HEY GUYS, OR MAŘENKA TRY TO PRONOUNCE "Ř”
STANDA FÉ
“AMERICAN DREAM” OF CZECH RESEMBLANCE LIVED IN GERMANY
I took a deep breath. And again. And again. Guys, what a relief. Well … a relief… depending how you take it. I take a trip into the blue. Beautiful sunset. How peculiar. I am travelling to warm places, I am travelling to the West. Towards a new life. In the romantic films or westerns the story ends like this. My story begins like this. Come on, yuck. Such sweet staff, urgh. I have never been much of a Romeo. A little bit yeah, but from here to here.
Excerpt from the book
„Hey guys, or MaŘenka try to pronounce Ř”
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BOOK
„The American dream“ of Czech resemblance lived in Germany
The main hero of the novel „Hey Guys, or Mařenka Try to Pronounce “Ř”,“ the young man Standa Fojtů, within one year, has lost his parents, the childless marriage has been ruined and he´s been fired from his job. So, he is changing his present life and travels to Germany, where, as he assumes, his great dream would come true, that´s to be rich, or at least to work for more money. And mainly to forget his ex-wife.
After many attempts to get rich, he had already tried this in his childhood and after the revolution until today, in the end he reconciles with the fact that he cannot do anything else than to work manually. However, he doesn´t get to Frankfurt according to his plan, because his car breaks down on the way. He finds himself in a tiny picturesque spa town of Bad Soden, where he happens to find a job as a handler.
After two months of anxiety of solitude he decides to go back to the Czech Republic, but just before Christmas he meets a beautiful girl, whom he is also attractive to. Standa is lucky and he meets a friend, whom he, because of his large scar, calls DePejrak, nevertheless, whom, immediately after getting to know each other, leaves for Brazil for a few days.
The girl called Mary lives alone and is well off. Standa visits her several times, he is helping her to remove snow, they are chatting, Standa in Czech, Mary in German, and, although they do not understand each other, at heart they understand each other very well. They fall in love with each other. Eventually after two months of staying in Germany he begins to learn German more and teaches Mary (“Mařenka”) Czech. The main hero´s wishes come true: to have a woman that he loves and she loves him, to have luxury housing and to be rich. However, is it exactly what he wanted? And what the return of DePejrak from Brazil brings to this relationship?
The author of this “fairy tale for men” Standa Fé pulls us into the story through narration, which, as he believes, every man would love to live through. After the failures of the main hero in his personal and professional life a happy ending will come.
But attention. As the author says himself he has enough of romantic films like “Maid in Manhattan”, “Bodyguard”, “Pretty Woman", where the men have a role of “the knights on white horses” and as great idols of women. In essence this book is the opposite of such films. According to him the men want something else.
In his narration Standa Fé often draws from childhood and military service memories and memories from the period after the revolution to enliven the story with a bit of wit.
Apart from humorous situations arising for instance from the fact that Standa and frau Mary speak different languages, the readers will also feel anxiety. For example, when Standa´s father, before he dies, relieves his conscience and tells that when he was a border agent at military service, he was forced to shoot an emigrant.
As it happens, this story has an unexpected denouement and many unforeseen coincidences that will keep your attention all the time.
And not only that. The novel consists of inserted songs, by means of which the author tried to evoke the atmosphere with the aim to pull the reader into the story. You will never find this anywhere in a classic book!!! With exaggeration Standa Fé called his original idea as a “book musical” and according to his words he hasn´t seen anything like that in any websites. Consider yourself:
Even the fact, that I happened to be very near to death a few times, began to make sense to me: wrapped umbilical cord around neck, broken brakes, loosened cast, collision with a plane, and a fall from the weir. I do not like using the word “God”, but it is simpler and more comprehensible than to use words as „universe“, „cosmic energy“, „space law“, „subconsciousness“, or how or what anyone imagines when saying "God". God just wished me to do what I exactly did. Just because of this fact, by buying appliances I could have helped other people and through financial assistance to the environmental programs I could have helped our planet at least a little bit, just a little bit.
The Planet Earth had been formed over 150 billion years before the life appeared. Barely the Earth was adapted to life, several animal species replaced one another on it and they ruled the motherland for another hundreds of millions of years to be eventually replaced by a man. The Planet was created for hundreds of billions years, the elder lizards lived here for hundreds of billion years, a man has evolved in the course of tens of thousands of years and, in the end, an individual has some 80 years to achieve something on his or her own, to build up something, so that the replacement of species would make any sense. But what sense? Finally, everything will come to an end, not only the mankind.
Herod, Achilles, Jesus of Nazareth, Alexander the Great – people will remember these figures forevermore. But when all the mankind ceases to exist, it will become yesterday´s news. And in a few billion years even our Planet will come to an end. So why? Why are we here when everything will pass away one day? There is only one thing that stays forever and is infinite both in time and space. The only thing that makes sense is the Universe. And therefore we are here to treat each other fairly, politely, with respect to each other, not hurting one another, neither flora nor fauna, because we are the part of the Universe for those granted 80 years. And although we do not presumably still understand, the behavior of each of us contributes to imaginary scales of good and evil. Either we contribute to the Universe or not.
Brontosauruses, dinosauruses and other elder lizards didn´t contribute to the Universe. They had eaten one another, the monsters weighing many tons had devastated the nature and the Universe didn´t benefit out of them. And what are we doing? We are eating one other, we are devastating the nature. And yet there is just so little to do. To follow the rule of 10 %: to be 10 % less angry, to be 10 % kinder, to reduce 10 % of consumption, to argue 10 % less, to show 10 % more of love, recognition and respect... Even though it does not seem and mathematically it doesn´t work, in fact these ten per cents will bring all of us a thousand per cents of better life.
Laugh at me or not, guys, but I feel it like that. Feel free to think of me that I am naïve. I´ll survive this.
In this excerpt Standa Fé has attempted for a philosophical view of life. However, it is rather unique (in the whole story he has tried this only 4-5 times, because he felt the need to tell “something to the world”). Otherwise the novel is written in delicate, sometimes even erotic style.
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