Vaclav Havel: To the Castle and Back

I fell in love with Havel the writer before I fell in love with the man.  His plays combine all the virtues of Camus, Kafka, and Beckett, but where they despaired at the idiocy of existence, Havel laughed and danced and blew raspberries--the only healthy approach. 

On a recent trip to the Czech Republic, I decided it would be appropriate to visit his grave and lay a rose, and took the chance to read this post-modernist memoir while lingering in coffee shops around the city.  I quickly went from appreciative reader to gobsmacked fanboy. 

The book itself would have been worthy of the time invested.  No formulaic memoir, this.  Havel juggles fragments of terse, frustrated emails; diurnal musings; and carefully polished interviews in a perfectly timed dance of seven travails.  It's a rare memoir that would stand up as a work of fiction.

But it was not fiction.  This remarkable life, and the remarkable way he faced it, were all real.  The protagonist of this Kafkaesque, Camusian, Becketty story existed.  It was not only in his plays that Havel gave the finger to the existential void.  Somehow, he saw what any perceptive human sees, refused to look away, and didn't go insane. 

And then he wrote it down.  And so it is not just because he was an amazing writer, thoughtful politician, and hero of his country that Havel is now one of my heroes.  It is rather because he knew what I know, felt what I feel, and somehow made it worthwhile in a way that perhaps I could be capable of someday.