Volume 49, Number 18 · November 21, 2002
At War with Stupidity
By Neal Ascherson
When Eve Was Naked: Stories of a Life's Journey
by Josef Skvorecky
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 352 pp., $25.00
Some writers, and many great ones, remain in their books. They may devastate your feelings and change your ideas, but they stay in the pages. Others, for no reason that I can define, move forward and enter your life. Primo Levi, and perhaps Tolstoy, are figures who have to be loved as a lost father or a brother killed in war may be loved. Josef Skvorecky´, in contrast, settles in the imagination as an irresistible friend. Reading him, I often catch myself feeling impatient to sit down with him again (though we have never met) in the corner of a bar and listen to him laughing, telling stories, and making sense out of the callous disorder around us.
Review, 2523 words
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