In Praise of Clumsy People

Perhaps it's because I have been required so often to be dexterous in life -- to handle things, persons, and situations with competence and clear grasp--tonight I got sick of it, and thought of Karel Čapek and his "In Praise of Clumsy People," a short essay written originally in 1935, collected in "Towards the Radical Center: A Karel Čapek reader."

This essay speaks about how inanimate things come alive in the hands of clumsy people. Dishes slip between fingers, wires wiggle out of grasp, inanimate objects assume life and will of their own. The world feels so differently for the dexterous and the clumsy. For the former, the world is within their firm grasp; for the latter, even the most everyday objects retain a measure of mystery.

Of course, by no means does Karel Čapek advocate for incompetence, nor does he idealize clumsiness as a virtue. Instead, he is like a forgiving and tender friend, who would stand there, smile, and make us feel better after we clumsily break something. "Oh, this dish looked as if it were alive," he would joke with us as we nervously gather the debris, bringing a relieved smile onto our faces.

Easily one of my top three favourite Czech writers, Karel Čapek is humorous and subtle, common-sensical and intelligent, sharp in human observation yet tender and merciful. He doesn't write with extraordinary language, nor do his stories have amazing characters or plot (his dexterous science fictions are exceptions, he invented the word "robot" in his sci-fi play R.U.R). What his writing has is a personal sense of mystery that is opposed to collective mythology. In a short story "Footprint", a single footprint is seen printed on a snow-covered path. There is nothing before it and nothing after. As people pass-by, they stop, ponder, and talk among themselves. It's a story about the unsolvable, the riddle in life, and the warm glow of fascination it brings to a cold, wintery journey.

In another short essay "A Cold", he writes about what one would read when having a cold.

"A man with a cold hesitates in front of his many-colored bookcase, shivering with chills and self-pity. Where can he find something ... something really good... Something that doesn't wound in any way... doesn't hurt a man in smallness and humiliation...(with a wet handkerchief on his face)?"

The man went through all literary genres-detective story, epics, romance, psychological novels... and rejected each for their excess, pretentiousness, hurtfulness. Until finally, he reaches for a small book in his bookcase, a book he has read many times when he is "depressed by the sufferings of body and mind". So "he snuggles down in his arm chair, takes a dry handkerchief, and heaves a sigh of relief before he starts to read."

As I felt something akin to a cold on my chest tonight, I searched at my colorful bookcase for Čapek. And here he is, never fail to comfort yet never to lie, the writer of a radical humanism -- love -- at the center.