In his book Burnout, Petr Šesták describes the story of a messenger who rides a bicycle around Prague. He is nominated for the Magnesia Litera award for her, and in an interview he mentions that the anger he feels from her is partly his. “When you’re on a bicycle, the anger comes quite automatically, you don’t have to try very hard,” says Šesták, while in the saddle of a bicycle, among other things, he goes around the analog photo booths he repairs.
I know this is the worst question… But how are you today?
It’s more of a difficult question, I always have trouble finding the right balance of answer so that it’s not too brief and doesn’t seem like I’m trying to cut you off, but also not too long-winded because I could go into an extensive analysis of my mostly conflicting feelings. But I’ll try. I’m fine because I heard today is National No Rush Day. I always try to have that, so I’m glad that for once the surroundings adapt to my pace, and not the other way around.
Based on the rhythm of your book Burnout, in which the main character rides a bike through the city, I would think that you live more of a fast-paced life.
I have more waves like that. I’m either at a terribly fast pace, or at a slowed down and even lazy pace. When I ride a bike, I’m either thoughtful, I ride slowly and people behind me are honking, or I’m “on speed” and weave between cars in traffic.
You can feel the anger in the book Burnout. Is it partly also your personal experience as a cyclist who rides a bicycle everywhere in Prague?
Partly definitely, but of course I exaggerated a lot in the book through my narrator. However, some of the situations I describe in it are authentic, because when you move around Prague by bike, anger comes quite automatically, you don’t have to try very hard. Just driving around the city gave the book a rhythm, as if it were treading on the edge of strength, the text is breathless.
Driving through the city gives the book Burnout its rhythm. | Photo: Jakub Plíhal
My theme is irreconcilability in society
Somewhere I heard the opinion that your previous book Continuity of the Park would rather have been nominated for the Magnesia Litera award. What do you think about it?
I think it is not within the competence of the author to decide whether he should or should not have received an award. A few other writers and critics expressed surprise that Continuity Park wasn’t even nominated. In the end, the “non-nomination” probably helped the book, because I feel that thanks to it, it was talked about more in literary circles than some of the books that were nominated. So maybe there was no harm in it and it was meant to be.
How do you feel about being nominated for the most important literary award in our country?
It is part of literary traffic. When a person goes out with his work, he expects some reaction and wants to communicate with readers. If he didn’t want to, then he doesn’t have much logic to publish the book. As soon as the work goes out, it exposes itself to the possibility that something will happen around it. A nomination and possible prize is certainly nice, because it will help the book to reach more readers. So I’m definitely happy for her.
In the book, I also perceived criticism of a consumerist, perhaps “so-called successful” life. Having a car, a house, working in a corporation…
I think Burnout criticizes absolutely everything. The messenger himself, who narrates the book, is very wrapped up in himself, in his life, swearing, he can’t stand back and look at his enemies in the cars through their eyes. My theme is irreconcilability in society, the inability to find common ground, consensus. But it is true that the car is presented in the book, among other things, as a symbol of consumerism, something that could accelerate it, as well as our entire rhythm of life. A car like a big shopping cart that takes us to big shopping centers.
Being tied to one place is hard for me
For two years you traveled around Europe in a camper van, and upon your return to the Czech Republic, you wrote a partially autobiographical novel, Continuity of the Park. I have the feeling that the rhetoric persists in the Czech environment: “Travel while you’re young, so you can then settle down and live the adult, actually settled life.” What do you think about it?
I think we should try to learn and discover throughout our lives. It is something that is perhaps a little lacking here in the Czech Republic, or rather was lacking, especially among those who are already retired today. My parents’ generation often looked forward to not having to go to work, but then suddenly they didn’t know what to do. When I lived in France, the elderly people around me were actively preparing for retirement, deciding in advance what they would do to realize themselves. Of course, it is partly a matter of purchasing power, a French pensioner can afford much more than a Czech, but at the same time it is also determined by the local mentality and some habit of using free time.
What was it like for you to return to the Czech Republic from two years of wandering around Europe?
It’s very difficult to sum it up somehow, I worked on the topic of return in general in the aforementioned novel Continuity of the Park. When I look back on that trip now, what was beautiful about it was that we took it at the time of the beginning of social networks, which we deliberately avoided completely. So our journey was analog, we almost disconnected from the internet, we didn’t have a concrete plan, we improvised and the journey ended up stretching from one year to two. It never happened again that I could handle time in such a way, but it stayed with me. Getting back into a regular rhythm and being tied to one place was hard for me and to this day I can’t handle it very much.
Photo author: Jakub Plíhal
Petr Šesták (1981)
- He graduated from the Faculty of Pedagogy of Charles University in Prague.
- He lived in a van for two years and toured Europe with a traveling photo exhibition.
- He published a poetic-philosophical travelogue Kočovná galerie (2014), a collection of short stories Štvanice (2015), a novel Continuity of the park (2021) and a book for children Cesta je pes (2023). He is nominated for the Magnesia Litera award for his book Burnout (2023).
- He currently lives mainly in Prague.
- It operates analog photobooths and organizes cultural events in Mikulov, South Moravia.
I never wear headphones
In addition to writing books, you organize cultural events in Mikulov and run analog photo booths in Prague near the National Theater and Karlín Barracks. How annoyed are you when people tell you that you look like a character from the movie Amélie of Montmartre?
It annoys me a bit, but at the same time it helps me to explain to people what I actually do. By the way, the mentioned character from the movie is inspired by the real artist, photographer and writer Michel Folco, who really collected torn photos found around photo booths and made albums out of them, reconstructing alien identities. Many artists worked with these devices, they have their place in cultural history. This is a dimension that is very important to me, it’s not just the old black and white passport photo machines. I have several books at home about the use of photo machines in art and popular culture, the phenomenon has also been devoted to a few excellent exhibitions in prestigious world galleries.
How did you get into servicing photo booths in the first place?
That was a bit of a coincidence. When I moved to Paris to be with my girlfriend at the time, I was looking for a job and came across an ad, but I didn’t understand the French very well. I thought they were looking for a photo lab assistant, but it was actually about servicing these photo machines. I was fascinated by the devices, and the work actually led me to rediscover the bicycle, which I hadn’t ridden since graduation. In Paris, the bike proved to be the fastest, cheapest and also the most pleasant way to get to the photo booths.
You take photos yourself, for example you cruised Europe with a traveling photo exhibition. What connects literature and photography for you?
I would say that I actually have a very photographic writing style. Photography is a frozen moment, and I often work with it in my texts. A photo cannot directly tell a story, it stops the time necessary to tell a story. Also, in my texts, I often describe situations rather than telling a story. They can contain the lines of the story, but the reader has to reconstruct them himself. This is actually very similar to the principle of photography. Photography has definitely affected my observational skills as well, I look around and listen a lot. For example, I never walk or drive with headphones because I’m always interested in what’s going on around me. I want to be in touch with reality and not cut off from it. At the same time, I collect material around me with which I can continue to work in the texts.
Anything I say about the book is my interpretation
In an interview with Jan Němec for the magazine Host, you talk about your travels and the “analog life” you led at the time. You went online to libraries and had a push-button phone. I like your answer, in which you say that “someone would probably call it escapism, an escape from ordinary reality, but aren’t the various variants of escapism, on the contrary, examples of last attempts to stay here?”.
I see it that way. We often call escapists, for example, people who go to the countryside and cultivate the land and raise animals there. This is not an escape from the real world, but often, on the contrary, a desire to avoid gradual uploading to the digital and virtual world. Some may say that I’m an old-timer, and I probably am, but I have a very contradictory perception of technology. I’m not 100% convinced that everything we invent opens up super ways for us. For example, social networks, like cars, can be a great tool, but we must not abuse them and let ourselves be abused by them. It’s all a matter of measure.
Are you at all comfortable talking about your books? Don’t you feel that you have already said everything about them and talking about them is redundant?
I thought that it would be nice to be a very famous writer, to be able to afford to avoid the media and thereby arouse even more interest in my person and my work and to be mysterious. It is true that I have said what I wanted to say with my book, and now the job is up to readers and critics. Whatever I say about the book will be only my interpretation of my own work, and I myself only have a limited view of my texts, so I don’t want to impose it on readers. On the other hand, I feel like living with the book for a while longer, meeting readers at the author’s readings, listening to their observations and interpretations. However, at some point there comes a moment when I feel like I want to cut myself off from the book and move on. After some time, I don’t even remember very well what is actually written in it. I need to start living with a different text.
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