VACLAV HAVEL: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts.

• Author: Easterbrook, Gregg
• Position: Review

VACLAV HAVEL: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts

by John Keane Basic Books, $27.50

MOHANDAS GANDHI--WHAT A jerk! Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Thomas Merton, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Schweitzer: a rogue's gallery of egocentric charlatans. People have said as much about everyone on that list, and now comes John Keane, a professor of politics at Westminster University in England, to add Vaclav Havel to the hall of shame. You may foolishly view Havel as a playwright, spirited dissident, and democratic hero to a peace-loving nation. Vaclav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts reveals the shocking underside. Havel drinks too much, smokes too much, had too much sex, is vain, and, as president of his country, he made mistakes! Take this man away and string 'im up.

Overstatement? Vaclav Havel begins by complaining that its subject is too well thought-of by the world though he is guilty of "knavery" and though "the harsh fact is that most of the citizens of President Havel's republic think less of him than they did a year ago." Keane cautions readers that "I have never believed in heroes" and then goes on to relate that when he first met Havel, in 1984, "he didn't look much like a hero to me." This Havel was "exhausted, overweight, depressed" and had trouble operating the stick shift of his car. He also seemed more interested in getting hold of a bottle of whisky than in talking to John Keane. Oh, and he'd just been released from five years in prison, did we mention that? And yet imagine that he would prefer whisky to being interviewed! What a jerk!

Keane declares, "Gone are the days when it could be assumed that biography was about recording the facts ... my account of Havel's life is unavoidably `factional.'" Funny, I was not aware that the days of fact-based biography were gone or that resorting to "factional" techniques (whatever they may be) was "unavoidabl[e]." But at least the author gives fair warning.

After its declaration of intent to destroy its subject, Vaclav Havel holds to form. The description of Havel's birth, for example, finds ominous portents in an old family movie ("inexpertly shot," the book jabs) in which parents and relatives fuss over the baby so much as to give the impression of "a child whose early months were not only coddled but crowned." Keane seems unaware that it is standard for parents to fuss over babies in lavish fashion.

The tale continues downhill from there. Along the...