Open Letters: Selected Writings, 1965-1990.

• Author: Knoll, Erwin

When I talked with Czechs about Vaclav Havel during a brief visit to Prague last fall, I was surprised to find that many did not share the esteem and enthusiasm with which their illustrious compatriot is so widely regarded in the West. Havel had just resigned as president of Czechoslovakia so that he would not have to preside over the dissolution of his country. He would return in a few months to head the new, truncated Czech Republic. His symbol-rich exit from the Prague Castle--wearing a T-shirt, carrying a backpack--had made more of an impression elsewhere in Europe (and in the United States) than at home.

Czechs criticized Havel for not fighting hard enough against the breakup, after seventy-four years, of Czechoslovakia. (I heard this, curiously, even from some who claimed not to care about Slovak independence and who said, dismissively, "Let them go!") Other Czechs --or, sometimes, the same ones--complained that Havel had deepened the nation's economic crisis by dismantling much of its arms industry and curtailing overseas weapons sales. And the most virulent attacks focused on Havel's opposition to the "lustration" law that stripped former communist officeholders of their civil rights regardless of whether they had, themselves, engaged in human-rights violations. Czechs who had suffered under the communist regime--though few had suffered more than Havel--simply could not understand his concern for the rights of those associated with their and his former tormentors.

All of this suggested to me that Havel was a decent, thoughtful, generous. and compassionate human being--qualities rarely encountered in those who hold high political office. And I concluded that the Czechs were in the extraordinary, almost unique position of having a leader better than they wanted or deserved.

These impressions were emphatically confirmed by the literate, profound, and humane essays compiled in Havel's Open Letters and Summer Meditations, and in Vaclav Havel: Living in Truth, which includes six pieces by Havel as well as sixteen appreciative essays by, among others, Samuel Beckett, Heinrich Boll, Milan Kundera, Arthur Miller, and Tom Stoppard.

The first essay in Open Letters, and the only one out of chronological sequence (it was originally published in 1977), is autobiographical and presents an excellent introduction to the man and his work.

"I do not belong to that fortunate class of authors who write constantly, quickly, easily, and always well, whose...