Word: holub
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Holub's most ascerbic essays lambast this spurious Soviet science, in which party-approved researchers concoct absurd theories to please their superiors. In their best form, these essays take the form of veiled political satire, an art perfected by the Czechs...
...What Links Me With Ladislaus the Posthumous," Holub humorously recounts his successful attempt to pass his medical exams by flattering his examiners' egos. The cause of the death of King Ladislaus, an obscure fifteenth-century Czech monarch, is an unsolved mystery with political implications: a patriotic Czech is expected to agree with his nation's medical historians about the cause of Ladislaus' death (though no one is in agreement), rather than with the account of rival German historians. When Holub is quizzed on medical minutiae by his professors, he offhandedly conjectures that Ladislaus died from whatever ailment his examiner happens...
...Holub is less successful when he turns his hand to overt political commentary. The heading of the book's second section, "Trouble on Spaceship Earth," sounds like the title of a Discovery Channel special, and the subject matter is suspiciously similar. When Holub dispenses unqualified environmental advice and chastises trendy scientific theorists, his otherwise sparkling essays acquire the atmosphere of soapbox sermons. The otherwise pedestrian chapter is punctuated by a few gems, such as "What the Nose Knows," a Proustian reverie on the atavistic power of scent, and the powerful "Shedding Life," which might have been titled "Killing a Muskrat...
Even when Holub strays outside his boundaries, his writing remains quick and poetic. A team of six translators (including Holub himself) collaborated on Shedding Life, and they succeed admirably in capturing the terse, aphoristic quality of his prose. For instance, Holub likens the Vietnamese minipig, the Eastern bloc's lab animal of choice, to "a semibald porcupine caught in a frontal collision between two armored cars...
...those who can tolerate Holub's tendency to climb up onto his high horse, Shedding Life should prove a successful marriage of the two cultures, appealing to both poet and pathologist, without condescending to either. Most importantly, Shedding Life proves to be a valuable and surprising perspective on the political climate of Eastern Europe today...