Harry´s Blog

a novel by Herbert Kuhner (excerpt)

Comments

I think that The Assembly-Line Prince, which I enjoyed in manuscript form, is the picaresque novel of our times. The Segment titled. Wedding bell: poet’s death knell was my favorite of many delightful passages. But the ending was great too, had me laughing out loud – partly with relief, because I didn’t know how the author could end it, but he did. Herbert Kuhner is not only a marvelous writer, but his novel strikes me as eminently commercial.
- Alan Levy, editor of the Prague Post and correspondent for The New York Times & Herald Tribune

I am of the considered opinion that Herbert Kuhner is a serious, dedicated, professional and versatile writer. I agree with Emile Capouya, former Literary Editor of The Nation, that Kuhner’s first novel Nixe (published by Funk & Wagnalls) is a work of great merit and originality and that his “gifts as a writer and stylist are unmistakable.“ Kuhner’s literary intelligence conveying psychological insight with cool precision, poetic verve and old-European wit – is deployed and displayed to equal effect in a second novel as yet unpublished, The Assembly-Line Prince.
- Anthony Rudolf, publisher of The Menard Press, London

The unmistakably talented writer Herbert (Harry) Kuhner meets his namesake, the jack-of-all-trades, Herb Andress. Herby’ a picaresque adventures, which sometimes border on the verge of crime, are material worthy of a novel. Harry tapes Herby’s autobiographical meanderings at their haphazard meetings. As Harry tapes, the novel takes form. Herby, the protagonist, is neurotic plagued by Don-Juanism who can only prove himself in a variety of constantly changing beds. He uses his rise as an actor in films as a ruse for the seduction process. His roles as an actor and as a lover are interchangeable. His friendship to Harry, the writer, develops into a clash of personalities, one the winner and the other the loser. This conflict is part of the plot, as well as the various colorful amorous episodes. To be sure, fact is combined with fiction, as the author indicates in the story. The Assembly-Line Prince is a highly-intelligently written slapstick story, a novel about a scoundrel and con man. It is an erotic novel that promises to be a commercial success. The author has proven himself to be a brilliant stylist.
- Ursula Pommer, Munich

                                                  -1-

This is the story of a prince by a prince. The protagonist, Herby, the Assembly-Line Prince. The author, Harry the Pratfall Prince. I hope I’ll be pardoned for bringing myself in on the fringes. Don Giovanni needs his Leporello, and that is the role that fate had me play to Herby. So I relate his adventures, my misadventures. Are they fiction or non-fiction? Probably both. Sometimes, it is necessary to tell the truth by lying.

How did I come to my title? It was Herby who gave it to me. This is the way he put it. The difference between us is that I give them the pratfall and you take pratfalls from them. And that’s the way it was. They pratfell with Herby landing an top of them. Then after he, others like him had absconded, I would come along. Naturally I would try to right them and brush off the dust. And they would tell me of the pratfalls they had taken. Then a strange sensation would overcome me: I would find myself pratfalling.

My next vantage point was from a sitting position. Pratt on ground. Ergo: the Pratfall Prince.
Now for the Assembly-Line-Prince. It was not the prince that had come off’ the assembly line – but his princess, that is, the series of pieces he was using to form her. It was his contention that you can construct a princess out of many pieces. And that was exactly what he was doing. The Royal Assembly Line was an assembly line in reverse. Herby stood at its end. Instead of assembling, he disassembled. From the many five-minute mates that came down the line, he would remove features and parts of anatomy for the task. Out of them he was forming his dream girl. A fantastic Lady Frankenstein. The most beautiful creature that never lived. And made to measure for him.

I, on the other hand, was looking for my princess among ready-made specimens. But I gave my fantasy free reign. I too had a dream girl. The candidates needless to say, fell far short of the mark. Quite on the contrary. They turned out to be real Lady Frankensteins. Back to the pratfall.

Herby was a modern Casanova, master of the jiffy seduction. The original had spent months wooing and lingering over the fruits of his labor. It was only when the specter of marriage made its appearance or a new interest took his attention that he packed up and moved on. But Herby had compressed Casanova’s time span to a minimal rate. One that fit into our technical age. It was the Casanova spectacular, except as a speeded-up short feature. The kind you see in a carny moviola. Herby’s wooing and screwing were limited to a matter of minutes or hours. Days were the maximum. He’d give them an energetic but unsubtle tumble. And once having achieved his ends and getting his end in they’d be discarded. Even if another candidate weren’t in view. That would be no problem. – Not with his drive and resourcefulness. He’d hunt one up soon enough.

Herby’s mates were interchangeable. He never had to worry about a mate aging. They didn’t age much in a matter of minutes or hours. After use, they’d be thrown away. He scooped the cream from the top. Let some poor sucker, like the previously mentioned Leporello, cope with the thin milk or hang around until it got sour.

Herby was a connoisseur. There were many beauties in his collection. But there were also plain and ugly ones. They all shared the same fate. The beautiful ones were discarded as rapidly as the others. No matter how ravishing a mate, nothing could hold him back. He had to move on. And move on he did. He had to switch. And switch he did. Even if it meant going from a beauty to a hunchback. If there were nothing better in sight, a hunchback would have to serve his purposes.
More about Prince Harry. It seemed to be my lot to go trudging from publisher to publisher, lugging my bundle of manuscripts under my arm. My literary career in the land of opportunity had been a concatenation of pratfalls. I was veteran of the staff shake-up, the dropped option and the lost manuscript. I had the freedom to write. But that freedom ended at the publisher’s door. There was the poetry program that had been disbanded, simultaneously with the acceptance of my manuscript. And there was the novel, recommended for publication by the senior editor and vetoed by the editor-in-chief. Yes, the fates were using me as a fireplug.

I got advice from everyone. Sample: “Prostitute yourself,” said the publicity editor (gender: feminine).

And I had my Job’s comforters: “Better to give up at the beginning! Or buckle down and write for posterity!”

No, Uncle Sam isn’t exactly a patron of the arts. Nor is he kind to writers. I wasn’t about to became a foaming Maoist or a White Panther, but I did take out a trial membership in the Hate America Club.
A writer who can’t bring his work to the public is oppressed and the logical thing for one who is oppressed in to pack up and go elsewhere. Those were my plans and I carried them out. Uncle Sam had been a wicked stepfather and Europe beckoned. A fairy godmother with a magic wand. However, I was to discover that the godmother was a witch, and the wand – a stick to beat me with. The conspiracy was international. As were the panders and madams of trash.

Then on to Austria. From the frying pan into the fire. After being worked over in the land where I grew up, I got the treatment in the land where I had been born. Get lost, baby, you’re a foreigner, was the gist of it. I thought I’d been uprooted when I lived in the States. I knew I’d been uprooted when I moved to Austria.

The literary establishment consisted of altruists who were sacrificing themselves but whose pockets were, oddly enough, well-padded. Their protégés were revolutionaries who were always on the lookout for a handout. What the Yahoos did in the trees, they did on page and stage. They were suffering from a malady known as pimples on the brain, and their pimples were eternal, the gestures indicative of their work were a jabbing on the inner arm and an up and down motion in the nether region, The talk was of literature but the activity was freeloading. Everyone either had his palm extended or his hand in someone else’s pocket. The Word had been thrown back into the Stone Age of Baboonism. We were in the midst of the Thousand Year Reich of Nonsense where fraud and the hoax reigned. Out it was voluntary totalitarianism, as opposed to imposed totalitarianism. The color was red, but rust red; the brown element was unmistakable. Of course I was persona non grata in this setup. I was blacklisted with carte blanche for every cul-de-sac.

Apparently professional and amorous pratfalls went hand in hand. I was master on both counts. My love life: a side show. A ride through the tunnel of horrors. Witches jumping up at every turn. Each more horrific than her predecessors a failure, I was a walking target for anyone wanting to take a crack at it. And women were good shots. They aimed well. I had gone the gamut and run the gauntlet.

Of the two classical hetira types, Carmen and Manon, my preference seemed to be for the latter. Although I did not leave Carmen untried. With Carmen you knew where you were before you started. Everything was obvious. But Manon was another matter. With her, the surprises came after you were hooked. At first everything was dandy. Smooth sailing. Then wham! The playful kitten turned into an alley cat.

In addition to my Leporello role, I also played Don José and des Grieux. Then there was that classical pratfall role: Dan Octavio. The square who consoles Donna Anna after Don Giovanni throws her over.

Let’s get to the crux of it. My pan is a dead giveaway. The saintly mug I’m stuck with, the puss with the holier-than-thou look. Christ and Sebastian, I’ve been compared to. The cross and the stake. Nails and arrows. The cross and nails, the stake and arrows. You look like a saint, they say, so we’ll make one of you. And they proceed to do so.