Tomaž Kosmač: VARNOST (SAFETY)

Thursday, March 1st 2012
MMC KIBLA
Tomaž Kosmač: 'Varnost' (Safety)

In his novel ‘Varnost’ (Safety) Tomaž Kosmač along with his autobiographical lead character takes us into a world of first working experiences of a young boy, who decides to swap his high school degree and a guaranteed office job for a bohemian lifestyle of vegging out in a doorman’s lodge under the light of a transistor radio, with a bottle in the drawer and a typewriter on the desk. The job is aimless, and so are the lives of the proletarian heroes interrupted occasionally by days-long drinking-sprees and the absurdity of alcoholism. Witty, grotesque stories from the social bottom, crossed with the belief that something more is out there somewhere after all, even if it only shows at the bottom of an empty bottle. Gostol – Mercator – Zidgrad – Kolektor – Rudnik živega srebra – IMP – Avtoprevoz – Zdravstveni dom – Gostol, are the names of companies our hero works at, with Čipka and MIP added as a bitter end. Together with the companies he is being kicked out of in a role, stories are strung about how one can experience failure even in the seemingly simple category of sitting down.

Tomaž Kosmač - Kosmo (1965) entered the Slovenian literary stage in 1987 with the publication of his first articles in Mladina magazine. He is a short story writer, published mostly in national literary magazines (Apokalipsa, Dialogi, Fontana, Mentor, Nova revija, Primorska srečanja, Sodobnost, SRP...). He was also a member of the culture-art project 'Hidrogliste', hosted in a number of cultural events and radio and television shows. He is the author of three short prose collections: 'Driska' (1998), 'Žalostno, toda resnično' (2001) and Punk is dead (2008), which all concern themes so typical of Kosmač, alcohol and people from the society's margin. Some of his stories are part of the 'Kronske priče' selection: about recent Slovenian prose of the nineties (2001), or are included in the Slovenian short prose anthology: 'O čem govorimo' (2004) that has been translated into a number of foreign languages.
In 2006 Kosmač published a controversial novel 'Hvalabogu' under the pseudonym of Bogomir Hvala, a peculiar adaption of the gospel. Under the wings of the national radio and televison service RTV Slovenija, a short movie 'Vikend paket' was made based on Kosmač's short story 'Zapor'.

Support: EU-EACEA, Culture program Brussels, Ministry of culture, Municipality of Maribor, Office of the Republic of Slovenia for Youth.