About a book
Original title: Keď sa pes smeje
Genre: novel
Slovak edition: JUGA ORCHIDAMOS SLOVAKIA
Foreign editions: Czech (Albatros Media 2011), Slovenian (Cankarjeva založba -2018)
CONTENT
Tomáš is a boy from the Bratislava housing estate, he just turned fifteen,
his pocket money is ridiculously small, the girls in the class have grown breasts,
his father and mother are hot. Just a hard life. Behind the skin of a tough guy who doesn't
go far for a dirty word or some sarcasm, he is still just an honest and good boy who wants
to enjoy life, date, ride a bike, chat with friends, and have people he likes around.
Sometimes even this seems like too much expectation...
REVIEWS
Conflicts between parents and children sometimes arise from generational differences, while family ties also play a decisive role. This moment is used very abundantly in artistic literature, and it was also used by the novelist Juraj Šebesta (1964), who in the novel When the Dog Laughs presents as the main character the teenager Tomáš, a boy from an educated family, a troublemaker and at the same time a shy adolescent with an above-average IQ.
Šebesta's novel takes place in the most recent present seen through the prism of Tomas the narrator, who brings us the life destinies of three generations, so in this sense it is a family novel. Admittedly, it is not a saga, rather the occasional input of Tomáš's great-grandparents, his uncles, and aunts, contributing to the conflict and humor of the plot.
From their narration itself, it follows that Šebesta focused his attention on the character of Tomáš, who represents the type of today's young person, computer-savvy, defiant, all but eyeless, de-romanticized, matter of fact. Šebesta's character sufficiently applies his intellectual abilities at school, but at the same time he shows a lack of experience and a noticeable shyness when meeting girls, which is quite unbelievable today. Šebesta, however, extended this feature of his character to a caricature, which also appears elsewhere.
If one of the areas of Šebesta's novel is Tomáš's disputes and arguments with his parents, another area is the tension between the parents, which ends with the father's sudden departure from the family. Here the author properly satirized the father's affair with a much younger student, and there is no lack of irony in the mother's attempt to take similar revenge on the father. Although from the point of view of real life these are serious matters, the novel's point of view moves the problem more into the position of a literary game, also present in family disputes over Grandpa's inheritance or in another key area of the novel, the so-called dog chapters. The female Žofia not only represents everyone's favorite animal, but the author also uses it in the function of a kind of deus ex machina, because it helps eliminate all kinds of crises of the characters.
Sebesta chose a language that corresponds to the given environment. His youth often speak slang, his parents speak dialect in specially designated dialogues, his grandparents, from one branch of Moravian origin, express themselves in mixed Czech. This language mixture, which does not exceed the level of endurance, gives the novel a special color. It should be emphasized that although the author had plenty of opportunities, he did not reach for vulgarisms anywhere, which makes the novel different from prose with a teenage theme. The fact that Šebesta lists the characters in the novel on the bookmark of the book should not be considered an author's joke. There are quite a few of them, so you can orient yourself better.
Jozef Bžoch
EXTRACT
SI got the laptop at the price of great sacrifices. I had to vacuum and scrub the floor regularly for two weeks and washed the dishes about three times. I had calloused skin on my fingers. Since Spring. Spring, you vogo, what brand is this. Because of thirty liters per laptop. And now I had to leave it to my mother to look for some ointments in the Nivea catalog. They say I'm always stuck on the computer. It's hard when your parents come from the middle class. When they have a mortgage for a two-bedroom apartment block, a loan for a washing machine and a Fabia Combi lease. When dad runs a real estate business and mom teaches psychology at kindergarten. That must mark you. I shouldn't bother, she'll stop enjoying it in an hour anyway. After that, dad will browse the ads for three-bedroom apartments. Or a large two, so that they can be rebuilt. At the same time, they recognized from the beginning that the laptop was mine! He could bring his own from the office, but he doesn't want to. (He only has a laptop there. But at home there is hardly any connection. Couldn't they buy a card? They say it doesn't work in the living room.) I hate it. The more I dial, the more cancer cells multiply in me. I was chatting with a friend! At eighteen, I immediately raise anchors. (Of course, I already have a passport, nicely sealed, but I can just look at it from both sides.) It would be best to go somewhere abroad, but who will click it? Maybe it would somehow work, study with work in Australia. In any case – you need to get out of here. I'll probably do some exercise to calm down. What is the use of my photographic memory? It really annoys me: I remember the whole series of domestic violence. I'll only do one hundred and eighty push-ups and twenty push-ups. I could have gone for a bike ride with Robek, but my family stopped me. 10 "Man, you're not normal," said the father. "It's a miracle that you didn't get hit by a car." "You lied to us that you were going to drive through the forest to Pezinski Baba," muttered mom. "I've been looking forward to this all year," I said. "How I will go to Rob's cottage in the summer. And you wanted to stop me." "As long as you live with us and we feed you, you will listen to us. Don't you understand that we are worried about you?" "But you are ruining everything for me! There are billions of people riding bikes on the roads!" "You knew we didn't agree with that, and yet you did it." "And you still lied to us." "Because you prevent me from doing what I look forward to the most! What is dangerous about it? I must ride the trails even to Koliba!" FATHER: Riding a bike in this city is suicide. MOM: He drove a hundred kilometers along narrow busy roads. Some sleepy trucker catches you and is after you. "The bag can fall on my head," I said. FATHER: It can. Do you know how many bags are loose on all those old roofs? That's why you need to walk in the middle of the street. "And you'll get run over by a truck there." "Of course, I mean the Old Town." "There are cafes." "You just don't know the boundaries." We forbade you and you did it anyway. We can't let it float; don't you understand?” They don't understand. How should I do sports now? I'm afraid it won't help me even when I'm eighteen. I'll think I'm an adult, but they'll keep banning me. It will be even worse. A stupid hundred kilos, a hundred and twenty, because after Trstín I actually had to turn off the main road into the forest and somehow go around it over the hills. One truck after another whizzed by. I'll probably screw up here. I really don't know what I will do with them. They are terribly stubborn. Especially my father, he keeps weighing in on me. 11 Well, look, my tissues are already degenerating, my cells are shrinking and falling apart. ...... Today is a big day. The constitution of our famous republic was adopted. And our dog was born. So, we don't know if Žofi was born exactly on September 1, which in itself is a terrible date, because we start school on the second. We found her with her father at the cottage. (There were pieces of rabbit hair lying in the grass in front of the barn, her mother lived in the forest for a year. I guess someone dumped her out of the car.) The veterinarian estimated the date of birth based on her teeth. We found it so memorable and besides, it is a public holiday marked in red on the calendar. And so she entered September 1 in her ID card. But Šuplík immediately lost his license. I don't understand how such a maniac can even run a business. He should have continued to study his history at the university. Sure, let him run his own business, but how is he going to survive?! Žofka (it just flew out of her) threw up poop laced with white worms, which looked a bit like sprouts on potatoes, if you leave them in the pantry for a long time, even though they didn't carry them with them. We sprinkled it with powder against fleas, in desperation they all jumped out of it terrified and tapped the bottom of the lavatory. It was littered with stunned, and even, I fear, frozen fleas. But that was a sight. October 15, 2004, was my happiest day. I just stopped enjoying legos, all those tentacle-like moonwalkers, robots, and rockets. One robot, whom I call Pepa, looks like René, has a square head like a television and protruding ears. Because I always see something, in anything. In a web, in branches or on a curtain. I like to watch how people resemble animals. For example, René is a loaded penguin. Nothing extraordinary, not only in our family. My grandfather reminds me of a ram. He has a stocky short figure with short legs, and he also looks so kind and conciliatory. Well, if you want Feel free to castrate me. I also stopped enjoying car chases and the famous zoo, especially when I was driven insane at 12 by lazy cleaners who dreamily walked around piles of poop. Every time I was hoping that they would stop and clean up, because that's why I gave them my life, they casually passed by. I was losing points, but it was not my fault. This is how the person who saves money ends up. They burn him with second-hand games. I didn't even enjoy sneaking into the enemy camp with a machine gun. Completely mechanically, I blasted off heads and crushed the entrails with lead, ambushed the guards from behind and strangled them with a steel cable. It looked like a quality depka. Staring out of the window, waiting for something that should suddenly appear and save me from terrible boredom. My parents couldn't even blackmail me with the fact that I'm an only child and I feel lonely, which is partly true. Who is supposed to take care of it and where, there is no green area here at the block of flats. Everything is built, and it still has to be built... When my father and I opened the barn door because we heard squealing from inside, and Žofka was wagging her tail and barking like a child, I immediately thanked the owner. I knew this would be our dog. She had such a wrinkled short snout and was always hanging around between our legs. A combination of a desert fox and a bat: the ears are too big compared to the head, which is too big compared to the body. She wasn't afraid of us at all, she let herself be stroked and scratched and rolled over on her back. She always ran around us for a while and then fell asleep. We put it in a shoe box. I remember how mom didn't want to believe we had a dog, and then her beaming face when she saw Žofi for the first time. That's a name, you vogo. I don't know any other dog with such a proud Hungarian name. She could sit with him in the castle and let the servants in wigs jump around her. The very first night, she made herself comfortable on a green pillow in the living room under the sofa bed. Right under my father's head. And she didn't whine at all about Pata, her mother, who was later married by neighbors, or her brother, who suffocated a few weeks later. Neighbors left food for them at the cottage, and he got stuck in a canned food. Normally I prayed for him because I - a natural evangelical - believe that 13 even animals have souls. Maybe we will meet him in heaven and give him a name there. It's weird when a puppy dies without a name, isn't it? And all those souls, that's a bit of a problem too. What does such a soul look like? Like a person who just died? When a child dies, will he know his parents in heaven, who will be so old and withered? Well, they probably know him, that is, if they get to heaven. What if someone had dogs all his life, like Grandpa? Will he be in heaven with the whole pack? It is not very clear with those souls. Jesus also answers this rather vaguely: that it is a stupid question. When the soul is already in heaven, it enjoys being there and does not speculate. ...... The whole first day at school was very suspicious. I was already being stared at so strangely in front of the church, even by some of my classmates, which totally confused me. And then I understood when the class teacher said: "Tomáš, you have grown incredibly during the holidays. That's a miracle." Although she didn't add "God's". The fact is that I stretched myself until my bones dried up over the summer. I could totally hear how they crackle, grow, decalcify and rot. Every moment I expected my skeleton to collapse and I would fall inside. Sometimes I have such visions. I can imagine anything, like in an animated film. My sideburns got longer and my hair got darker, so I don't know if it's brown or black. I think my eyes turned green too. And Paula, the mischievous bun who always teased that I was a nerd, looked at me... somehow differently. Before, she was always the first to avert her eyes. I suddenly realized that I like her. A twist, you vogo? The organ blared, psalms soared, and we prayed that the lord would protect us throughout the school year, and the teachers prayed that we wouldn't go crazy for another year. And I was suddenly sure that I was totally into her. The organ somehow got into my head, and when the service ended, we were married and had five children. I ride a black mustang on the dog farm while she sprinkles grain to the turkeys. The children throw themselves under my feet, so I prefer to pull them into the saddle and, showered with them, I gallop further 14 km into the prairie. There we hunt a bison together, the eldest son hits him with an arrow under the shoulder blade and I finish him off with a spear, pretty ecologically. We met again. To be sure, I looked at the large, oblong painting next to the altar. I envy them that they have it behind them. Here the duty to be leaders. Everyone is there, Jesus right up there, in the Jordan, and St. John is baptizing him, and below him Luther is reading from the Bible, in the background a German house with wooden cornices, and further below the peaks of the Tatras, and Bernolák and Hollý and Kollár and the holy trinity of Štúr /Hurban/Hodža and others, whole crowds, look at us, proud of the nation. (Everyone is there, Evangelicals and Catholics. Even Záborský, that calms me down.) ...... Before I could try anything, the girls left for the pastry shop. With Kuba and Robek, we set off to the mekacha. Some boys went to play football in Janko Kráľ's orchard. They got a little mad at us, but on the one hand, we were terribly hungry on the one hand, Jakub
was wearing a vogo jacket and black polished ankle boots. Yes, they flashed until our eyes crossed! Mom is said to have cried on her knees in front of him. He felt sorry for her, besides, she is divorced. Jakub's mom wants him to walk around clean and nicely dressed. At least to church. ...... "After all, I gave you two thousand the day before yesterday. The season ticket costs only fifteen hundred." "Yeah, but I gave one hundred to the coach and I bought the massage gel for one hundred and fifty." "And where is the remaining two hundred and fifty?" MOM: I gave you five hundred crowns on Monday. On Tuesday another two hundred and dad two thousand. Where is the money? "I can't anymore. I was a booster on Monday. I bought a Vita 15 mine for two hundred and fifty and the trainer got one hundred. I had lunch for a hundred. I bought something to eat... or to drink... what do I know..." "And the two hundred on Tuesday?" "I had those for lunch." MOTHER: Tomáška, it doesn't work like that. "I don't understand what you are dealing with here?! I didn't buy anything, just some small things to eat and drink." FATHER: And vitamins... "My trainer recommended them to me!" MOTHER: I don't have the nerve for this. I'm going out with the dog. FATHER: Are you saying you don't have a penny left? "No." "And how much do you need?" "You know how much." It's Friday, I'm going out with my friends after school." "I'll give you a hundred and a meal ticket." "Just one?" "Do you want us to break even?" "Dad, what can I buy in a restaurant for one meal ticket? Think a little logically." "Don't annoy me! You have a lot of food here. Why do you eat in restaurants?" "You didn't go out with your friends?" "He did, but I was able to restrain myself. And he made money on part-time jobs. I swept the streets. He was loading packages at the Main Station. All night." "Dad, you said yourself that everything is ten times more expensive now. You gave me like ten crowns. Ten crowns was enough for you with friends for a beer?'
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