Gary Snyder in conversation at Hotel Josef

Michael March:  What are your impressions of this year’s Festival?

Gary Snyder:  I haven’t been to any previous Prague Writers’ Festivals, but I found this one consistently interesting—many of the occasions were actually fascinating and challenging. There was a wide range of writers and people—some of whose works and ideas I knew, some of whose I didn’t—so I felt very educated by trying to keep up with it. And I enjoyed the opportunity to try to walk through town between the various events. I realized that Europe is still deeply engaged from West to East in the tangled question of its own identity and its own unavoidable urbanism, and that the ghosts of Baudelaire and of Kafka still hang over it all.

MM:  We have a great, young audience. Could you feel that, could you sense it?

GS: Well, I know that the audience that came to my events was certainly responsive. I could see who they were—and to a certain extent they were younger—and I guess that was true of the other audiences in general, as well. I felt very much in the present moment all the time I was here.

MM:  You still believe that Prague is clean?

GS:  And I also think it is clean (laughs).

Vlasta March:  What would you change in the world, if you had the possibility?

GS:  Oh, not a thing. Not a thing. I love it just like it is.

MM:  No change?

GS:  Well, if I had the possibility, I would bring back the mammoth. I would like to see the mammoths come back and live on the land with us.

MM:  How could the mammoth join you at Hotel Josef? It’s always over-booked.

GS:  (laughs) He’d just walk right through the wall. You know Michael McClure—he’s a wonderful poet—he says “my dream is to restore the entire Pleistocene fauna.” It’s very close to us in California, it’s only ten thousand years ago. Then I realized it is equally close here—so besides the civilized, literary, urban layer—there’s another layer here that I hope people will get closer to.

MM:  Which layer?

GS:  The upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. Great gardening, great farming, and before that great herding, and before that great hunting and fishing. This is really what human beings are meant to do.

MM:  You think Prague is wild?

GS:  Well, I saw some very wild things in Prague—and I’m not talking about sexy girls or anything like that—I’m talking about neat, little places in the garden and piles of dog doo-doo.

MM:  What was your impression when we had dinner with Mayor Pavel Bém? You usually don’t speak to politicians.

GS:  Actually, I have a very good friend in one politician whose name is Jerry Brown—governor of California for eight years, mayor of Oakland for eight years—who is now the attorney general of the state of California. He just called me up the other day. He said, “I’m getting together with Schwarzenegger and, as attorney general, I’m going to make sure that California is able to raise the standards of automobile emissions.” He is very much an environmentalist. And he’s a Buddhist. So, yeah, I talk to some politicians (laughs).

MM:  How did you feel speaking with Pavel?

GS:  A man who has been an alpine mountaineer, and then climbed Mt. Everest, must be a good man. That’s my impression right away. Also, he’s got a nice, light but smart touch.  And he has a very good laugh. So I like him.

MM:  Do you feel at home at Hotel Josef?

GS:  Well, at first I thought, oh this is just another designer hotel, of which I have seen a fair number. But, as I stayed on over several days, I came to realize how well put together it is, how refreshing it is to come in here off the street for a different kind of light and a different kind of space, and how basically friendly it is. I appreciate that they don’t have all kinds of free newspapers out. There are some very interesting touches.

MM:  Are you touched by the Festival?

GS:  The latest big literary festival I was at was in Seoul, Korea, in May 2005. And it was six days long. I found Prague much easier to be at. The Koreans put on too many banquets with too much alcohol, and are much more rigidly organized.

MM:  Prague’s not only funky, but intimate.

GS:  And also the young people of the Czech Republic are looser and more fun. They’re more relaxed and can speak English. To my taste the Festival was just about right. The only problem was—and this is what we have to work on— how do you manage to fit dinner in?

MM:  Next year, we’ll ask the Koreans to organize dinner.

9 June 2007