Volga Vladimir Knihy

The author is an American expatriate living in French Polynesia. He holds three additional passports and lived in five countries on three continents. He lambastes the cable companies and strips the fashion industry of its glory, claiming it to be nourished by the swollen egos of fashion designers and fashion suckers alike. He calls the co-op racket the greatest rip-off, whereby when you finally buy your apartment you keep paying rent under the guise of maintenance, which is the only artificial anti-gravity force in a sea of relatively stable prices. Although a believer himself, he takes issue with God. He speaks to God, argues with God, and it sometimes seems that he's ready to drag God into a higher court of justice, if one could be found, and, in so doing, makes ample use of Time, an element whose existence he denies. He derides Einstein, mocks Freud, and subjects their theories to humorous interpretations, not always tongue in cheek. He divests royalty of its crown and elevates sex to the jewel in the crown. Furthermore, he worships sex (while scoffing at its mechanics) perhaps more than God, seeing no irreverence in it, since sex was created by God, and if the Devil was also created by God, well then, life is full of contradictions.

Time. Ever hear of it? You know, that thing which tick-tacks even when your heart stops; that thing which affects all and is by naught affected; which neither exists independently of man nor would cease to exist in his absence. Time. That's what you're doing. That mysterious element devoid of sound, color, smell, sub-stance, or space, although an integral part of it, traveling on neither waves nor particles, omnipresent yet nonexistent. That's what you're doing. Time. That curious anomaly which alone, in nature's overabundance of cycles, and of all the abstract elements known to man, is absolute in direction and one direction only, with neither turns, nor curves, nor stops, nor speed limits it even defies speed traps. You're doing time, my friend. That man-made element of a variety of measures such as clocks, calendars, time zones, degrees, lati-tudes, longitudes, years, decades, centuries, milleniums, eons all these and more, centered on Greenwich and based on natural cycles of the solar system that complement a constant and infinite flow of nothingness, which is as elusive to the old as it is trivial to the young. That's what you're doing, my friend. Time. The slowest and the most potent toxic element extant. You get the idea what you are doing, man?"

" . . . I hear that she has everything a woman could ever long for. Diamonds, minks, breakfast in bed and all that, but, well, she's dying to come back to you. Do you think that you might " "I couldn't. I just couldn't, Fabrizio. Had I truly known that breakfast is all she had in bed . . . I can live without, but not with doubt. The greatest anomaly of all is the advantage the sea horse has over us. No doubt there as to who screwed whom. Whereas we are always in doubt. How, how I ask myself over and over again, has God created anomalies where the only things that don't leave traceable tracks are time, ghosts, devils, souls, angels and everything alive on the wing or swimming down below. Yet of all untraceable tracks nothing is more intriguing and excruciating than the adulterous men and women." "Yes, I know what you mean. Doubt is a . . . nagging thing." Reginald became somber, and with a melancholic look in his eyes said, "When I was a child I remember Christmas mornings I used to steal out of the bedroom to be the first one at the Christmas stocking." "So did I" "Did you ever get the feeling that someone was there already? I always did. No, thanks. When there's so much doubt in one stocking, think of the doubt that lies between two . . ."

When we have told Mr. Vladimir that we would like to write what is known in the trade as an "About the Book" page he, at first, did not respond. Then, after some deliberation, he said, "It's all in the book." "Yes, I know it is," I said, "but, let's face it, Mr. Vladimir, you are not a widely known personality. Even a madam nowadays has more right to write a book than has an unpublished author. What we're trying to do is legitimize your right to appear in print." "Well, you may be right," he said. "Still, I cover that too in the book when I say, My apologies for this prose run mad/But I thought it unfair/To deprive life of its share/While leaving records of my birth and death.' However, if you want to write that page, go ahead, I'm not going to stop you." Well, we admire Mr. Vladimir too much to further antagonize him. Not when, among other things, he speaks about the vanity of authors and in the same breath points out that if we keep on harping on "About the Author" there won't be much room left for his picture. So I guess we're not going to write an "About the Book" page.