THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 12, 1996 TAG: 9605130178
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY PIERCE TYLER
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
THE BRIDE OF TEXAS
JOSEF SKVORECKY
Translated by Kaca Polackova Henley
Alfred A. Knopf. 436 pp. $27.
A town outside Atlanta is burning. Union soldiers under the command of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman are pillaging the community. Flakes of burning cotton swirl in the air.
Through the chaos walks Sgt. Jan Kapsa, a member of the 26th Wisconsin Volunteers. Kapsa is one of many young Czech immigrants who have signed on with this northern battalion.
As he walks, he suddenly recognizes a face in the crowd.
``Madame Sosniowski,'' he asks of the woman, ``have you ever lived in Helldorf, in the Tyrolean Alps?''
Madame Sosniowski stops and looks at the soldier. ``Helldorf! How did you know?''
``I lived there for some time too. In '48. Your husband was a doctor, I believe . . . I used to see you in the park. You had two little girls . . . ''
``Those little girls have become young ladies,'' she sighs. ``Are you surprised that I've become a dyed-in-the-wool Southerner?''
He shrugs.
And so these two Czech immigrants - one a Northerner, the other a Southerner - continue their conversation, while around them the fires blaze. The coincidence of their meeting so many years later in this place creates a mood of absurdity, which in turn serves as commentary on the entire war.
The absurd is familiar territory for exiled writer Josef Skvorecky, whose new novel, The Bride of Texas, explores the experiences of Czech immigrants during the Civil War period.
Like so many other Czech writers of his generation - Milan Kundera, Vaclav Havel, Bohumil Hrabal, to name a few - Skvorecky learned to employ absurdist techniques as a means for avoiding state censorship.
Now with The Bride of Texas, his 10th novel, Skvorecky applies these same techniques to a pivotal moment in U.S. history. The effects he achieves are unusual, fresh and often startling. But the prose is sometimes difficult to read.
The novel consists of three loosely related narrative strands, which are presented in a collage-like fashion.
In one the reader follows Sgt. Kapsa and his fellow Czech soldiers, as they march through the South with Sherman's army. Here the general himself proves a prominent character.
A second narrative focuses on the Toupelik family, which has settled in Texas where farmland is inexpensive. Of all the stories Skvorecky tells, the tales of the Toupeliks are by far the most amusing.
It is Linda Toupelik who becomes the bride of Texas. Perhaps even more intriguing is her older brother Cyril, who falls in love with a slave from a neighboring plantation.
The third narrative is told by popular fiction writer Lorraine Tracy, whose interest in politics provides insight into the national scene.
Taken all together, the cast of characters in this novel is so immense that readers are likely to feel overwhelmed at times. Add to this the fact that the narratives interweave constantly and contain numerous flashbacks, and the result is a multi-layered book that can be extremely difficult to follow.
Skvorecky writes in a postscript that he intended this historical novel to be a ``sort of memorial'' to the Czech soldiers who fought bravely for their adopted homeland.
The sincerity of that aim, when combined with the author's exhaustive research, makes this book a welcome addition to Civil War literature. Skvorecky's accomplishment is in itself monumental.
But the difficulty of the narrative often makes the reading less than pleasurable. The translation by Kaca Polackova Henley could have something to do with that. Skvorecky continues to write in Czech, despite having lived in Toronto since 1969.
There are moments in The Bride of Texas that can best be described as indelible - events and scenes that readers won't soon forget. Unfortunately, to discover them one must read with considerable patience. MEMO: Pierce Tyler teaches composition and literature at Old Dominion
University. He lives in Norfolk. by CNB