Salvador Dali wrote in the “Genius Diary” that first you need to paint like an old master, to gain respect, but then you can do anything that comes to mind. The idea is clear – show and prove that you know how to do something excellently, that you know the specific genre, and then you can not count on the audience’s evaluation. Or not?
An excellent debut can also become a heavy burden for an artist if all his subsequent works are constantly compared to the first. Vilis Lācītis had already found his handwriting and voice as a storyteller in his debut novel “Stroika with a view of London” (2010), which was once highly rated by Latvian critics. Lācītis had really managed to tell a subtle, witty story about the hardships and victories of Latvian migrant workers in Great Britain – about a complex topic that the writer presented easily, with humor, without whiny sadness and “everything is bad” narrative. (Almost at the same time as “Stroika”, Marjus Ivaškevič’s poignant play “Izraidītie” directed by Oskar Korshunov, about the fate of emigrants, was staged in Lithuania – a similar theme, but a completely different intonation; in 2014, it also came to the stage of the Daile Theater.)
Lācīš’s latest novel – “Oxford with a view of the university” (2023) – is a deliberate paraphrase of his first and at the same time most famous work, but this time the focus is not on the daily life of a hard-working black worker, but on a person’s pursuit of education. The main character of the novel (as in “Stroika”) is Vilis, who tells about his experiences in Great Britain around 2017-2018. year. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree from the University of London, he works in a pub in the capital of England as a deputy in household matters, or a handyman (as he himself translates the English word “handyman”) – a craftsman who knows how to fix everything and maintain the building in technical order. Does a bachelor’s degree make sense? Vilis quips that it could be used to cover torn wallpaper, because it is not suitable as toilet paper – it is too thick.
