Authors
Jan PELC
Jan Pelc was born on April 15 1957 in Podbořany. He grew up in Klášterec nad Orlicí and trained as a machine fitter. He worked at the Prunéřov power plant. The plot of his most famous novel ...a bude hůř (...and it’ll get worse) is based on his adolescence. In 1980 he left the former Czechoslovakia and reached France via Yugoslavia. There, from 1982-1990, he worked for Svědectví, a magazine for exiles. He also contributed to other periodicals such as Listy, Paternoster and the samizdat Vokno. He returned to Prague in November 1989. Afterwards, he divided his time between Prague and Paris, where he also worked in the Czech embassy. Since 1993 he has lived permanently in Prague.
Jan Pelc writes about the “dark side”, the underground and rock scenes with unconventional anti-heroes and provocative themes. The writer’s interests centre on characters who overindulge in alcohol, smoking and sex. The unravelling of their stories is not unexpected or shocking, rather it is predictably negative. If it is possible to consider any of the conclusions as positive or even hopeful, they then start to distinctly smack of absurdity. The constant and distinguishing characteristic of Jan Pelc’s writing is a language full of vulgarity, which is violent, sexist and crudely developed into a grotesque black humour.
Pelc’s most famous work is the novel …a bude hůř, which was written in exile and first published in 1985 by the exile literature publishers Index. It was not published in his native country until 1989. It is currently being adapted for the cinema. The controversial novel is mainly set in northern Bohemia during totalitarianism. Its protagonists attempt to “make the most of things” under the existing regime: one group – the majority - do this by kow-towing, whereas the second group, represented by the adolescent “rebel” Olin, are in constant revolt, which in the end achieves minimal success. However, their strength gradually grows: whereas at the start their rebellion centres mainly on the length of their hair and indiscipline at work, it gradually becomes a cruel, open struggle for survival.
In the book the author describes a small Czech equivalent of the unreachable flower generation, but mainly the feelings of his own generation, which was best labelled as “lost”. In this respect, Pelc’s novel is a cult work. Just like its creator, the main character resolves his situation by emigrating, a step that only graduates of a socialist realist schooling would understand. But this new-found freedom also quickly shows its limitations, as does the potential for mutual understanding between the emigrant and those who stayed behind and “suffered”. That becomes another of Jan Pelc’s themes in the second instalment of Olin’s stories, entitled …a výstupy do údolí (...And Emerging into the Valley). It is set in the Czech Republic where the main character returns following emigration.
The fate of a poor country boy, who becomes a partisan by chance and against his will in the book …a to mi nemůžete udělat (..and you can’t do that to me), as well as the literary creations published in collections such as …a máš mě rád? (..and do you like me?), …a golpotoni táhnou (..and the golpotons pull) or in his new work…a poslední kouř (..and the last smoke), are usually rooted in the monotone course of everyday life, from which the author through his characters tries to capture glimpses of the unusual, the bizarre or the unique, and although they do not rise above the surface of the everyday greyness, he manages to imbue them with a strange, incomprehensible happiness. At the opposite pole the need for inner personal freedom always remains, gradually increasing to total freedom and constantly changing borders which can be seen everywhere, both under totalitarianism and post-totalitarianism. Pelc’s heroes are absolutist, anarchistic elements, inspired by freedom. The enemy can even be democracy, reduced to absurdity by European Union regulations. In Jan Pelc’s opinion, the demon of totalitarianism never sleeps.
Jan Pelc’s novel Basket Flora is a kind of original abberation, an appendix to his work. It is the distinctively coarse and crude story of an original, albeit brutal detective, Basket Flora, and his nemesis, the Crime Demon, and was produced in comic-book form in collaboration with the Yugoslav artist Andrej Sujetov Kostić. Although the action takes place in a realistic Czech setting, it owes much to the American school of tough detective fiction, ae well as the famous comic (and film) Sin City.
Since the second half of the 1990s Jan Pelc’s books have mainly been published by the Prague publishers Maťa. Pelc’s work is now inextricably linked with the existence of the “underpunk” band called A bude hůř.
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This profile was last updated on December 1st 2006
En français 
Jan PELC, En français.doc
