Dancing Lessons For 
The Advanced in Age 
Bohumil Hrabal
New York Review Books Classics
Dh65
Dancing Lessons For The Advanced in Age Bohumil Hrabal New York Review Books Classics Dh65

Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age: take a deep breath



One of the minor arts of the novel is the art of the title, of a word or a phrase that successfully broadcasts the sense and spirit of the whole. Novelistic prose has all the time in the world to unfurl its nature, but titles, if anything, belong to the universe of poetry, to its mode of tightly wound suggestion. No matter how distinguished it is, we carry within our minds, at best, a few sentences of any prose writer's work; good titles, however, ring on forever.

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Sometimes a title can prove to be, disappointingly, the most intriguing bit of a work, a cover charge that yields no reward in the establishment to which it gives access. But on other occasions titles are not just thresholds to narrative worlds of the greatest density and distinction; they are the whole work in microcosm. Such, at any rate, are the titles of the great 20th-century Czech novelist - some would say the greatest 20th century Czech novelist, above Kundera, Hašek, and Škvoreck - Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997). Even in translation, where they surely lose some of their colloquial charge, the phrases Too Loud a Solitude, Closely Observed Trains, Pirouettes on a Postage Stamp, I Served the King of England, and Dancing Lessons for the Advanced In Age are flares that light up the teeming, gusting worlds, red with carnival and heavy with suppressed laughter, from which they emerge.

At one point in I Served the King of England, one of Hrabal's most perfectly realised works, the protagonist, a small waiter named Ditie, is seen moving from a big hotel in Prague to a small but plush establishment in the countryside called the Hotel Tichota. He arrives with his suitcase in the middle of the day, but mysteriously the hotel and its grounds are absolutely deserted, the only sound being that of the wind, "which smelled so sweet you could almost eat it with a spoon". Perplexed, Ditie turns and is about to leave, when suddenly he is stopped in his tracks by a piercing whistle: "It blew three times as if it were saying, Tut tut tut, then gave a long blast that made me turn around, and a short blast that made me feel a line or a rope was reeling me in, pulling me back to the glass doors." Even sounds in Hrabal's world are as perfectly measured and varied as the sentences that then describe or transate them, and the entire universe rains meanings upon the fevered brains of his heroes.

Hrabal's protagonists are also agents and enablers of the central force in his work, which he termed pabeni, or, loosely, shooting the breeze. He is a kind of poet of the beer garden, gathering up folk wisdom, old maid's tales, testosterone-fuelled exaggeration, and street chatter into perfectly formed monologues delivered by characters he called pabitels. A pabitel, he explains in a note to his early work The Palaverers, "is a person against whom there is always welling up an ocean of intrusive thoughts. His monologue flows constantly ... As a rule, a pabitel has read almost nothing, but on the other hand has seen and heard a great deal ... He is captivated by his own inner monologue, with which he wanders the world, like a peacock with its beautiful plumage".

Thus, although Hrabal's fantastically vivid narrations throb with incident and anecdote, they are paradoxically (except in Closely Observed Trains, his most popular but in many ways most conventional work) often plotless, taking delight in their very aimlessness and susceptibility to suggestion. The series of "little men" in his work - Ditie, the paper compactor Hanta in Too Loud a Solitude, the train dispatcher Miloš Hrma in Closely Observed Trains - achieve a gentle subversion through their very earnestness and naivete, blowing the pompousness and absurdity of the world's structures and doctrines into bubbles of the strange and the surreal. Although Hrabal lived and worked under the aegis of a communist regime, in an age of "socialist realism" in literature, about the only doctrine sounded in his work is the exuberant conclusion of the unnamed narrator of Dancing Lessons for the Advanced In Age: "Mother of God, isn't life breathtakingly beautiful!" Taken in the context of its time and literary environment, this is not so much a declaration of aestheticism as a reproach to a world that hums with, to adapt one of Hrabal's titles, too loud a certitude.

The most important word in Hrabal's work might, however, be not so much a particular concept like pabeni or the repeated emphasis on the delights of sense life, but the humble conjunction "and". Since his narratives thrive on an effect of copious simultaneity, of a dozen balls of incident being juggled in the air at the same time, the word "and" is the well-oiled hinge through which all this is transmitted and ordered (prose, unlike painting, always being a linear thing). Like Jose Saramago, Hrabal loves run-on sentences and enormously long paragraphs, though in Hrabal these things are not meant to mime a primitive "folk voice" as in Saramago, but to produce an onrushing river of richly embroidered and seemingly unstoppable incident.

This principle of composition reaches its logical conclusion in Hrabal's early and daringly experimental work from 1964, Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age, just published in a translation by Michael Henry Heim. The entire novel is told in a single sentence. Once we begin, we are allowed no pause for breath. In his life Hrabal worked variously as a warehouseman, a railway dispatcher, an insurance agent, and even as a waste-paper collector, in which incarnation the novelist Josef Škvoreck first met him, finding him (in a detail that might have come straight out of Hrabal's own work) "saving the proofs of a Thackeray novel from the rubbish". The unnamed narrator of Dancing Lessons is similarly diverse in his vocations, telling us about his tumultuous exploits as a cobbler, a brewer and a soldier, even as he retails to us his application to the real world of the lessons he has learnt from his favourite, if fanciful, books (one on the interpretation of dreams, another a book of wisdom on marriage).

Stories and characters come sailing out of nowhere, such as the tale told to the narrator by some truckers about a dentist they see while they are racing one another down a hill: "He'd left his umbrella in his office, and just as he was sticking his key into the door one of the [lorries] burst a spring and barrelled smack into the office and it lurched away from the key, the whole office, and he was left standing there with his key in the air."

In Hrabal it is not the key that misses the door, but the door that escapes the key. Elsewhere we find human hands blown off by grenade explosions slapping people as they fly, and a flock of turkeys blown to bits by a careering express train coming down, part by part, at stations all the way down the line.

As everywhere in Hrabal, we see from numerous amorous exploits "how a real man trembles like a frog about to leap whenever he sees a beautiful woman", and are led through parades of comic complaint: "Why will no one see that progress may be good for making people people, but for bread and butter and beer it's the plague, they've got to slow down their damn technology." Never has the workaday world of bread and butter and beer been rendered so lyrically as in the work of this essential writer, every phrase of whose narrations both prove and demand "the world is a beautiful place, don't you think? not because it is but because I see it that way".

Chandrahas Choudhury is a novelist and literary critic based in Mumbai, and the author of the novel Arzee the Dwarf (2009).

Living in...

This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Business Insights
  • Canada and Mexico are significant energy suppliers to the US, providing the majority of oil and natural gas imports
  • The introduction of tariffs could hinder the US's clean energy initiatives by raising input costs for materials like nickel
  • US domestic suppliers might benefit from higher prices, but overall oil consumption is expected to decrease due to elevated costs
If you go
Where to stay: Courtyard by Marriott Titusville Kennedy Space Centre has unparalleled views of the Indian River. Alligators can be spotted from hotel room balconies, as can several rocket launch sites. The hotel also boasts cool space-themed decor.

When to go: Florida is best experienced during the winter months, from November to May, before the humidity kicks in.

How to get there: Emirates currently flies from Dubai to Orlando five times a week.
Uefa Nations League: How it Works

The Uefa Nations League, introduced last year, has reached its final stage, to be played over five days in northern Portugal. The format of its closing tournament is compact, spread over two semi-finals, with the first, Portugal versus Switzerland in Porto on Wednesday evening, and the second, England against the Netherlands, in Guimaraes, on Thursday.

The winners of each semi will then meet at Porto’s Dragao stadium on Sunday, with the losing semi-finalists contesting a third-place play-off in Guimaraes earlier that day.

Qualifying for the final stage was via League A of the inaugural Nations League, in which the top 12 European countries according to Uefa's co-efficient seeding system were divided into four groups, the teams playing each other twice between September and November. Portugal, who finished above Italy and Poland, successfully bid to host the finals.

How to protect yourself when air quality drops

Install an air filter in your home.

Close your windows and turn on the AC.

Shower or bath after being outside.

Wear a face mask.

Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.

If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.

Electoral College Victory

Trump has so far secured 295 Electoral College votes, according to the Associated Press, exceeding the 270 needed to win. Only Nevada and Arizona remain to be called, and both swing states are leaning Republican. Trump swept all five remaining swing states, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, sealing his path to victory and giving him a strong mandate. 

 

Popular Vote Tally

The count is ongoing, but Trump currently leads with nearly 51 per cent of the popular vote to Harris’s 47.6 per cent. Trump has over 72.2 million votes, while Harris trails with approximately 67.4 million.

COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Almnssa
Started: August 2020
Founder: Areej Selmi
Based: Gaza
Sectors: Internet, e-commerce
Investments: Grants/private funding
SPECS

Engine: 4-litre V8 twin-turbo
Power: 630hp
Torque: 850Nm
Transmission: 8-speed Tiptronic automatic
Price: From Dh599,000
On sale: Now

Keep it fun and engaging

Stuart Ritchie, director of wealth advice at AES International, says children cannot learn something overnight, so it helps to have a fun routine that keeps them engaged and interested.

“I explain to my daughter that the money I draw from an ATM or the money on my bank card doesn’t just magically appear – it’s money I have earned from my job. I show her how this works by giving her little chores around the house so she can earn pocket money,” says Mr Ritchie.

His daughter is allowed to spend half of her pocket money, while the other half goes into a bank account. When this money hits a certain milestone, Mr Ritchie rewards his daughter with a small lump sum.

He also recommends books that teach the importance of money management for children, such as The Squirrel Manifesto by Ric Edelman and Jean Edelman.

The specs

Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
Power: 620hp from 5,750-7,500rpm
Torque: 760Nm from 3,000-5,750rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed dual-clutch auto
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh1.05 million ($286,000)

The specs

Engine: 1.5-litre 4-cylinder petrol

Power: 154bhp

Torque: 250Nm

Transmission: 7-speed automatic with 8-speed sports option 

Price: From Dh79,600

On sale: Now

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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Citadel: Honey Bunny first episode

Directors: Raj & DK

Stars: Varun Dhawan, Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Kashvi Majmundar, Kay Kay Menon

Rating: 4/5

How Tesla’s price correction has hit fund managers

Investing in disruptive technology can be a bumpy ride, as investors in Tesla were reminded on Friday, when its stock dropped 7.5 per cent in early trading to $575.

It recovered slightly but still ended the week 15 per cent lower and is down a third from its all-time high of $883 on January 26. The electric car maker’s market cap fell from $834 billion to about $567bn in that time, a drop of an astonishing $267bn, and a blow for those who bought Tesla stock late.

The collapse also hit fund managers that have gone big on Tesla, notably the UK-based Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust and Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF.

Tesla is the top holding in both funds, making up a hefty 10 per cent of total assets under management. Both funds have fallen by a quarter in the past month.

Matt Weller, global head of market research at GAIN Capital, recently warned that Tesla founder Elon Musk had “flown a bit too close to the sun”, after getting carried away by investing $1.5bn of the company’s money in Bitcoin.

He also predicted Tesla’s sales could struggle as traditional auto manufacturers ramp up electric car production, destroying its first mover advantage.

AJ Bell’s Russ Mould warns that many investors buy tech stocks when earnings forecasts are rising, almost regardless of valuation. “When it works, it really works. But when it goes wrong, elevated valuations leave little or no downside protection.”

A Tesla correction was probably baked in after last year’s astonishing share price surge, and many investors will see this as an opportunity to load up at a reduced price.

Dramatic swings are to be expected when investing in disruptive technology, as Ms Wood at ARK makes clear.

Every week, she sends subscribers a commentary listing “stocks in our strategies that have appreciated or dropped more than 15 per cent in a day” during the week.

Her latest commentary, issued on Friday, showed seven stocks displaying extreme volatility, led by ExOne, a leader in binder jetting 3D printing technology. It jumped 24 per cent, boosted by news that fellow 3D printing specialist Stratasys had beaten fourth-quarter revenues and earnings expectations, seen as good news for the sector.

By contrast, computational drug and material discovery company Schrödinger fell 27 per cent after quarterly and full-year results showed its core software sales and drug development pipeline slowing.

Despite that setback, Ms Wood remains positive, arguing that its “medicinal chemistry platform offers a powerful and unique view into chemical space”.

In her weekly video view, she remains bullish, stating that: “We are on the right side of change, and disruptive innovation is going to deliver exponential growth trajectories for many of our companies, in fact, most of them.”

Ms Wood remains committed to Tesla as she expects global electric car sales to compound at an average annual rate of 82 per cent for the next five years.

She said these are so “enormous that some people find them unbelievable”, and argues that this scepticism, especially among institutional investors, “festers” and creates a great opportunity for ARK.

Only you can decide whether you are a believer or a festering sceptic. If it’s the former, then buckle up.

The bio

Favourite book: Peter Rabbit. I used to read it to my three children and still read it myself. If I am feeling down it brings back good memories.

Best thing about your job: Getting to help people. My mum always told me never to pass up an opportunity to do a good deed.

Best part of life in the UAE: The weather. The constant sunshine is amazing and there is always something to do, you have so many options when it comes to how to spend your day.

Favourite holiday destination: Malaysia. I went there for my honeymoon and ended up volunteering to teach local children for a few hours each day. It is such a special place and I plan to retire there one day.

Indoor Cricket World Cup

Venue Insportz, Dubai, September 16-23

UAE squad Saqib Nazir (captain), Aaqib Malik, Fahad Al Hashmi, Isuru Umesh, Nadir Hussain, Sachin Talwar, Nashwan Nasir, Prashath Kumara, Ramveer Rai, Sameer Nayyak, Umar Shah, Vikrant Shetty

Company%20Profile
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Wicked
Director: Jon M Chu
Stars: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey
Rating: 4/5
RESULTS - ELITE MEN

1. Henri Schoeman (RSA) 57:03
2. Mario Mola (ESP) 57:09
3. Vincent Luis (FRA) 57:25
4. Leo Bergere (FRA)57:34
5. Jacob Birtwhistle (AUS) 57:40    
6. Joao Silva (POR) 57:45   
7. Jonathan Brownlee (GBR) 57:56
8. Adrien Briffod (SUI) 57:57           
9. Gustav Iden (NOR) 57:58            
10. Richard Murray (RSA) 57:59       

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The Arts Edit

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