Impressions of America
BENES, JAN
BY JAN BENES IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA SOME years ago, when people of my generation were 12 to 18 years old, a popular song-Sung to a rock'n'roll guitar accompaniment-went like this: Life is good...
...I look out for one of those "Angels on Wheels" described by the Czech author Miroslav Holub in his reports from U.S.-the stewardesses who navigate the immense breadth of the airport buildings on scooters...
...I'll go there and marry Mary And live the good life...
...a book was written on it by Konstantin Paustovsky...
...This is where the middle ages end...
...Like Murray Kempton, whose engaging personality and enviable intellect captivated me...
...And it all looks just like those pictures in my National Geographic magazine (though the last volume my grandma had left me was from 1937...
...The system is as functional as the numbered cell blocks in a prison, making it impossible to get lost...
...The child, pouting, shuffles out and up the street...
...That time in Russia, it was lice...
...Like Incident at Vichy...
...Only once," he replied, "when I shot a bear who escaped from a zoo...
...it would be foolish to say that a sardine is free in the same environment with a shark...
...This business of collecting tolls on the highway from the airport is something I do not like: I feel it holds one up...
...I do not see any...
...Then she goes in to inspect the bookshelf for ladies...
...Europe's today was here yesterday...
...Maybe I will never forget it...
...I regret that, even though America can certainly put up with his disenchantment, considering the broad back it has...
...And because he is talented and strong, he will soon get his footing again...
...My reflections come to an end aboard the airplane taking me back to Europe...
...and from H. G. Wells, Charles Dickens, and Maxim Gorky...
...The first American car I ride in is an Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 (where there really is room for one's legs and feet...
...I do not claim that this is how it is, say, in our country, but an ear infection there constitutes no insurmountable or irreparable calamity for anybody...
...America, you have been criticized by Dickens and by Gorky-without harm to their literary reputations, and without harm to you, but they did not persuade you to mend your ways...
...This is a complete mystery to me...
...I myself am not, and do not wish to be, and shall not be an emigre...
...In New York one would doubtlessly be uncomfortable in a tent at the end of October...
...In a hotel in the Soviet Union where I once stayed, there were certain bugs...
...First the father enters the pornography store and pores over its wares, while the mother and son wait outside...
...of Howard Fast, but those by William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and again London and Mark Twain...
...But I really don't know whether it was the boy who should have been slapped...
...It was this America that was the subject of a song sung from the stage of Prague's Osvobozene Theater, on the eve of World War II, by Jan Werich and George Voskovec: If it hadn't been for Columbus The world's history would have been flat...
...now in New York, it is cockroaches...
...Procaccino...
...The manager of the Russian hotel was able to deliver me from the creatures by having a tent pitched in the garden...
...A little more than might be expected because I was lucky enough to meet some of the most sensitive and perceptive people...
...To publish photographs of young girls so that old lechers may be aroused serves only to focus their aggression...
...Perhaps so, but this situation does not seem right...
...I found him living in a pitiful hole: a room with air-conditioning, but no windows...
...I don't know what idea it has now...
...I am truly sorry that I had to devote so much attention and space to this aspect of the U.S., but I could not eliminate it from my impressions of America...
...I don't know of a single instance (in this world where the rights of the common man are the most insignificant rights) in which this organization would exercise political power...
...Swing and then bebop...
...set foot on this continent in the afternoon of October 26, 1969...
...It ssems to me that if weapons can be sold on the open market, then penicillin, too, should be easily available...
...I was surprised to learn that his most successful plays in our country are said to have failed in America...
...so is the gentlemen at customs inspection...
...Neither is a pleasant companion...
...I wish I had a submarine to go to New York And sing for the whole of Europe: Behold this great statue, Its head in the sky Its feet by the sea It's the Statue of Liberty...
...For those fantastic hopes still being fastened onto you, America, by people all over the world-hopes you probably must fail, America...
...Raymond Chandler and Phillip Marlowe...
...I will not soon forget the picture of my friend who has no money for a doctor...
...It is just like in Prague, where one also keeps bumping into scaffolding and bags of cement...
...I do not intend to follow their curse...
...I am still inspired by them...
...Admittedly, they work beautifully, which is not true of elevators in some other parts of the world...
...I do not believe this to be beneficial, and my feelings on the subject were strengthened after I witnessed the following scene on 42nd Street: An American family-a man, a woman and a child of about 10 years...
...To be sure, the building is a perfect example of modern architecture but, I feel, only provides a forum for utterly cynical people whose major problem is where to park their car, and who think that they represent a tribe of complete idiots...
...He was once-and in the minds of my countrymen, still is-an inventive, original artist...
...For freedom to me means, in the first place, safety from all sorts of danger...
...He was a man who had never, as far as I know, had any financial problems in Prague...
...Apart from the more or less official song that goes / Walk on Broadway, up and down, hungry, I'm black, I cannot get work . . ., it was one means of expressing your feelings about the United States, though only in out-of-the-way bars or around a Saturday campfire...
...My first night in America I went to see a man whom I knew from Prague...
...One smokes Camels, drinks Cokes...
...Interestingly, most of the post-August 1968 Czech emigres do not head, say, for South Africa, which promises them everything, but for the U.S., which promises them nothing...
...While i was m New York the election campaign for mayor was nearing an end...
...But they do have a spray...
...Besides, this hotel does not have a garden...
...I favored Mr...
...Cuba, and the perhaps understandable, but hard to explain, war in Vietnam...
...In the end, what did I really learn about this country beyond its subways, hotel rooms, airports, dining rooms...
...I would be inclined to think the latter from the presence of a policeman in each subway train...
...Then, of course there was the sparkling, clear imagination of George Voskovec...
...I may be wrong in this, but they seem not to consider clothing such an important matter, as do people in Paris, such a primary matter, as do people in Prague...
...In the earphones I hear Stravinsky...
...Dizzy Gillespie and the cool jazz...
...Lindsay...
...This essay of American impressions was translated by Jan Lorenc...
...Freedom or no, human health should be protected...
...Thin there is my pariicu'ar Amer'ca: tue Anrrca I know from Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Arthur Miller, and Norman Mailer...
...Only a reactionary would not understand that, he said...
...Then I'm out...
...From all this one lesson emerges: All over the world, including America, there are some things that a man will find disgusting...
...And the virile, sympathetic Arthur Miller, who gave me his book on Russia in which I found (later, unfortunately) a passage describing Georgia and the Millers' meeting with my wife's family...
...The son, feeling deserted and bored, follows them in and begins to flip through some magazines, but he is soon noticed by his father, who orders him out...
...On Broadway, I saw men in white tie and tails, and men in blue jeans...
...I know a man in Prague who has been with the police for some 39 years...
...In London, they have an impossible system of paying for your fare...
...The song is much longer, but its beginning indicates how we thought of America...
...I am only a curious traveler...
...Also, race riots...
...We have seen the Marines landing in Lebanon...
...I couldn't help noticing, incidentally, that the same technology that put men on the moon is also concerned about such minute idiocies as perfumed and Muzaked elevators...
...Ever since 1956, when the restrictions on jazz were relaxed, one hears everywhere what was once to be heard only in secluded bars and dancehalls on the city periphery...
...Freedom is an invention of man, not a condition of nature...
...Those who did not were, unfortunately, soon forgotten...
...The first impression for comparison's sake...
...When my friend lived at home he liked America very much...
...The years after the War have presented us with a new, and often bewildering, American montage...
...Unlike in Prague, however, the construction here does not cause an interruption of traffic...
...In Czechoslovakia we tolerate homosexuality, but we do not encourage it...
...So there, it's not true that children are never beaten in America...
...The passport officer is courteous...
...My friend, much in need of medication, was amused by my notion...
...For this "American Dream" dates from around the middle of the last century, and many a story is still told of those who have left and made out well "over there...
...His mother (suddenly seized by a twinge of responsibility) catches up with the boy a few blocks further on and drags him back to his father, who slaps the rebellious youth's face...
...In fact, six months after singing this song in Prague, Werich and Voskovec were on a ship bound for the Statue of Liberty...
...I was shocked, later that afternoon, to see the publications sold on 42nd Street, and appalled to hear my American companion describe their sale as an expression of the country's democratic spirit...
...The family is worth description, I must say...
...A country of freedom and work A country of civilization...
...And melancholy overtakes me-I feel sorry for those fantastic people I have been fortunate enough to meet...
...Maybe the people who, as I read in Time, recently demonstrated in San Francisco for "gay power," should rather have carried placards saying "Health Is Everyone's Right...
...Also, the assassinations of the two Kennedys and of Martin Luther King...
...To restrict the sale of weapons would jeopardize the economy, he observed, and the unrestricted sale of medicine would do the same by taking money out of the pockets of the doctors who write prescriptions...
...And on occasion the rangers or the police would raid even those parties...
...I could not put that question to a New York policeman, so I will probably never learn whether that New York psychosis of "crime in the streets" is a specter of fiction or the horrifying truth...
...But a society capable of financing trips to the moon and perfuming elevators should be able to create social security for its members...
...The creator of many good and successful film cartoons and of numerous posters and illustrations, he had a God-given talent that he cultivated and made sparkle...
...And the books now being printed are no longer those Jan Benes, whose novel Second Breath was published last month by Orion-Grossman, is now returning to his native Czechoslovakia after a brief visit here...
...This was so even though New York, in contrast to, say, Chicago, is somewhat compressed and, thank God, the system of numbering streets is quite comprehensible...
...I do not consider myself either a reactionary or a puritan, yet I submit that freedom and its political mechanisms?meaning democracy-Should allow normal people some room to breathe...
...they remind one of the idea America used to have...
...I found it all very interesting, even though I was uninvolved...
...And the enormous cynicism with which Truman Capote portrayed its other side in In Cold Blood...
...I happened to see a television speech by Mr...
...In my hotel here in New York there were certain bugs...
...More jazz, and more rockets, culminating in last spring's Operation Luna, which we watched intently throughout the night (we were shown a film about Soviet achievements in space during the intervals between broadcasts from Houston...
...In order, perhaps, to learn a lesson for yourself...
...The subway in New York is the only one in the world, as far as I know, to have express trains, and is also the only one in the world in which I could not find my way...
...It is a stroke of genius, I think...
...Still, I feel that in a democracy the strong, healthy, rich, smart and talented should give a portion of their good fortune for the benefit of those who are weak, sick, and ignorant...
...Also, crime...
...Being an industrious immigrant, he will no doubt eventually become rich, and tough-skinned...
...But perhaps the Americans are not in such a constant hurry after all...
...Though he left our country when I was only three years old, he continues to live there in his writings and as a symbol of the joy of life and atmosphere of freedom...
...or Paris, where dexterous men wash facades with steam...
...I was very glad to meet dozens of other fine people,too, including some former war pilots who had put their lives on the line to rid the world of savagery...
...Take music...
...I once asked him how many times he had used his pistol in the defense of law and order...
...Another part of the picture-nelson Algren, and dozens of American whodunits...
...But he will not like America...
...Americans evidently dress pretty much as they please...
...Speaking of subways: The Metro in Moscow has fresh air and devastatingly beautiful statues...
...It is the America that twice within 30 years battled in Europe to save the world from barbarity (success somehow eluded it each time), though America itself was not vitally endangered...
...He was unemployed and gravely ill, his ears full of pus, yet he was unable to go to the hospital only two blocks down the street for the simple reason that a room there costs $140 a day...
...But the cheerful views linger on past puberty, when they are no longer the fancies of naive youngsters...
...I like that...
...But I would have found Arthur Miller congenial even without this coincidence...
...So it goes...
...Whatever it is, it does not seem to spring from any of the new revolutionary groups, nor from any international sentiments in the UN building...
...First impression, Kennedy Airport: I walk through never-ending corridors in an unfinished part of the terminal...
...Pity...
...In Paris, there are rides of various classes...
...BY JAN BENES IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA SOME years ago, when people of my generation were 12 to 18 years old, a popular song-Sung to a rock'n'roll guitar accompaniment-went like this: Life is good overseas in America...
...from Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson...
...Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald...
...Maybe I am mistaken, and if so I stand to be corrected, but the purpose of this organization should be the protection of human rights and not a quasi-Bud-dhist contemplation of the perfection of one's own navel...
...in fact, he went so far as to make bets-this was back in 1957-58-quite unreasonable bets, it seemed then, that the first footsteps on the moon would be those of an American...
...And it was a very small pistol, he assured me...
...In any case, I believe my friend will get over his ear infection in time...
Vol. 52 • December 1969 • No. 23
