The page of Rankov, Pavol, English Reception
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Reception
[Slovak] [English]
CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS WORKPavol Rankov has succeeded in offering readers a new face of Slovak literature. His authorial strategy, already evident in his debut Over the Distance of Tim, can be considered as the epic essence of his whole prose work up to the present. It is based on a direct, pithy, exceptionally dynamic and confident narration, condensed in places to the extent where the text preserves only the barest outline of a plot, recorded as if in telegraphic jottings. The author seems to refuse developing the theme proper; the plot of his, stories, not overly given to ramifications or complexities, is strictly subordinated to the final effect - a sudden unexpected denouement. This final punch line works on the principle of a sudden “revelation” of some unexpected circumstance - a decisive, but previously hidden. or unnoticed fact as a result of which the whole story gains its real meaning. Rankov’s key devices for this method of the quick narrative punch line are mystification, a suggestion of mystery, the exotic, the principle of obscuring, sudden reversals of meaning, the re-stressing of certain previously mentioned connections; changes of the narrative viewpoint or shifts in the narrative perspective. The effect of mystery is not achieved through involved complications of the action - on the contrary, the plot, freed of all extraneous detail, hastens vertiginously to its bizarre ending. Mostly it is simply cur off, „lost” in vagueness; it is only rarely that the story is told completely „to the end”. One could even say that the simpler the plot, the more penetrating the punch line.
Rankov does not have a “great theme”, his texts do not concentrate on a uniform subject, they are rather variations of a state of permanent threat, an unceasing escape from something, appearances in furiously changing situations without mutual connections, constant oscillation between the reality of wakefulness and dreamlike vision, more often than not in a vague time-space, happening at conflicting times (an exotic island; tribal rituals, then the world of contemporary civilization, mass media, then straight back to an archaic world). With this quick, dynamic flow and mosaic-like fragmentariness the reader is - unobtrusively and with gentle indications of an almost Roald Dahl-like black humour - drawn into a purposely hidden chimerical picture of sonic terrible, hectic, even apocalyptic terror, into a world of absurdity and total relativism. The affiliations of Rankov’s prose are with the emotionally and thematically related texts of magical realism (Borges, Cortázar) as well as the newer Slovak literature with elements of absurdity (Mitana, Grendel); they enrich contemporary Slovak literature with new dimension of contemplating reality.
An eclectic, superficial and commercial society is the subject of Pavol Rankov’s interest in his essays published in magazines and in book form (Mass Communication, Mass Media and the Information Society),. where he expresses his opinions on the conceptions, theories and attitudes from the field of the Mass Media, advertisements, information technologies and culture.
ON THE AUTHOR
Rankov’s creative method has something in common with an invention. To begin with, the theme itself is always unique, although at the beginning completely ordinary. But the author develops it into bizarreness, irreality, super-reality, so that in his short stories unbelievable things happen. His book Over the Distance of Time creates the impression of a complex, perfectly thought out brainteaser where the most various solutions and explanations are offered. (Jozef Bžoch)
Rankov’s stories are proof of the fact that good narration somehow, despite the crisis of the stow, lives on; at the same time they prove that it can also be very appealing, it can address contemporaries, contain a philosophical secret, it even - which is unusual for our provincial conditions - can be of the wider world. It is especially these two things - mysteriousness and worldliness - that I have always missed as the reader of contemporary Slovak fiction. (Adam Bžoch)
THE AUTHOR ON HIMSELF
I don’t speak as the representative of any generation and I don’t belong to any generation. By the way, I don’t remember any poet or prose writer during last twenty years who would speak for his generation.
…in future I will make things easier for the reader. I’ll place some ‘endings’ into my books more often, so that they shouldn’t stiffer so much.
The internet to a certain level reflects the fragmentariness, eclecticism, superficiality and commercialism of the information society in which we live. It is full of poems, but the complete work of any author can’t be found, it places on the same level Shakespeare and Stephen King, Odysseus and Dracula... On the internet, one finds far more discussions with authors about books than extracts from these books. The internet mediates an enormous amount of meta-information about literature so that at present it has an advertising propaganda function in relation to literature. Within the sphere of reading fiction the Internet has not replaced public libraries.
AWARDS
Laureate of the Ivan Krasko Prize (1995)
Premio Letterario Internazionale Team Monnet (1997)
The Prize of the daily “Sme” in tine literary competition Short Story (2001)
