Dancing lessons for the advanced in age /

Hrabal, one of the foremost contemporary Czech writers, has devised a provocative little novel for special readers. In a breathless monologue--in fact, in one unbroken sentence--an old shoemaker spouts off to a captive audience of young women about his life and ideas. From political history ("his son, the crown prince, was forced to marry Princess Stephanie of Belgium, but he was wild for Vetsera's body, she had these gigantic breasts and eyes" ) to morality ("Christ wanted us to love our neighbors, he wanted discipline, not love on the sofa the way some mealy-brained idiots would have it" ), the old man perambulates over a wide range of territory, spreading recollections and opinions far and wide. For readers who appreciate language for its own sake, this short book is fertile ground; for those who need a firm plot as anchorage, they had best turn elsewhere. For active foreign-literature collections. --Brad Hooper

The unnamed narrator of this comic rant proclaims that any book worth its salt is ``meant to make you jump out of bed in your underwear and run and beat the author's brains out.'' Czech novelist Hrabal (Closely Watched Trains) very nearly fills that peculiar bill in this humorous and breathless affair, which is told in one never-ending sentence‘a technique that just may make readers pay him the ultimate compliment by looking around for handy blunt objects. The narrator, a scurrilous old man who claims to have been a shoemaker and a brewer, approaches six sunbathing women and embarks on a rambling monologue about his past loves, the past in general and his ``magic hands for what we called contessa shoes.'' He enjoys telling scandalous tales about his betters, including the one about the old emperor looking up women's skirts. Hrabal, who has been cited as a major literary influence by Milan Kundera and Ivan Klíma, among others, is generally considered the most revered living Czech author. It's easy to see why. As this novel (originally published in Czechoslovakia in 1964) plays around with Czech history, juxtaposing the public life of the country with the private life of the narrator, Hrabal displays abounding energy and a rambunctious wit. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

From the irrepressible Czech writer Hrabal (I Served the King of England, 1989; Too Loud a Solitude, 1990) comes this pocket- sized, single-sitting love-letter to a worldand to a lifegone by. Readers of The Little Town Where Time Stood Still (1993) will recognize the speaker here (though unnamed) as the same life-loving and mischievous Uncle Pepin who, in that novel, ``went to visit my brother for two weeks and stayed for thirty years.'' This time around, Uncle Pepin''pushing seventy''delivers a monologue to a group of ``young ladies,'' a certain type of ``beauties'' with whom the monologuist has had many an acquaintance over the years. So what's he telling them now, as he looks all the way back to ``the days of the monarchy'' under the Hapsburgs? In good part, no more than bragging about his own high old exploits in the fields of romance, the military, and drink. But there's another side to it, too, the book being also a kind of advice-manual: ``...what I'm giving you now, young ladies, are like windows on the world, points, goals, scores,'' he says near the start, going on to cite not only from memory (``what a memory I have!'') but also from ``Mr. Batista's book on sexual hygiene'' and from ``Anna Nováková's dream book.'' All three sources are unceasingly wonderful and rich as the young girls learn, among much else, that ``if you dreamed someone was pouring cucumbers over your head...it meant ardent love,'' and that even though the old days were often brutal, ``yet somehow people sang more.'' A short little book in a single long paragraph that holds the charm, gusto, and nostalgia of several lifetimes. Asks the speaker, ``the world is a beautiful place, don't you think?'' No reader will demur.