March 29th, 2002
Jeremy Pickle Goes To Prague is another ugly-American story, only in this version, the American's ugliness merely mirrors the ugliness of everything and everyone else in the book. Andrew Condon's protagonist, a stunted ex-museum security guard named Jeremy Pickle, travels to bohemian hot-spot Prague to write his true-life comic book about the ruin of Czechoslovakia at the hands of the free market. As he bumbles through life there, he lands an English-teaching job despite a lack of qualifications, tries to fend off amorous advances from strange people, and wrongly sees himself as the only voice of sanity in a barbaric wilderness. Condon doesn't make any bold new observations, nor does he provide a challenging lay-out scheme for his story. But his jabs at simple-minded idealism are well-placed, and his monochrome cartoon expressionism is both amusing and unnerving. It's good fun, especially for people surrounded by the kind of goofs who fancy themselves romantic expatriates.
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