Marek Hłasko - Encounters with Polish Literature - S1E9

Marek Hłasko with George Gasyna (University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign)

In this episode, we look at several works including Hłasko’s early masterpiece, "The Eighth Day of the Week"—a kind of production novel about a couple looking for privacy in the ruins of Warsaw. We consider two works from his Israeli period that show the “wild West” era of tough Sabras and awkward European refugees in the early days of the Israeli state in "Killing the Second Dog" and "All Backs Were Turned". We examine his haunting Holocaust story “Searching for the Stars,” which is available for free on the internet in "Tablet" magazine, and along the way we take a glance at his memoir "Beautiful Twentysomethings". We think about the legacy of the war and the problem of underlying melancholy, survivors’ guilt, the concepts of memory and postmemory, absent fathers, and the phenomenon of hypermasculinity and the compulsion to create “James Dean”-type characters in the mid-twentieth century.

"Encounters with Polish Literature" is a new video series for anyone interested in literature and the culture of books and reading. Each month, host David A. Goldfarb presents a new topic in conversation with an expert on that author or book or movement in Polish literature.

Learn more about this episode, and see the biography of the guest on the Polish Cultural Institute New York's website. The linked page includes a list of selected translations and background on Marek Hłasko:
https://instytutpolski.pl/newyork/202...

Access the Playlist of the entire series:
https://bit.ly/Encounters-ALL