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Codrescu, Andrei ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
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HOLE IN THE FLAG: A ROMANIAN EXILE'S STORY OF RETURN AND REVOLUTION
Codrescu, Andrei
1991 6451 ABOUT THE BOOK Hole in the Flag: A Romanian Exile's Story of Return and Revolution FROM THE CRITICS Publishers Weekly Poet and National Public Radio commentator Codrescu ( Belligerence ) was born in Romania, left as a teenager and returned to observe the shocks and joys of revolution from December 1989 to January 1991. This report of his homecoming, jubilation and disenchantment makes an excellent companion volume to Codrescu's early memoir, The Life and Times of an Involuntary Genius . The first book was a lyric portrait of the artist as a raffish would-be poet in rural Transylvania; the one in hand is an equally sly but more worldly meditation on politics and personal history. The author opens on a note of sobriety, recounting the apparent end of despotism. The remainder of the book bears a more individual imprint, as Codrescu revisits scenes from his past, tries to look up old friends and offers thoughts on ``cultural genocide." His outlook is summed up with the words, ``I have never been able to abide either authority or bureaucrats. That is why I'm a poet." And thus, he finds enough still to rail against in Romania, questioning the veracity of the revolution itself as a series of ``staged media events" possibly brought about by an elite conspiracy. (June) Library Journal Codrescu has succeeded at a disconcerting task: writing a delightful book about a harrowing subject. After leaving Romania in his late teens and pursuing careers in the United States in poetry, academia, and journalism, Codrescu, with an assignment from National Public Radio, hurried back to revolutionary Romania at Christmas 1989. In this limpid and lively account that both chronicles the changes that have taken place and recollects his own past, Codrescu brings a fine attentiveness to the common folk he encounters: travelers on the train, hotel porters and cabbies, students and policemen. He describes with skepticism the ``game of mirrors" played by the revolutionaries (the apparent new good guys) and the terrorists (ostensibly the old bad guys). Wit and irony color nicely his observations on political society and, by extension, human nature. For an immediate and personal experience of the recent Romanian turmoil, this is a real tour de force. Recommended for public libraries.-- William Morrow & Company, Inc. 0-688-08805-8 / 9780688088057
Hardcover As New New York
Price:
16.05 USD
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