THE WILLYS DREAM KIT

by Novak Jan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 23, 1985

Emigr‚ Czech playwright Novak's first novel is a Krazy Komic Kaper starring Jan Svoboda's ""skinny kid"" from the time he splurges on a pair of kangaroo-leather soccer shoes to his closing days in a Cook County mental hospital composing Omnium, his inexhaustible narrative of dreams and grudges. No names are used in Uncle Jan's untrue-life story, and all cockamamie combinations are plausible as The Kid turns into, and out of, being a violinist, a poet, a file clerk, a yard loader, a banker, an embezzler, an immigrant, a janitor, a gambler, a pseudo-philantropist, a pyromaniac and a writer. About to be exposed as the thief of his fellow oil-refinery workers' savings, he's ""saved"" by the Russian invasion. He gathers up wife, son and daughter--the model family--and taxis to Vienna. There, a master key to all the apartments in the buildings where he's janitor gives him opportunity to get to Las Vegas. He played roulette in the Old World; he goes for blackjack in the New. His wife is long-suffering until almost the end, while his children become patently lower-class American, hard rock, dog collars and all. (Back in the Old Country, the embezzler had fixed up a Jeep, painted it white, driven around in it, and immediately all newlyweds wanted to be driven in it as their ceremonial car--the Willys dream.) With arch, sassy sarcasm, Novak gets in hard digs at Nazis, Communists (native and imported) and bohunk society in Chicago. The book spoofs all pretensions, from keeping up with the Joneses to 14«-inch flesh-and-blood sashweights. The tone is brash, mostly unbelievable, made up of comic contrasts and non sequiturs, Latinate words and contemporary slang: ""The American [our hero, so-called because he has immigrated] and his kid watched in utter disbelief as the punk began wringing liquid out of the leg of his jeans. The wet stain under his fingers spread from his fly down to the middle of his left thigh. He slowly rotated a full turn to exhibit the splotch to his followers, laughing contentedly in his natural baritone. What a pisser!"" Greed and loutishness are fine subjects for satire to show there's no difference between East and West, and the grotesques of a loony bin make bright distortions. But our hero is no match for Ostap Bender, and this novel pales beside The Twelve Chairs (1928) or The Little Golden Calf (1931), though someone up for a Looney-Tune romp might enjoy it.

Pub Date: Aug. 23, 1985

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1985

Categories: FICTION