It is going well… – that is author Janusz Glowacki
The columns of Forum introduce the literary profile of Janusz Glowacki, a Polish writer, living first in Warsaw, and now, for the last twenty-one years, in New York. Here is a fragment of the text in which he jokingly writes about his literary beginnings:
“…For a long time I dictated to my mother everything I wrote, using a ball pen, and so she was the first person who read and judged. A variety of good wishing acquaintances knew my mother was an editor in a publishing company, so they talked and assumed that it was impossible for me to write this stuff, since I am a playboy, who walks the streets of Warsaw’s New World in a shirt open down to my belt. And they swore it was my mother’s work, not mine, she did everything for me. Only when I started to write some “dirty” stuff they hesitated, because Mrs. Glowacka would not write this…”
The initial stages of the literary work of Glowacki were set in the sixties and seventies. These are the times of Poland being ruled by Gomulka and Gierek, times of sadness, and many tragic PRL-realities. But even in these times of deep crisis and terror some people lived colorful lives. In his stories Glowacki described a pseudo-elite society of the capital. His heroes packed the exclusive restaurants and coffeehouses of Warsaw, drove foreign cars, and usually were the sons of party dignitaries, some entrepreneurs, some pseudo-artists. In short, rich kids.
Glowacki’s début was the book “The Centrifuge of Nonsense” published in 1968. It was received guardedly, but it was noticed. The book was a sociological sensation that opened the curtain unto the surreptitious world of the elite. It allowed the reader to become a voyeur of this world engaging them by giving an intimate look of their world views and various complicated and sometimes absurd personal situations.
Two years later, in the volume “New Dance La-ba-da”, the action still occurs in the same environment, but the author now sharply criticizes the people he portrays. He sees them as living day to day, having a petty-minded attitude, spending their lives in a hurry craving for money.
It seems that this is not a new theme in literature but rather has been repeated for years. The novelty is the time in which they live, the reality in which they are placed. Glowacki describes this environment in a mockingly revealing way. This kind of narration, ironic and grotesque, will become his signature. Everything he has written thus far has a similar literary convention, namely, accurately seeing satirical philosophy. Furthermore, the language he uses, is really a magnificent prose, unusually suggestive, unique, and very original.
Glowacki is not only a prose writer and a columnist, but also a creator of popular theatrical plays, radio dramas and movie screenplays. Andrzej Wajda created the movie “Fly Hunting” based on his text and Janusz Morgenstern the movie “Kill This Love Affair “based on another of his texts. He was also the co-creator of the movie “Voyage”, a cultish comedy from the sixties, full of absurdities. The action of this movie takes place on a ship sailing against the current on the river Vistula. Everything that happens on the ship is a metaphor for Poland, a reflection of situations from this time.
Glowacki traveled several times on a scholarship to the United States. In December of 1981, he traveled to London for the premiere of his play “Cinders”, and that is where the martial law, installed by general Jaruzelski in December of that year, found him. After several months of an uncertain existence he received a scholarship from the university in Iowa. In 1984 he became a permanent resident of New York City. This is where he wrote his 1992 play “Antygona in New York”, in which three homeless people play out their tragedies. “Time” magazine put it on their list of the best plays of the year. The “New York Post” emphasized that according to the author, being homeless is not only having no roof above the head, but also a state of soul. “Antygona” was staged in over twenty countries. An earlier play by Glowacki, “Hunt for Cockroaches”, was shown in over fifty theaters in the United States. A drama called “The Fourth Sister” was also a success. The play refers to the “Three Sisters” of Chekhov, but the real message of the play is the presentation of the depressing backward steps the world has taken since Chekhov was the observer.
The novel “The Last Caretaker” (2001) described the gloomy grotesque reality of American. In it, an illegal émigré from a place in the vicinity of the Kielce works for a New York fashion designer. The designer is a millionaire recognized as a world renowned artist, whose sudden death begins the extermination of the world. The Gdansk Shipyard in 1980 is the back drop of one of the author’s last stories, “The Night is Quailing”.
The international success of Glowacki is undisputable, and it proves, that he was able to adapt himself as a writer both in Poland and in United States. He won several prestigious literary awards, such as: American Theatre Critics Association Award, 1987, John S. Guggenheim Award, 1987, Hollywood Drama-Logue Critics Award, 1987, National Endowment for Arts, 1988.
When asked in one of the Warsaw magazines how does he handle himself abroad he answered: – “In America one needs to stand all the time straight with a head carried high, and when they ask, how is it going, answer: – “It is going well, it is going well!”
Dr. Ezbieta Ulanowski
Translated by Jozef Hart
Forum, 1/2006
Tags: Forum, Janusz Glowacki, New York, warsaw, writer
