The Eternal Philistine Read Free Page A

contemptibility of the powerful that would blame the powerless for their own misfortunes:
    Along these lines he had a friend in Berlin. And this friend once ran over a pedestrian with his fabulous car because she was jaywalking. But despite the fact that it was a case of jaywalking, an inquiry was launched. Indeed, it even went to trial, probably because that pedestrian had been the widow of a counselor for the regional court. The state’s attorney, however, failed to sentence his friend to paying damages. “After all, what do I care about a few thousand marks,” said the friend, “but as a matter of principle I want to know that things have been resolved.” He had to be acquitted, even though the chairman had asked him whether he felt sorry for this pedestrian, the jaywalking notwithstanding. “No,” he had said, “as a matter of principle—no!” He was just asserting his rights.
    Revolutionary animus was set ablaze in Harry every time he saw a gasoline engine collide with the engine of the state. At such times he hated this state, which maternally protected pedestrians from every fender and reduced motor vehicle drivers to second-class citizens.
    The connection made here to the humans at the World’s Fair having to make way for the cars is not accidental; progress may change the way we do things, he suggests, but we’ll continue to do the same things we always have. Like mass murder.
    Man, said Aristotle, is the only animal that laughs.
    Or builds gas chambers.
    Not surprisingly, after Hitler came to power, Horváth’s home was searched and his writings banned. He fled toSalzburg, then to Vienna, where he married the German singer Maria Elsner in Vienna; she was Jewish, the marriage simply to help her escape from Germany by taking on his Hungarian nationality. He returned to Berlin in 1934, but was soon harassed by the Nazis again, and he fled to Zurich. He returned once more to Germany, to see his parents, but was ordered to leave after 24 hours. Which led, unfortunately, to this:
4. THE AUTHOR DIED TRAGICALLY.
    It’s bad enough this book is funny; to make matters worse, the author didn’t even kill himself. It was the least he could have done. Respect-wise, nothing beats suicide (even Gogol had the courtesy to starve himself to death), and your asshole friends would have loved Horváth if he had. Still, he died tragically, and that should count for something.
    Ödön was not afraid of much. He was not afraid of Nazis, criticism, or failure. What he was afraid of, however, was trees.
    His whole life.
    Trees.
    In 1938, Hitler invaded Austria. Ödön left Vienna and, after many stops along the way, finally made his way to Paris. He loved Berlin, but was thrilled to be back in a bustling, lively city.
    “Human life,” Ödön once wrote, “is always a tragedy and only in individual episodes is it a comedy.”
    One night, as he was returning from the cinema, a summer storm kicked up, and Ödön took shelter beneath a tree. A gust of wind broke off a branch, which landed on Ödön’s head, killing him instantly.
    He was thirty-six years old.
    Tragic.
    And yet, in a typically, uniquely Horváthian way:
    Hilarious.
5. THE BOOK IS PUBLISHED BY AN INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER.
    If all that doesn’t convince your friends to read this book, they’re even bigger assholes than I thought, and you should immediately point out to them that the book is being published by Melville House, which they’ll not have heard of (+10 points), but which you can tell them is a tremendously respected (+10 points) independent publisher (+15 points) based in Brooklyn, New York (Win). It will have a beautifully designed cover and be published on high-quality paper, maybe even with that respected-book rough edge thing going on.
    “I have neither prettified nor disfigured,” wrote Horváth of his work. “I have never built and will never build distorting mirrors, because I reject parody in all its forms.”
    He wasn’t exaggerating.
    He was