About book Prague Pictures: A Portrait Of The City (2003)
Just wonderful. Inspired me to visit, which I did a couple of months ago. The book is atmospheric and surprising - there's a remarkable tale of Banville smuggling some of Josef Sudek's photographs out of the country. It's also funny (which I didn't expect from Banville, actually). This passage on Czech cuisine rings comically true -‘Lunch. Ah. Perhaps this is the place to say a word about Czech cuisine; a word, and then on to more appetizing topics. My Czech friends, whom I value dearly and would not wish to offend, should skip smartly the next two paragraphs - you have been warned. I have eaten badly in many parts of the world. There is a certain plate of macaroni studded with gobbets of cow’s kidney that was served to me by a resentful cook - her name was Miss Grub, honestly, it was - at a friend’s house in London many years ago which I shall never forget. At a hostelry in a pleasant little town not far from Budapest I have been confronted by a steaming platter of sliced goose, mashed potato, and sauerkraut, three shades of glistening grey. And what about the inoffensive-looking green salad which I ate without a second thought in a little lunch place off the tourist trail one glorious autumn afternoon in Oaxaca, which infiltrated into my digestive system a bacillus, busy as a Mexican jumping bean, which was to cling to the inner lining of my intestines for three long, queasy, and intermittently galvanized months? I do not say that my culinary adventures in Prague were as awful as these. Indeed, I have had some fine meals there over the years. In general, however, it must be said, and I must say it, that the Czech cuisine is, well, no better than that of Bavaria, which statement is, as anyone who knows Bavaria well will confirm, a ringing denunciation. Both the Czechs and the Bavarians, close neighbors that they are, have in common an inexplicable but almost universal enthusiasm for… dumplings. These delicacies can be anything from the size of a stout marble - what in my childhood we called a knuckler - to that of a worn-out, soggy tennis ball, with which they share something of the same texture, and possibly of their taste. The Czech species comes in a broad variety of strains, from the very common houskové knedliky or bread dumplings, through the bramborové knedliky, potato dumplings, often temptingly served alongside a smoking midden of white sauerkraut, to the relatively rare - rare in my experience, anyway - ovocné knedliky, or fruit dumplings.Perhaps the dumpling’s most striking characteristic is its extreme viscosity. It sits there on the plate, pale, tumorous, and hot, daring you to take your knife to it, and when you do, clinging to the steel with a kind of gummy amorousness, the wound making a sucking, smacking sound and closing on itself as soon as the blade has passed through. Dumplings can be served as an accompaniment to anything, whether the lowly párky, or hot dogs, or the mighty slab of svíckova, boiled fillet of beef.That day at the Golden Tiger, if that is where it was, we stuck to simple fare: plates of only slightly worrying klóbasy - grilled sausages - and dark bread, heavy but good, washed down with bubbling beakers of glorious Czech beer, which tastes of hayfields baking in summer heat. But there would be other mealtimes, oh, there would, from which memory averts its gaze.’From John Banville’s Prague Pictures: Portraits of a City.
A question on what a city means to someone. Is it the physical entity, person's living on it, its place in history, or something else. Banville's foreword summarized the book perfectly. It's Banville's letter to the city as his forgotten love. It's Banville's Prague like every woman (or man) is her lover's version of it. I'll re-read it more carefully next time, it does have parts that dragged a bit. The footnotes are perfect as a running commentary.four stars(looks like a Prague reading binge is on horizon...)
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John Rogan reads from John Banville's book on Prague, which features architecture, street life, political reminiscence and some fruit dumplings at a 'literary pub'.Broadcast on:BBC Radio 3, 7:55pm Thursday 26th November 2009Banville was not keen on the dumplings but loved the beer; he also hated churches which house terror and "the hush of past sacrifices".
—Bettie☯
Oh what a pompous wandering 'recounting' this is...ugh. I read this before and DURING my visit to Prague. The BEST thing I brought way from it was an introduction to Sudek, the photographer...although Prague doesn't think much of him except to capitalize on his photos of the St. Vitus Cathderal - which ARE wonderful...This was, I guess, just too melodramatic for me and so very personal to Banville. It was NOT, in my opinion, a 'portrait' but rather a vague, 'mystical' wandering which may or may not be Prague....the reader IS warned in advance that this is NOT a travelogue but I have absolutely enjoyed the memories of other places from those who one expects to write well about their experiences. This one seemed too cliched to be true.
—Pam
