Lost Inside the Happy Noise

Pushed into action by Jane Pauley's voice and a television image of a pack of cigarettes being handed through a hole in the Berlin Wall, author Jim Lukach set off for Eastern Europe. Lost Inside the Happy Noise is a collection of essays that capture the heady days of post-revolution in a small city in western Slovakia, days measured out in half-liter beer glasses and startling self-discovery. Holding a mirror to the past-wild boar hunting safaris, a Slovak television appearance, autograph sessions after teaching a successful English class-Lukach reflects on how something as simple as dancing the polka can reach far into the future and questions whether life could ever feel so full again. In Lost Inside the Happy Noise, Lukach evokes with the realism of a dream the atmosphere of a time that passed too quickly by, days outside the norm spent tramping through Slovakia or watching his train leave seven times without boarding. But most of all, it is about the small moments teaching English and discoveries made in the most surprising places.