Richard Katrovas - Raising Girls in Bohemia: Meditations of an American Father: A Memoir in Essays

HIGH PRAISE for Raising Girls in Bohemia

THE FRESHLY WRITTEN , deeply felt essays in Raising Girls in Bohemia: Meditations of an American Father, were fascinating when first published individually in literary magazines. Richard Katrovas vividly conveys the complexity of the relationship between a father and his bilingual daughters who are being raised as citizens of two very different cultures. But to read these essays together adds a welcome sense of an overarching narrative, and dials the level of complexity higher still. The result is a vital, one-of-a-kind book.

STUART DYBEK , author of The Coast of Chicago

A POTENT , fascinating book.

TRACY KIDDER , author of Strength in What Remains

SOMETIMES A PERSON is in the right place at the right time to witness history, which is lucky. Sometimes that person is a writer of Richard Katrovass talent, which is even luckier. These twenty-three essays reflect on a world bent on transforming itself, gazed through the transformative eye of fatherhood. From his unique positionone foot in the Bohemia of the French Quarter, one in, well, Bohemia, Katrovas speaks with humor and authority, whether describing the Worst Restaurant in the Western World, or realizing that My daughters are more physically free in Europe, and more rhetorically free in America. Raising Girls in Bohemia is a clear-eyed, sure-handed, big-hearted book.

BETH ANN FENNELLY , author of Great with Child

A REMARKABLE ACHIEVEMENT , a heady ride, wise and knowing.

PATRICIA HAMPL , author of A Romantic Education

RICHARD KATROVAS TELLS a unique story of how his own rootless childhood in the US led him eventually to have roots in two continents as the loving father of three daughters born in Czech Republic. Though he reminds the reader often of the unusual twists and turns of his early lifeDickensian barely describes it!by the end of this book, he has, in fact, told the story of his generation, especially the men of his generation. The final essay, Glenn Beck Is Not My Brother, is the best I know about the heartbreaking divisions in American society today.

MARK JARMAN , author of Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems

IF, AS SOCRATES told us, the unexamined life is not worth living, Richard Katrovas demonstrates amply in Raising Girls in Bohemia, that a life considered rationally, and with sensitivity, reveals insight both triumphant and heartbreaking. This is a fascinating book. In these essays Katrovas proclaims unceasingly that the lives of his beloved daughtersindeed all of our livesare not problems to be solved, but rather mysteries to be lived.

GERALD COSTANZO , director, Carnegie Mellon University Press

AT ONCE DEEPLY personal and strikingly erudite, Richard Katrovass Raising Girls in Bohemia is a remarkable achievement. In every piece the voice is authentically his, whether describing episodes from his exceptional life story, pondering the intricacies of fatherhood, or sidling into rumination on subjects as far-reaching as the role of art in society, the horrors of prison or the disparate ways we experience connection to past and homeland. This potentially random collection of essays is a true memoir and a satisfyingly thought-provoking read.

ELISE B. JORGENS , Provost Emerita, College of Charleston

SPEAKING FROM FIRST-HAND knowledge, I can say that Richard Katrovas is an exemplary parent, friend, and colleague, generous, tough-minded, invigoratingly opinionated, and tender hearted. As a writer of prose and poetry, he is simply an international treasure. All of these qualities are on display in Raising Girls in Bohemia, a wide-ranging collection of essays that speaks not only to fathers, daughters, and Bohemians both upper and lower case, but to all of us who matter to each other.

ARNOLD JOHNSTON , author of The Witching Voice: A Novel from the Life of Robert Burns

IN THESE TRENCHANT essays, Richard Katrovas strips away the gauzy romanticism of expatriate life to probe the challenges of raising three Czech-American daughters in a culture he cannot fully embraceand that can never fully embrace him in return. In sweeping, meditative arcs, the essays roam from the authors own complex relationship with his incarcerated father to his struggles with the language and customs of Prague, turning always on the axis of his profound love for his daughters. A must read for anyone interested in the literature of expatriation.

ROBERT EVERSZ , author of Gypsy Hearts

A BRAVE MEDITATION on the hazards and fleeting forms of happiness available to a navigator of two divergent cultures. The American poet and prose writer Richard Katrovas explores the fallout from his doomed marriage to a Czech woman, and in the process addresses his own complicated inheritancethe ways in which his fathers long-term imprisonment shaped his childhood; his fierce love for his three daughters and inability to protect them from heartbreak; the difficulty he finds in entering into another language and life. In these wide-ranging essays, Katrovas examines the nature of freedom, the artists role in society, and the impossibility of ever really knowing someone, all with wit and wisdom. This is a wonderful collection.

CHRISTOPHER MERRILL , author of The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War

Raising Girls
in Bohemia

MEDITATIONS OF AN AMERICAN FATHER

A MEMOIR IN ESSAYS

Richard Katrovas

WITH A FOREWORD BY PATRICIA HAMPL

THREE ROOMS PRESS
NEW YORK

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS:

Blackbird, The Magic Book

Callaloo, My Transvestite

Connotations, Katies Hair

Crazyhorse, Stalins Face

Ekleksographia, School in Nature

Fourth Genre, The Lear Years

Hunger Mountain, The Underprivileged

Mid-American Review, A Brief History of My Heart

Prague and the Czech Republic: True Stories, Alan Levy 101: A Eulogy

Solo Novo, Glenn Beck Is Not My Brother

Sonora Review, Private Gold

Southern Review, Prison Art and Civic Pride and I Am Learning Czech

St. Petersburg Review, Poetry Is a Dead Art

Third Coast, The Big Easy and the Big Nasty

Raising Girls in Bohemia: Meditations of an American Father
A memoir in essays by Richard Katrovas

Copyright 2014 by Richard Katrovas

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. For permissions, please write to address below or email . Any members of education institutions wishing to photocopy or electronically reproduce part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Three Rooms Press, 51 MacDougal Street, #290, New York, NY 10012.

First printing

ISBN: 978-1-941110-07-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014938000

AUTHOR PHOTOS:
Annie Katrovas

COVER AND INTERIOR DESIGN:
KG Design International
www.katgeorges.com

DISTRIBUTED BY:
PGW/Perseus
www.pgw.com

Three Rooms Press
New York, NY
www.threeroomspress.com

This book is dedicated to
the mother of my daughters,
Dominika Winterov,
Queen of Bohemia

Contents

S PECIAL T HANKS:
I thank Stuart Dybek, Gail Wronsky, Ema Katrovas, and Krista Katrovas for reading and commenting on some of these essays. I blow a huge, wet, weepy kiss of appreciation to my friend and colleague Jaimy Gordon, who, from the moment I met her, has been the best teacher Ive ever had.