Bapašaba

LABOR (PRÁCA - a Slovak daily newspaper)

19 December, 1992

(published since 1946 – no longer in business)

About Anti-book, God and beef soup.

I have copied everything from the writing of Dumb Duck.

Luba Nitrova

I will make myself comfortable in a sitting standing up position, bite off a piece from a bloated blue soft icicle and immerse myself into reading the fourth chapter from the end. If this sentence seems a non-sense to you, then everything is all right. Laced rules of literature with partial contributions from authors, under which we have been raised for ages, have produced so many books and “pseudo-books“ that souls are whistling for something else, creative, non-traditional...

I apologize for not having enough courage to write an “anti-book“, and I am glad that Rastislav Dobos has one. The best crazy shot of courage can be called his quality that helped him create the “Balance Sheet from studies at the Electro-technical Faculty in Bratislava or recipe for making a beef soup” (Print Servis, Bratislava, 1991) which won the Award of the Slovak Literary Fund. Or an “anti-book” where all against are for it. Me too.

I am for it that the Balance Sheet should (but does not have to) be read from the back. I am all for it that the Earth is a planet full of beautiful people, who live for each other. I am all for it that the heaven is full of bellies, and that God addresses the politicians: “My dear dummlings and babblerlings,” that people are too diverse to be helped, on top of it all are covetous – even mini-penny dwarfs and hodge-podge hobbits. Even filthy mucky-muck. That’s how things are.

Rasto Dobos, in his own unobtrusiveness, has broken the rules of the game where people play blind readers. He announced: “I am not playing this game!“ and he looked upon the world differently. Maybe from between his legs, maybe standing on his head, but with an interesting outcome. That, which appears to be incomprehensible when starting to read it, begins to be clearer right on the second page of the “anti-book”. On the third page it becomes understandable, and on the fourth page we see the events happened as they should. (What happens next I can only write in hints because due to seizures of laughter I will stop thinking in a narrow straight-line logical way after reading the fourth page.) Why not? Why not just like that? Life is also about booming fodder beets, bloated blue soft icicles, castrated hob-goblins, carp Dodo, goofball gremlins and God´s responsibility for how He has created the world. By the way, when He saw the chaos, He did not even bother to control it. “So you don´t give it a shit anymore?“ asked the fool. And God did not know how to answer.

Rasto Dobos knows. He knows that the main truth about the beef soup lies somewhere else. Perhaps right where fustily philologists would not look for it: among expressions decently said vulgar ones, among small brain farmers, vulgarly said at a decent intellectual level. Dobos detests tons of paper that unnecessarily burdened the reader´s mind. He erases pettiness and replaces it with other much more useful ones. He tickles and scratches, taunts and hits head on the nail. Then he places naked and vulnerable “I“ into the center of this purely original mishmash. It does not matter whether “I” means Bednarik, Slavik called Nightingale, Gozoo, Dobos, his alter ego – Ivan Rosa, Fool or Noah. Nobody owns a patent for the brain, and yet everybody fights for it. In this case the reader must use it broadly, together with fantasy, heavy childishness and lightened maturity.

Did he copy everything from Dumb Duck as they say? Did it pay off?

 - It is one of the top books in this world. If it does not become success on Earth, it will definitely become a “best-celler…” in heaven. I hope that the not best manager God will provide this at least.

You have created the “anti-book”. What do you regret most?

 - That it has not come out as a cardboard page book for kids.

Dumb Duck for adults?

Thanks for the interview?