Václav Havel Critical Essay | Critical Review by Irving Howe

SOURCE: "One Can Stand Up to Lies," in New York Times Book Review, May 26, 1991, p. 5.

In the following review, Howe offers positive assessment of Open Letters. "We turn to Havel," Howe writes, "not for theoretical innovation but for the consolidation of truth."

There is a pleasing anecdote about Vaclav Havel, perhaps true, perhaps not. During the years he was being hounded by the Stalinist dictatorship in Czechoslovakia, he would spend part of his time in the country, watched day and night by the secret police. Once, a policeman is supposed to have said to him: "Why go back to Prague? Why don't you remain in the country, where we have such a nice, quiet life together?" Intuitively, this policeman had come to grasp the moral power of the writer he was watching.

For there is a mystery to Mr. Havel. Now the President of his country and,...
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