Fast confession - Michal Viewegh: I was supposed to have been dead, I’m now living a sort of bonus

You published a new book this autumn – New fairy tales for tired parents. Are you able to write normally again?

I am not writing at the same rate as before, but I am able to write four or five pages a day. It just takes me an hour or two longer.

So do you have your own system or regime for writing that you basically have to write every day whatever happens?

I don’t have to, I haven’t got a boss, but I want to and that is the fundamental difference. And when I write, I even write on Saturday and Sunday. I don’t have to be reluctantly forced into my office. If I did, I wouldn’t even get out of bed. But I still enjoy writing. I regard that as the best thing about what I do.

Is the “ruptured aorta” chapter in your life closed for good?

That would be wonderful, but unfortunately that is not possible. Problems with my memory, low energy, bad spatial orientation – those are the direct results. I mean that nowadays I wander around Prague as if I were born there. That is basically to do with the fact that my aorta ruptured. You can’t change some things. You can only get used to them or resign yourself to tolerating them.

What recharges your batteries?

Taking the dogs for a walk or even running. I alternate walking and running at the moment, a sort of interval training, if I manage to motivate myself to do that. I did manage in the summer, I had more energy. So I go running, then I have a shower, put on some clean clothes, that it precisely it. Everyone who runs knows that. It is about that euphoria, the endorphins flooding your brain, it’s amazing.

Do you have any goals in your running?

I don’t want to do a marathon anymore, that is too much work with the training. But a half-marathon, for example for my sixtieth birthday, that would be nice But I am not promising that to anyone definitely.

It has been a couple of years now since your aorta ruptured. How do you look back on that? Maybe that it was your body trying to give you a signal that you were doing something wrong and that you needed to make a change in your life?

You can look at it from various angles. I could take it that I was wronged, that I helped various people and work for UNICEF and went to Sierra Leone, which you can be certain was no holiday, but really a working trip, I paid for my brothers to go on a trip to the mountains, lent people money... So I could cross off a few good deeds on the list and rightly wonder why it had to be me of all people! But I could also look at it from the other side. Tendencies towards alcoholism, tendencies towards promiscuity, I was deservedly punished.

Do you have a will after having gone through that experience?

I still don’t have a will. Now I am divorced, I don’t feel the need to divide up my assets in any way, because the state will divide it up for me. The house into thirds and the girls would have to argue over that or come to some agreement.

How does caring for your two younger daughters work after the divorce?

I have them every other weekend, which seems to be fair. Just by chance, my wife is on holiday at the moment and I am looking after our daughters in Sázava, which means that when they go to catch the bus in the morning and it is dark, I have to go with them. I have to put some jogging bottoms over my pyjamas and I take them to the bus stop. So I am experiencing a very demanding time as a father at the moment.

You have a girlfriend. Have you reassessed your attitude towards infidelity? Because your marriage fell apart due to the infidelity you admitted to. Have you changed anything?

I think I have changed significantly. You cannot compare the time before and after. It is of course also due to that physical handicap. I can’t really be Don Juan with a ruptured aorta. I would almost say that makes it impossible. (laughs) And it is also to do with age.

Vila na pronájem Ořechovka, Praha 6

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Do women inspire you to write?

Women are the fundamental motivational factor for men. It is a natural male instinct that the male shakes those feathers.

Have you got any story in your head or in progress on paper at the moment?

I am finishing off two novellas at the moment. One is called Family Frost. That is a slightly autobiographical story, but it’s only about themes. The hero is a former restaurateur who went bankrupt and is now making a living by delivering frozen food, his wife is divorcing him and marrying his friend. I take that as a sort of symbolic downfall.

Will you be tackling politics again?

I don’t think so. After it happened (the ruptured aorta – editor’s note), I didn’t read the papers or watch the news for a year or two, I left out all of that completely. I used to read four newspapers every day, cut bits out and put them up on a notice board, tables of relationships between the mafia in Prague and politicians in Prague. Then I wrote those two books (The Big Freeze from Prague Castle and The Mafia in Prague) and in doing so I did my civic duty.

How do you perceive the mood in our society?

I don’t concern myself with that. It sounds like I have given up on life, but I am in fact statistically dead. I survived something which apparently only ten percent of people survive and the vast majority die of. So I should logically be dead. I am enjoying a sort of bonus here. Well – a rather arduous bonus at the start, but it’s getting better now. So I say to myself that in return for that suffering I endured and in return for all those problems, I deserve at least some peace and quiet and not having to worry about these things which are difficult to change such as corruption in Czech politics and party machinations. Life is too short for that.

Where is Czech writing at the moment? Can a person make a living in the Czech Republic by writing?

It is on the periphery of society. But I shouldn’t complain. I am still the second or third best-selling author in the country and three or four hundred people attend my readings. So I have managed to established some sort of reputation.

What is responsible for the twilight of Czech writing? What is the cause? Do people not read anymore?

The decline in readers is absolutely conclusive. I sell a tenth of the books I sold twenty years ago. For example, I sold about three hundred thousand copies of Holiday Makers per year, I now sell thirty thousand copies of Moonlighting if I am lucky. I would like to believe that I haven’t gotten ten times worse. It’s simple. Twenty years ago, there simply weren’t one hundred and fifty TV programmes and all of those simpler methods of entertainment. People didn’t travel so much, they did not work three jobs at the same time. And that tradition of reading was kept alive more than it is now.

What about electronic books?

Of course people also buy my books as e-books, but the royalties from that are absolutely negligible. A writer certainly can’t make a living out of that. But on the other hand – you can’t measure everything just in monetary terms.

Are you active on social networks?

I am really lagging behind there, because I contemptuously scorned all of that. But that was of course a mistake. I can’t go against the times. Nowadays, it is almost as if anyone who is not on social networks doesn’t exist. Due to the fact that my name was well-know, I am still functioning thanks to some sort of momentum I gained, but now I am changing my publisher and it looks as if I will have to start paying attention to that sort of thing.

It is one thing to use social networks for work, but another is that thanks to them, you understand your children better. Have you not got a bit of a gap there?

They know I am a sort of Martian in that respect. But they already see me as a sort of old man from a different century and I am a sort of comical figure for them in some respects. Luckily, I have some cheap dad tricks, that I for example take them to a reading, where they only go because I promise them I will split the fee with them. That motivates them. (laughs) But the important thing for me is that they sit there in the audience and there are two hundred and fifty people around them listening to me. And all of a sudden, they see things in a different light.

When is your new book coming out?

I have more or less finished it in its rough form and I hope to get it out with the new publisher in the spring.