Visigoths in the dust

Today's find when pushing books around and raising dust motes in my house was Karel Poláček's 1928 novel released in 1993 in an English translation (from the Czech) titled What Ownership's All About. I decided I would probably like this one when I read in the introduction that in 1934:

"Poláček published A Journalist's Dictionary, a collection of hundreds of vapid expressions favored by contemporary journalists."

And I felt a surge of kinship with Poláček when I read that

"(O)n the pretense that the Visigoths had been maligned in history as a barbarous and destructive people, he founded a tongue-in-cheek school journal called the Visigoth Review, in which he championed the Visigoth cause."

I have never founded a tongue-in-cheek school journal, but I did put up a blog post two years ago called "Visigoths: Breaking the Silence." I may lack a spiritual brother, but a satirical novelist with Visigothic tendencies who hates clichés sounds like a good candidate for the job.

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What Ownership's All About is available as a free e-book from the publisher's Web site. The publisher, Catbird Press, specializes in Czech literature..


© Peter Rozovsky 2013