GOING HOME AGAIN:
Novak, Michael
GOING HOME AGAIN MICHAEL NOVAK Writing now at the end of July, I returned to Slovakia to live. Yet,...
...Mark Stolarik has to get in touch with their own history, earlier-as long as as blacks were just completed a still more advanced and to start afresh in their own inemancipated in the U.S.-were being thesis, also drawing heavily on materi- tellectual and creative work, is one of driven off the land by overpopulation, als from Cleveland, for Timothy the happiest signs in American Cathofamine, lack of land...
...outnuminto the foreign Hungarian army...
...ians entering the ranks of American ber Irish Catholics...
...Only a week is avail- nearly six million Slovaks emigrated a newer generation of historians who able to me...
...Frequently, disappointing visit...
...last-with giving the rest of us what known relatives-in the counties of Some of the great tides of European we have been without: a history...
...ence of separate valleys and rural ways they deposed a pastor or marched en My knowledge of my own land's his- encouraged a number of democratic masse on the bishop's chancery...
...23 August 1974: 456...
...and other cities in Pennsylvania from changed by genuinely new and proIn some years, as many as five out of 1900-1930...
...Perhaps, almost tion arrived a century earlier than in the Slovak laity insisted on controlling surely, I will be quite a distant "for- Germany or England...
...most all Czech and Slovak immigrants have told the story of the Slavic imThe impulse that draws me back to the U.S...
...language in public...
...Not tory is rudimentary and wholly self- traditions...
...pire is almost unknown to Czechoslo- tory, sociology, anthropology, political I remember my grandfather playing vak history...
...Who America...
...Fresh points of view in hisGreek...
...Perhaps, at last, the Each year, hundreds of thousands the Pennsylvania archives in Harris- promise is to be fulfilled-and not migrated seasonally all over Europe burg, is guiding a half dozen major where many at first looked for it, in seeking work and soon, as well, to the projects, one of the most significant "Americanization...
...Those who had urban history (concerning Cleveland) That many Catholics are beginning been serfs, freed hardly a generation by Josef Barton...
...But I do hope to drive for good, in a period of about 40 know the native languages of the imthrough Slovakia and to find the years, 1880-1920: to the U.S., to migrants, and who are concerned-at villages-and, possibly, some now un- Canada, and to Latin America...
...could at least read and migrants accurately...
...I recall write...
...These young historians found impulses from the greatest mass eight who left for the United States have examined records in Czecho- migration in world history...
...They are in the vanguard of my grandparents...
...All of us have United States...
...GOING HOME AGAIN MICHAEL NOVAK Writing now at the end of July, I returned to Slovakia to live...
...Or that boat, in order to escape being drafted so many young Czechoslovak histor- Italian Catholics in the U.S...
...Many of the young modest culture, no bursting at the the American population has been knew how to play an instrument in seams with glory and achievement...
...The independ- their own churches...
...left out of the standard descriptions his days...
...Literacy was common...
...more than once eigner...
...Even today, the audience for Catholic scholars in almost every Elia Kazan's saying: "As the years go books and the arts on Czechoslovakia field have a magnificent opportunity on, I find myself more and more is extraordinarily high...
...Smith...
...I will visit the moun- history rose earlier in Czechoslovakia Most of the Slovaks west of the tains where the legendary folk hero of than elsewhere...
...It is alone, and returned with a purse large between blacks and Slavs in Pittsburgh time, now, for America also to be enough to purchase land and to marry...
...It is a possible, for nearly one-quarter of of another world...
...the national heroes tend science, literature and philosophy are his violin and in his face the knowledge to be philosophers and poets...
...Harvard University Press even obvious, statistical material-rethat decade for speaking the Slovak will soon publish a splendid piece of mains to be inquired into and digested...
...Much about usScores of Slovaks were arrested in historians...
...such arts died for awhile in Many who are emigres cherish a love and themes about the nation...
...Yet, as slovakia as well as in the United anticipate a first trip to the land of times worsened, two million of the States...
...I do not know the language...
...Perhaps it will be a with a great university.The Reforma- my grandparents came...
...Usually the males left being an oral history of the relations learned much from America...
...A unified, in some Allegheny river in Pennsylvania, and Slovakia, Janosik, hid with his moun- ways, democratic empire came early, particularly those around Johnstown, tain band and preyed upon the and a 'thriving urban life, together came from the two countries whence wealthy nobles...
...John Bodnar, who is directing lic intellectual life...
...My grandfather left Slovakia for it...
...al- even American Catholic historians taught...
...would guess that, demographically, at night, leaping into the darkness of It is satisfying now, in the third Slavs are the most numerous ethnic a train, crossing the Danube in a small generation in America, to recognize group in New York State...
...Spis and Saris...
...surprises me by its strength...
...Military em- these days...
Vol. 100 • August 1974 • No. 19
