Pavol Rankov has succeeded in offering the reader a new kind of Slovak literature. The author’s strategy, which he already presented in his first book
S odstupom času/Over the Distance of Time, can be considered the narrative essence of all his prose work so far. The basic element is a story told in a direct, pithy, exceptionally dynamic and confident manner, in some cases condensed to such an extent that the text only keeps the bare bones of the plot. The author holds in check the development of the actual theme; he strictly subordinates his fairly straightforward storyline to the final effect – a sudden, unexpected denouement. This final point works on the principle of the sudden revelation of some unexpected circumstance that has just appeared or emerged – a decisive factor, but up to that moment a hidden or unnoticed fact, as a result of which the whole story makes sense. The key elements in this narrative method leading up to a sudden climax are mystification, the suggestion of mysteriousness, the creation of an exotic, baffling atmosphere, sudden reversals in meaning, the repeated stressing of some earlier connections, changes in narrative viewpoint or shifts in narrative perspective. It is rarely through the complication of his plot that Rankov achieves the effect of mysteriousness – on the contrary, the storyline, freed from all unnecessary detail, moves at breath-taking speed towards its bizarre ending – where for the most part it is just broken off, lost in vagueness; only on rare occasions is the story completely told. It could even be said that the simpler the plot, the more striking the punch line. Rankov does not have his
great theme; his texts do not concentrate on a cohesive subject, they are variations on a state of permanent danger, a continuous escape from something, being present in abruptly changing situations without mutual connections, constant oscillation between the reality of wakefulness and dreamlike visions, action often unanchored in time and space, or in conflicting times (an exotic island, tribal rituals, then the world of contemporary civilisation, the mass media, to be quickly followed by a return to the archaic world). Through this rapid, dynamic course of events and mosaic-like fragmentation the reader is unobtrusively and with a gentle hint of almost Dahl-like black humour drawn into a deliberately obscured chimerical picture of a kind of horrible, hectic, even apocalyptic sinister world, a world of absurdity and total relativism. The affiliations of Rankov’s prose works with emotionally and thematically related texts of magic realism (J. L. Borges, J. Cortazár) and more recent Slovak prose works with elements of absurdity (D. Mitana, L. Grendel) enrich contemporary Slovak literature with a new dimension to the way reality can be viewed. An eclectic, superficial and commercial society is the focus of Rankov’s interest in his essays published in journals as well as in book form (
Mass Communication, Mass Media and the Information Society) and here he expresses his views on conceptions, theories and opinions in the field of the mass media, advertising, information technologies and culture.
Eva Faithová
