of 5]

“การโดนเย็-เป็นเสรีภาพอย่างเดียวที่เหลืออยู่ในประเทศนี้
การเย็-และโดนเย็-คือเรื่องเดียวที่เราเหลืออยู่ พวกนั้นมาห้ามไม่ได้...”

คุณบัญชาแปลได้ดุเดือดมากค่ะ 🤣

อ่านเพลิน ๆ ดี เป็นนิยายขนาดสั้นตลกร้าย ที่กลายเป็นขมขื่นอยู่เหมือนกันแฮะ ด้วยมีเนื้อหาการเมืองที่สะท้อนสภาพชีวิต และชะตากรรมของประชาชนชาวเช็กในช่วงปี 1976 ด้วยมรดกอุบาทว์จากระบอบคอมมิวนิสต์ ที่การใช้ชีวิตต้องชาชินกับการถูกรัฐสอดส่อง เฝ้าระวัง และโดนรายงานพฤติกรรมจากสายลับที่มีอยู่ทุกที่ คนไหนหนีไปได้ก็ดีไป คนไปไหนไม่ได้ก็ต้องยอมจำทน...

[Rui Torres · Rating 3 out of 5]

Este romance é o volume que encerra a mediática trilogia e epílogo de Zuckermann Acorrentado, personagem aclamada e construída por Roth.

Nesta obra, Nathan Zuckermann parte para Praga em busca de um manuscrito raro escrito por um autor iídiche. Na linha temporal em que a história decorre, finais da década de 70, salienta-se a ocupação da cidade por parte do poderio soviético.

Esta circunstância política e social, vai fazer com que Zuckermann se depare com uma obra bastante oprimida e recalcada pelo totalitarismo vivenciado na época. Mais do que isso, Zuckermann apercebe-se das dicotomias presentes entre a sua obra e aquela que encontra nos escombros da liberdade.

É com relativa rapidez que Zuckermann se vê envolvido em episódios mirabolantes e, até mesmo, obscenos, com outros escritores marginalizados.

Este livro é o culminar duma trilogia emblemática onde, mais uma vez, Roth nos empresta a percepção da vida artística e das consequências que a mesma traz ou pode trazer.

Bastante direto e uniforme na sua crueza literária, este livro breve impõe-se pelo seu espírito aventureiro e corajoso de Zuckermann e, consequentemente, de Philip Roth.

[Giovanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Degno epilogo alla serie di libri su Zuckerman, l'Orgia di Praga tira le fila di molti temi “zuckermaniani”, primo fra tutti quello del rapporto con la figura paterna, che nei tre libri precedenti era rimasto irrisolto; qui il nostro Nathan cerca di recuperare, andando a Praga per portare in salvo il manoscritto del padre di uno scrittore ceco esule in America, Sisovsky. Certo, si tratta del padre di Sisovsky e non del suo, è un manoscritto in yiddish che Zuckerman non è neanche in grado di leggere, ma forse proprio questa inaccessibilità lo rende un simbolo.

«Ancora il figlio, ancora il bambino, che cerca strenuamente l'affettuosa risposta del padre? (Anche quando il padre è quello di Sisovsky?)»

D'altro canto, il fatto che il padre non sia suo non è neanche tanto rilevante: sappiamo che Zuckerman tende a specchiarsi negli altri personaggi, a mescolare la propria identità con la loro, e questo avviene anche con Sisovsky, ovviamente:

«Il fatto che Sisovsky pretendesse di essere la mia controparte nel mondo cui era sfuggita la mia fortunata famiglia non significava che dovessi provare che lui aveva ragione precipitandomi a cambiar posto con lui. Io assumo il suo destino e lui assume il mio: non era un po' questa la sua idea, fin dall'inizio?»

È una dinamica già vista nei libri precedenti con Carnovsky o Appel, tanto per fare gli esempi più lampanti. È, in fondo, il tema della personalità irrisolta, della non accettazione di sé, che spingeva Zuckerman a passare da un alter ego all'altro. Anche questo tema viene affrontato di petto in questo ultimo libro, con un'accettazione che interrompe la spirale di duplicazione: «No, la propria storia non è una pelle di cui ci si possa spogliare: non le scappi, fa parte del tuo corpo e del tuo sangue. E continui a raccontarla finché campi, questa storia venata dei temi della tua vita, questa storia sempre ricorrente che al tempo stesso è una tua invenzione e l'invenzione di te.»

Zuckerman, insomma, è alla fine diventato Zuckerman. Forse, per farlo, aveva solo bisogno di mettere le distanze tra lui e New York, di spostarsi in un altro mondo, in cui, per affermare la propria identità, gli è bastato essere se stesso.

[فهد الفهد · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Prague Orgy

رواية صغيرة التقطتها من مكتبة غائرة في زقاق خلفي، يمتد متعرجاً وراء متحف فرانز كافكا في العاصمة التشيكية براغ، كنت قد خرجت من المتحف مخيباً من أن المحل الملحق به لا يحتوي على أعمال كافكا الكاملة كما يجب، فلذا ولجت المكتبة باحثاً عن قصة (مستعمرة العقاب) والتي لم تترجم للعربية، فلذا لم اقرأها قبل الرحلة، وجذبني لها النموذج المرعب لآلة العقاب الذي وضع في المتحف، وجدت مجلداً لكافكا يحتوي على قصصه القصيرة الكاملة – من ضمنها مستعمرة العقاب – من طباعة دار فانتاج، ووجدت هذه الرواية القصيرة – 86 صفحة – لفيليب روث، والذي أحببت كتابه (الوصمة البشرية) كثيراً.

هكذا وعلى غير العادة، انهمكت بقراءة الكتاب مباشرة، كنوع من الرومانسية، أن تقرأ كتاباً عن براغ في براغ – نعم، أصير رومانسياً لا يطاق أحياناً -، في الرواية يلتقي ناثان زكرمان بطل فيليب روث الدائم بكاتب تشيكوسلوفاكي، تدور أحداث القصة في سنة 1970 م، وهذا يعني أن تشيكوسلوفاكيا تقبع خلف الستار الحديدي للشيوعية، وأن ربيع براغ قد قصمه السوفييت قبل عامين فقط، يطلب الروائي من زكرمان أن يساعده على استعادة قصص كتبها والده باللغة اليديشية، ترك هذه الكتب مع زوجته في براغ في جلبة فراره، هذا الوالد يهودي بالطبع قتله النازيون، هكذا تكتسب هذه القصص أهمية رمزية، فكأن استنقاذها هو معركة ضد النازية والشيوعية وكل أشكال التسلط والشمولية، المشكلة هي في أن الزوجة المقصودة تكره زوجها لأنه فر مع ممثلة إلى أمريكا وتركها هناك، يذهب زكرمان رغم كل هذا إلى براغ، ويلتقي بالزوجة وبعض المثقفين التشيكيين، ومن خلال الحوارات الفجة يكشف لنا روث الحالة في براغ، يكشف لنا حجم التسلط والعربدة التي تدور وتكسب الرواية اسمها (العربدة البراغية).

ليست أجمل ما كتب روث ولكنها جميلة وذكية.

[°•.Melina°•. · Rating 2 out of 5]

رمان اشتباهی رو برداشتم،برای من یا علایق من نبود.
اما این دلیل نمیشه که کتاب بدی بوده باشه.
اتفاقا خیلی عمیق و زیبا به توصیف جوامعی پرداخته بود که هیچ آزادی‌ای توشون حس نمیشه،به ادبیات خیلی کم یا خیلی افراطی توجه میشه و از زنان فقط پاهای خوش تراششون به چشم میاد.از دو نفر یک نفر جاسوسه و با وجود اینکه همه با حکومت مخالفن همچنان خشم همه رو خفه میکنه.همه فقط به فکر خودشونن و تنها چیزی که براشون مونده روابط نامشروعه.

[Adam Dalva · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a good idea, but too lean. Has a couple of good sequences and some interesting thoughts on writing, but the rest was sort of like overly sexualized, fairly bad Le Carre. Almost a 3. Neutral thoughts.

[R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trivial note: In the history of cinema, Philip Roth's double-goer, Nathan Zuckerman, has been portrayed by just two men. These men are the noted thespians Gary Sinise and...Mark Linn-Baker. Which means - must mean - that in some way Roth is a bit Lt. Dan, a bit Cousin Larry. The Zuckerman of this novella (in the Library of America edition of Zuckerman Bound, The Prague Orgy is a little over 50 pages) is more Sinise. Sinise, the smooth operator. Zuckerman is out doing a bit of literary spywork, footwork, tracking down the misplaced manuscript of an obscure Yiddish chessmaster who was gunned down by a Nazi. An anecdote which reads on the page, no doubt accidentally, like a semitic-deprecating joke written by Woody Allen but told with all the give-a-shit-who's-listening-these-handcuffs-are-tight-got-a-light? darkness of a drunken Mel Gibson. But fear not: throughout the Zuckerman novels of the 70s and 80s, there are a few Linn-Baker moments. There's slapstick. There's diving into mailboxes.

[Il Pech · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roth s'impegna a scrivere un libro sciocco, piatto e banale. E quando ci mette in mezzo la politica passa da gigante della letteratura a cittadino Usa cretino e ignorante.
'sto giro si vede che non ne aveva voglia. 90 paginette buttate lì.
È il libro peggiore nella dozzina dei suoi romanzi che ho letto. Però i personaggi sono più macchiettistici e strambi del solito. E spesso si ride.

Insomma, anche se nn ne ha voglia, Phil la sufficienza la prende comunque, perché riesce sempre ad essere scorrevole e a tratti persino brillante.

[Jason Pettus · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

Regular readers know that I'm in the process of getting through Philip Roth's remarkable nine-book autobiographical "Nathan Zuckerman" series, a slew of novels written from the 1970s through early 2000s that essentially record the entire history of the Postmodernist Era, by looking very pointedly at Roth's own life as a major tastemaker of these Postmodernist decades. And in fact for a long time, the short 1985 novella The Prague Orgy was the official endcap of what was known then as the "Zuckerman Trilogy" (consisting of The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound and The Anatomy Lesson), although the reason it's getting such a short write-up today is because there's simply not much to it; more a glorified short story than a standalone book, it tells the tale of Zuckerman traveling to an academic conference in '70s Communist Czechoslovakia, where in usual style he falls in with an absolutely insane femme fatale, gets dragged to a group-sex party held by one of the bright lights of the Czech intelligentsia, and eventually runs afoul of the local secret police, getting whisked away in the middle of the night and unceremoniously dumped on the first plane back to America. An interesting little ditty for what it is, it can nonetheless be charitably called the least essential Zuckerman book of the entire series, and can be pretty easily skipped unless coming across it in the famed '80s four-book compilation known as Zuckerman Bound; and this finally leads us to what's the most exciting part of the entire Zuckerman series, when in the '90s Roth started using this character merely as an everyman narrator for what is widely considered the best books of his career -- 1997's American Pastoral, 1998's I Married a Communist and 2000's The Human Stain. Expect write-ups of those to slowly start appearing here over the next year.

[Come Musica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Irriverente, come lui sa essere.
Un racconto metaforico sul potere politico e sul potere della letteratura che può liberare dai totalitarismi.

“... sotto il tormento dell’eterna malinconia e il tremendo stress dovuto al puro e semplice bisogno di – farcela – sempre si nasconde, da qualche parte, una barzelletta, una caricatura, una battuta mordace, una storiella che con feroce autoironia arriva piano piano all’esilarante battuta finale: «E questo è il frutto delle sofferenze!» Quello che senti è l’odore dei secoli e quelle che odi sono voci e quelli che vedi sono ebrei, ora un lamento forsennato ora uno scoppiettio d’ilarità, voci tremanti di rancore e vibranti di dolore, una società corale che proclama con veemenza: «Ci credereste? Ve lo sareste immaginato?».
«Eppure è proprio quello che è successo!» Che queste cose possano capitare – ecco la morale delle storie – che queste cose capitino a me, a lui, a lei, a voi, a noi. Ecco l’inno nazionale della patria ebraica. A rigor di logica, quando là senti qualcuno che comincia a narrare una storia – quando vedi le facce degli ebrei dominare l’ansia e assumere un’aria ingenua e mostrare stupore per la propria forza d’animo – dovresti alzarti in piedi e metterti una mano sul cuore.”

In queste righe credo che sia racchiuso tutto il modo di essere di Roth. Ecco la forza del popolo ebraico. Ecco quello che forse stiamo perdendo e che dovremmo recuperare: la capacità non solo di narrare storie, ma anche di ascoltarle... “Quando senti che qualcuno inizia a narrare una storia, dovresti alzarti in piedi e metterti una mano sul cuore.”

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This epilogue of the Zuckerman Bound trilogy provides an interesting bridge towards the great Zuckerman books, where Zuckerman begins to be an observer and commentor of others. In this, Zuckerman is enticed into going to Prague to free a sheaf of manuscripts of what may be groundbreaking Yiddish literature, works that are being held captive by an exile Czech writer's estranged wife. This short book is a whirlwind of exotic and extreme characters, the type that Roth is a fine constructor of, but somehow so much more immediate, since the book takes the form of excerpts from Roth's notebooks during his adventure. Though the trapise through Prague is wonderful in its extremity and paranoia, the deliverance at the end of the theme, ass it were, a sudden bit of philosophizing on identity and how may even achieve that rectroactively, seems somewhat too-little-too-late. The approach is almost Tobias Wolff in style--a forward-driving narrative that suddenly gets reflexive to offer what was REALLY going on. The most satisfying Roth is one that always explores its ideas and pushes at them on a regular basis, so in that regard, this book didn't quite take the cake, so to speak. But it's a hell of a read--an eighty-page whirlwind that few can do like Roth.

[Kittist Kosumsuriya · Rating 5 out of 5]

"จัดจ้าน"
อ่านจบแล้วคำนี้ขึ้นมาในหัวทันทีเลย
ยิ่งเคยอ่านงานของคาฟกาก็จะยิ่งรู้สึกว่าเล่มนี้มีบางอย่างที่คล้ายกัน
จะเรียกว่าแซะคาฟกาได้หรือเปล่านะ ๕๕๕๕

ถึงจะเป็นเรื่องเริงโลกีย์ มีแต่เย็- (ตามหนังสือ) เต็มไปหมด
แต่บวกความเสียดสีสภาพบ้านเมืองในตอนนั้น กลับกลายเป็นเรื่องที่ไม่รื่นรมย์
ออกจะทำให้ orgy นั้นดูขมขื่นไปเลยด้วยซ้ำ

นับเป็นเรื่องสั้นเรื่องหนึ่งที่อ่านเพลินมากๆ และเห็นภาพชัดเจนเลยว่าสภาพปรากในตอนนั้นเป็นยังไง อดไม่ได้ด้วยซ้ำที่จะเอามาเปรียบเทียบกับสภาพประเทศตัวเองในตอนนี้ (๕๕๕๕)

[Jennifer Ciotta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great snippet of Soviet Eastern Europe by Roth. Some parts were insanely funny. Roth is the master of disfunction and great one liners!

[David Partikian · Rating 3 out of 5]

”Don’t be tender about his martyr complex. And don’t credit the secret police with so much. Of course the hotel clerk is a cop. Everybody is in that hotel. But the police are like literary critics—of what little they see they get most wrong anyway.”. . .
--The Prague Orgy--pg 69

Philip Roth’s quick, knockoff ode to Kafka after having already written The Breast, which was a prior homage to Kafka. This slim volume counts almost as an afterthought or addendum to the meatier trilogy that initially comprised the original Zuckerman books from the early 1980’s. In this novella, Nathan Zuckerman is on a Fool’s Errand to Russian-occupied Prague where the author, in well over his head, tries to smuggle a manuscript of [gasp] Kafka-like vignettes out of Kafka’s hometown. Replete with the world-weary resignation, cynicism and humdrum decadence that human beings exhibit in repressive regimes.

Roth’s The Prague Orgy (1985) stands as a competent apposite to Saul Bellow’s (1982) The Dean’s December, which recounts Bellow’s trip to Romania to deal with death in his wife’s family. Perhaps it was tacitly de rigueur for the two most famous male, Jewish-American Jewish authors to write accounts of life behind the Iron Curtain. Neither work measures up to the true literary gems that have emerged despite the repressive regimes in Eastern Europe. Herta Müller’s Herztier and the works of Christa Wolf come to mind. Those works have a certain sense of impending doom that the American efforts lack, if only because their protagonists were just visiting and most certainly leaving at the conclusion of their gloomy adventures. Philip Roth did serve as General Editor for Penguin series Writers from the Other Europe which lends a certain veracity to the characters whom he paints. And there can never be enough tales and films (Thank you DEFA!) with a post-World War II decaying Eastern European city in the background and with characters like Roth’s Olga, whom Nathan Zuckerman encounters in Prague. Her deadpan lines with their stunning cynicism and jaded deadpan woe anchor the novel firmly in the tradition of Modernist humor, complete with the required Angst von der Stadt that is omnipresent in the Other Europe’s great Modernist texts. While The Prague Orgy is an engaging enough tale and an entertaining Roth in his prime read, it is nothing special within that genre.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's kind of strange to think the original impetus for Roth to write the saga of Nathan Zuckerman lay in wanting to tell this portion of the story, because for what faults the series has (all of them, to my mind, following the stunning achievement of The Ghost Writer), at no point before this slim epilogue volume has he seemed like a writer on cruise control, as he often does here-- even at fewer than 100 pages there's a curious slackness to The Prague Orgy that creeps in too frequently for it to feel like a proper conclusion (let alone raison d'etre) for the Zuckerman Bound story, including an ill-advised transition to stage directions and dialogue only at a pivotal scene that conveys the unfortunate message that Roth has somewhere to be and so needs to get this all over with quickly.

Having said that, there are a few good scenes-- the initial one with Zuckerman discussing with a Czech expatriate couple a cache of lost Yiddish stories ("the Yiddish Flaubert") by the male partner's deceased father which serve as Zuckerman's inspiration for traveling to Prague in the first place, a raucous encounter with the aforementioned man's drunken and sleep-deprived ex who is in possession of the trove of stories, and a final encounter with a bureaucrat who provides a counterpoint in the form of his own narrative-building about the reality of life on the ground in Prague and Czechoslovakia-- but the execution of this Kafkaesque twist on Henry James' The Aspern Papers by way of Roth never fully lives up to the promise of that shorthand description, in part because Zuckerman himself has reverted to the sort of passive presence that knee-capped parts of Zuckerman Unbound, and it is only-- once again, as there-- at the very end of this chapter where he comes to life and begins to really grapple with his circumstances and those of the people he encounters. By the time he finally got down to the business of writing this one, Roth hadn't been able to visit Prague in nearly nine years, and it shows in the rather thin depiction of a city that ostensibly made so indelible an impression on him.

[Roberto · Rating 3 out of 5]

L’orgia di Praga è il penultimo episodio della vita dell'alter ego di Philip Roth, Nathan Zuckerman. Purtroppo ho letto l'orgia di Praga prima degli episodi precedenti (Lo scrittore fantasma, Zuckerman scatenato, La lezione di anatomia) e credo che questo abbia fatto perdere un po' di significato alla storia.

Il libro inizia con l'incontro tra Zuckerman e uno scrittore ceco esule, Zdenek Sisovsky, che lo prega di andare a Praga per recuperare un manoscritto yiddish il cui autore è il padre dello stesso Sisovsky. La Cecoslovacchia della metà degli anni '70 è sotto il dominio dell'Unione Sovietica, in una condizione di totale sudditanza reale e ideologica.
Nathan Zuckerman si reca nella città per una “missione letteraria” e si trova circondato da intellettuali, scrittori e artisti cechi, che vivono controllati a vista dalle autorità. A Praga in quel periodo “la metà della popolazione controlla l’altra metà”, con tutto ciò che ne consegue. Alla fine Zuckerman sarà “liberamente costretto” a lasciare Praga come ospite indesiderato.

Philip Roth in poche decine di pagine intreccia una discreta quantità di personaggi, tutti come sempre finemente tratteggiati con quella maestria e quella tagliente attenzione per i dettagli che lo hanno reso famoso. Il libro comunque non mi pare affatto uno dei suoi migliori.

[Read By RodKelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very short and beautifully written epilogue to Zuckerman Bound which digs into the nature and consequences of literary writing.