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Since not all of Havel's plays exist in English translation, those of us who do not read Czech or have access to unpublished mss. can appreciate, for example, Keane's summary of Havel's version of The Beggar's Opera, performed only once in Czechoslovakia, after which the authorities made life miserable for both performers and those in attendance. We already knew about Havel's extramarital affairs, but Keane gives more information and tells us about Olga's affair as well. Beyond our prurient interest in mere gossip, Keane gives us details of some of Havel's illnesses, especially the more recent ones, and attempts to reveal some of the personal and psychological dimensions of his life that are hidden to the public.

All this is to Keane's credit. But there are serious weaknesses in his work, many of which derive from his stance as a biographer. I know from experience in trying to understand the person and character of those whom I do not personally know but whose works I have read exhaustively and am teaching to others that understanding a person is the hardest job a scholar ever has. People are too complex for anything more than a tentative assessment. But some explanations are more on target than others. And all explanations are predicated not just on the intelligence of the explainer but the perspective from which that explanation comes and the rhetorical forms in which it is expressed. On both of these scores, Keane, I think, stumbles.

Let me take the rhetoric first. Keane explains that his account is factional, meaning, he says, that his story involves selection and interpretation. So far so good. But just what this means remains vague. He also says that he tells his story by means of tableaux vivants that, first, place the details of Havel's life in the context of broader events, and, second, "have the 'cubist' effect of producing deliberately broken narratives that warn readers from the outset that the stories told here are 'fabricated' by certain—but changeable—points of view." Keane succeeds at both, but the result is a narrative that is not always sufficiently tied to dates and times. Moreover, some of his "context" is not just historical, political or cultural but sentimentally "moral." Keane the wise pundit sprinkles throughout the narrative a half-dozen or so inane, overwritten "set pieces" on such themes as war (p. 65), friendship (p. 183), courage (pp. 263-66), temptation (p. 318) and, the worst offender, death (pp. 494-505), about which more later.

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January (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44