The jokes in Prague mostly depend on the characters and so are hard to catch the flavor of here. Here is one character's childhood list of lessons learned from his precocious reading:
age 8: avoid sea travel (Treasure Island)age 9: as you get older, it's harder to have any fun (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)
age 9: don't go looking for trouble (The Hobbit)
age 10: it takes a lot of money to get out of trouble (The Count of Monte Cristo)
age 11: sometimes it's better to just leave well enough alone (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)
age 12: if you're not really, really careful, you'll grow up bitter (Moby-Dick)
age 13: always know where your escape routes are and what you can use as a weapon in case of trouble (The Heart of Darkness)
age 13: don't read too much (Don Quixote)
age 15: it's better to die, even to die slowly, than to get married (War and Peace)
age 15: a lot of people feel like I do, but they've learned to hide it (The Stranger) because they're phonies (The Catcher in the Rye)
age 16: I want to live inside a glowing circle of love and romance (title never included; entry violently scratched out with black ink shortly after being written)
age 17: once it's past, forget it; it won't help to think about it (The Great Gatsby)
age 19, last entry, freshman year of college: No one cares. And why should they? (No Exit, Nausea)
With which Phillips sets up the character in question and mocks the reader for trying to glean any simple lessons from his book. Okay, so maybe you had to be there to catch the humor — Prague is worth the trip.
Article comments
1 - Sean Hackbarth
Who said irony was dead? Nobody told Arthur Phillips. The approach was overdone. Everyone wasn't exactly what they appeared. Sounds like real life. Maybe that's an ironic point Phillips missed. But you see the endless literary analysis that can take place with a novel like this. At least I didn't hate any of the characters, and the depiction of Budepest tempts me to visit Orbitz to check on flights.