Inzerát na dům, ve kterém už nechci bydlet

by Bohumil Hrabal

Knížka sedmi povídek (Kafkárna, Divní lidé, Anděl, Ingot a ingoti, Zrada zrcadel, Prokopnutý buben, Krásná Poldi), o níž říká autor sám, že "je konstatováním jisté situace, která se nazývá 'obdobím kultu osobnosti'". Zdůrazňuje, že v ní nelze hledat jen odsouzení, neboť připomíná i lidi, kteří "se neodcizili základnímu domovnímu řádu lidského bydlení a kteří už byli hrdinové tím, že nepropadli sémantickému zmatku, ale nazývali věci audálosti správnými jmény a znaky".

Genres: Short Stories, Czech Literature, Fiction, 20th Century, Classics, Literature, Literary Fiction

125 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Born in Brno-Židenice, Moravia, he lived briefly in Polná, but was raised in the Nymburk brewery as the manager's stepson.

Hrabal received a Law degree from Prague's Charles University, and lived in the city from the late 1940s on.

He worked as a manual laborer alongside Vladimír Boudník in the Kladno ironworks in the 1950s, an experience which inspired the "hyper-realist" texts he was writing at the time.

His best known novels were Closely Watched Trains (1965) and I Served the King of England. In 1965 he bought a cottage in Kersko, which he used to visit till the end of his life, and where he kept cats ("kočenky").

He was a great storyteller; his popular pub was At the Golden Tiger (U zlatého tygra) on Husova Street in Prague, where he met the Czech President Václav Havel, the American President Bill Clinton and the then-US ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright on January 11th, 1994.

Several of his works were not published in Czechoslovakia due to the objections of the authorities, including The Little Town Where Time Stood Still (Městečko, kde se zastavil čas) and I Served the King of England (Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále).

He died when he fell from a fifth floor hospital where he was apparently trying to feed pigeons. It was noted that Hrabal lived on the fifth floor of his apartment building and that suicides by leaping from a fifth-floor window were mentioned in several of his books.

He was buried in a family grave in the cemetery in Hradištko. In the same grave his mother "Maryška", step father "Francin", uncle "Pepin", wife "Pipsi" and brother "Slávek" were buried.

He wrote with an expressive, highly visual style, often using long sentences; in fact his work Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age (1964) (Taneční hodiny pro starší a pokročilé) is made up of just one sentence. Many of Hrabal's characters are portrayed as "wise fools" - simpletons with occasional or inadvertent profound thoughts - who are also given to coarse humour, lewdness, and a determination to survive and enjoy oneself despite harsh circumstances. Political quandaries and their concomitant moral ambiguities are also a recurrent theme.

Along with Jaroslav Hašek, Karel Čapek, and Milan Kundera - who were also imaginative and amusing satirists - he is considered one of the greatest Czech writers of the 20th century. His works have been translated into 27 languages.

Reviews

[Ilse · Rating 3 out of 5]

According to the translator's epilogue, this tiny collection shows Bohumal Hrabal from a different side, a rawer side that readers of more renown work by Hrabal are probably not or less familiar with. I can only agree. Whereas what I have read before of Hrabal, and especially his wanton, colourful and subversive play with language, has something fairy-tale like and enchanting about it that is often funny despite its tragic character, this dive into grotesque cynicism did not appeal to me. The bone-hard irony and rancidity find no relief here in sparkling silliness. Especially the cruelty and the bloody horror in the second story (A Christening, to be found in his Why I Write?: The Early Prose from 1945 to 1952 ) - the murder of a deer by a vicar just before he has to baptise a child - left a bad taste in the mouth; the crazy drunken orgy in the cemetery and the juggling with bones in the dance macabre of the first story as a rebellion against God (The famous Wantoch legend, from his early collection Menorah) left me cold (as most evocations of carnival in writing or in painting (Ensor) do). The shortest piece, the newspaper column Intimate Ladies' Toilet made me laugh – ribald for sure, but unlike the other two pieces, more light at heart.

The rougher register of these stories held little interest for me, even though they were written by an author I count among my favourites (in that sense, this book reminded me of the Droll Stories by Balzac).

The epilogue by translator Kees Mercks, on the other hand, is definitely worth reading. Mercks puts the work and the ambivalent position of Hrabal in Czechoslovakia during the communist period in an enlightening perspective. Unlike Kundera, Kohout and Škvorecký, he remained in the Czech Republic, without engaging in dissidence like Havel. He continued to publish, albeit with the necessary concessions to the demands of the regime, fact of which he was ashamed after the Velvet Revolution. The auto-fictional background of some of his well-known novels and novellas was unknown to me. He worked in the wastepaper business, like the protagonist Haňta in Too Loud a Solitude, and was a platform manager, which seeped through in Closely Watched Trains. Mercks points out the (also political) schizoism that characterises Hrabal's life and work and the harrowing contrasts this produces (in, for example, I Served the King of England).

In short, a meagre two stars for the three pieces, four stars for the epilogue.



(collage by Tatiana Svatošová, on the outer wall of the Palmovka metro station on Na Hrázi Street in Prague)

Volgens het nawoord van de vertaler toont dit boekje Bohumal Hrabal van een andere kant, een rauwere kant waar de lezer van andere in het Nederlands vertaalde werken van Hrabal vermoedelijk niet of minder vertrouwd mee is. Ik kan dat enkel maar beamen. Waar wat ik eerder las van Hrabal en vooral zijn baldadig, kleurrijk en subversief spel met taal iets sprookjesachtigs en betoverends heeft dat ondanks de tragiek vaak ook nog grappig is, kon deze duik in grotesk cynisme me weinig bekoren. De beenharde ironie en ranzigheid vinden hier geen verzachting in sprankelende gekkigheid. Vooral de wreedheid en de bloederige gruwel in het tweede verhaal – de moord op een ree door een dominee net voordat hij een kind moet dopen - kon ik weinig smaken; het doldwaze dronkemansfeest op het kerkhof en gejongleer met beenderen in het eerste verhaal (De fameuze Wantoch legende) lieten me koud. Het krantencursiefje Intiem damestoilet was nog het beste te pruimen.

Het ruigere register van deze verhalen kon me weinig boeien, ook al is het dan van de hand van een auteur die ik tot één van mijn favoriete schrijvers reken (in die zin herinnerde dit boekje me aan de Vrijmoedige verhalen van Balzac).

Het nawoord van vertaler Kees Mercks is daarentegen beslist lezenswaardig. Mercks plaatst het werk en de ambivalente positie van Hrabal in Tsjechoslowakije tijdens het communisme in een verhelderend perspectief. Anders dan Kundera, Kohout en Škvorecký bleef hij in Tsjechië, zonder zich evenwel zoals Havel in de dissidentie te engageren. Hij bleef publiceren, weliswaar met de nodige toegevingen aan de eisen van het regime, waar hij zich na de Fluwelen Revolutie voor schaamde. De auto-fictionele achtergrond van enkele van zijn bekende romans en novellen was me onbekend. Hij werkte in de oud-papierbranche, zoals de hoofdpersoon Haňta in Al te luide eenzaamheid en was perronchef, wat doorsijpelde in Zwaarbewaakte treinen. Mercks duidt de (ook politieke) gespletenheid die leven en werk van Hrabal kenmerkt en de schrijnende contrasten die dat oplevert (in bijvoorbeeld Ik heb de koning van Engeland bediend).

Kortom, een magere twee sterretjes voor de drie stukjes, vier sterren voor het nawoord.

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful blueberry nights fill my liver with morning and the nozzle of my heart spews forth an amalgam of blood.

This collection was supposed to stew. It was the subject of a group read and I had planned to read a piece every 2-3 days. Alas I was at the Walgreen's clinic and hours drifted past. The titular piece is an absurdist litany, a Fellini film shot in Prague under the drunken eyes of State Security. The subsequent pieces all contain demolition and smelting. Literally this could be construed as a paean to the factory, but the materials all appear to be in flux. Everything is being torn down, just as exaggerated production figures are broadcast over the radio like some hit parade. Stalin's shadow has slinked into history and quickly his statues are smashed with sledgehammers and dismembered with acetylene torches. Workers proclaim their constitutional rights to strike as reluctant administrators plan to have them arrested. Theft and prostitution become attractive in the worker's paradise. Despite such socialist realism trappings, the themes are universal, the angst which is afforded to everyone, the despair we inherit in the womb. This is an amazing assemblage, one made slick with Pilsner and laughter.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of short stories is just now being published with an English translation, but was published in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s. The story are all of the 1950s, post-war, during the Stalinist reach into Czechoslovakia. Throughout the stories, the former religious icons (crosses, art) and items of war are being boiled in vats of acid and otherwise destroyed/repurposed. Most of the characters are prisoners or prostitutes, and the first and last story feature the character of Mr. Kafka.

I hate to say it.

I'm going to say it.

These stories are Kafkaesque. Especially the first and last, with this man wandering around a town with no purpose, and nobody knows him, or thinks he is somebody else. I usually hate the term Kafkaesque but 1950s Communist empire usually fits it well.

"It's not easy being a decent Communist these days."

Hrabel captures the absurdity well, and I was pleased that the humor makes its way even through the translation (not an easy feat.) The language itself should be mentioned - for the brevity of the stories there is a density of language. You can almost feel the elevated high Czech words being pummeled into the new bland and industrial world, the way Paul Wilson has translated the stories. Perhaps I'm imagining it, but if I'm right, this could also be the very intentional craft of Hrabal.

"All our good old golden days are being smelted down and you don't even know it's happening... You're tossing the very means of production that created your class into the furnace, and you're completely unaware of it."

I received a review copy of this book from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In ‘Drie rabiate legendes’ (Three rabit legends) translator Kees Mercks has put together three short stories by Bohumil Hrabal. All three show what’s typical for Hrabal’s style but is hard to describe: the irony drips off by the tons, harsh and straight forward language is used, mixed with a certain laconism. It works for me. JM

[Leonard Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

It takes a lot of nerve for anyone, let alone a Czech, to title a story “Mr. Kafka”. Finicky Franz casts such a huge shadow on the literature of Prague that it’s audacious to the point of foolhardiness to invite the comparison. But if anyone earned the right to do it in life, it was Bohumil Hrabal. The Brno-born eccentric who, when he died in 1997 in a tragicomic fall from a window while feeding pigeons (a demise both referred to in and perfectly in keeping with his work) was widely considered one of the greatest Czech writers of all time, certainly didn’t mind suggesting a kinship between himself and that other fellow; living, as he did, under an oppressive Communist regime, he likely considered overzealous literary comparisons to be the least of his troubles.

Hrabal, probably best known in America as the author of I Served the King of England and the novel that would become Jirí Menzel’s classic film Closely Watched Trains, was often on the receiving end of censure from the state. But a new collection of some of his short fiction, titled Mr. Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult, shows that he never quite had an entirely oppositional relationship with the government that constantly threatened him with censorship or worse. ‘The cult’, as he termed the postwar period of extreme repression and the personality worship of Stalin and Novotny, was no better or worse than other times of capricious fate and wanton cruelty: humans treated one another badly in the abstract and lovingly in the concrete. Despite the lunacy of the era, he wrote that his stories not “mere condemnation”, but an affirmation that his Prague was filled with “people who had not forgotten the fundamental house rules of human coexistence”.

The seven brief stories in Mr. Kafka are light on plot; they tend to be build around what we might call notions rather than storylines. Hrabal’s greatness did not lay in his ability to craft tightly knotted frameworks of events and conclusions, but in his ability to exquisitely describe the romantic and bewildering interactions of vividly living human beings in intolerable circumstances. His stories are marked by wandering narratives, by people reacting instead of acting, by impossible coping mechanisms instilled by even more impossible demands. Like his sentences, lovely loping things of an almost Faulknerian beauty if Faulkner’s metier was industrial Europe after the war instead of the post-agricultural American south and possessed a Slavic fatalism instead of a Mississippi melancholy, his stories meander through beautifully delineated places and times, stopping to observe the behavior of the odd characters who find themselves there rather than rush to discover what becomes of them.

The title story is the collection’s most romantic and inspiring, a virtual love letter to Prague by a man who never fell out of love with it even when it turned its back on him, but most of its most successful tales are set in the Poldi Steelworks of Kladno. Hrabal himself was a worker there, and most of these stories involve freewheeling encounters with the bizarre assortment of odd characters he ran into as the Communist regime literally liquidated its past in the huge smelters to build a totalitarian future. But despite the consequences of disobedience, the constant treat of surveillance and snitching, and the bureaucratic impossibility of true liberation, most of the workers manage to scrape out some degree of happiness and independence: “Tell me about some of the other times when you were happy,” one worker tells his comrade, a hapless ex-judge who can’t seem to get anything right when he’s working on the factory floor.

The stories are full of these characters, obsessed with what they used to be and identified with nicknames that suggest both their personalities and the hidden lives they carry around with them: the Frenchman, the Dairyman, the Cop, and the Priest; the shadowy female convicts, who are sentenced to doing some of the most backbreaking manual labor; the rabble-rousing crane operator, and the sincere foreman who can’t understand why he won’t cooperate and stop taking the worker’s-rights rhetoric of communism seriously. These descriptions suggest mere archetypes, but Hrabal manages to make them achingly real, infusing them with desires and histories that flesh them out and bring them depth. No matter how the state tries to subsume them into its machinery, he implies, they can never leave behind who they were — a fact that is both a lifesaver and a hindrance.



Into this all comes a documentary film crew, assigned to tell the ‘real’ story of the steelworkers; but, of course, their stories are all too real, and the crew breezily constructs an absurd backdrop of propaganda. The workers are forced to coo over a hastily constructed aquarium; they are quickly taught recently penned ‘traditional’ work songs, and they stumble over anticapitalist slogans. For their part, they bribe the director for extra sandwiches, ad lib their own lines, and fall victim to their own incompetence. This all plays out in a way that seems almost like Soviet magical realism, but bears inescapable marks of not only the satirical humanist poet Hrabal became, but the wickedly absurd surrealist he started out as.

Much of what is portrayed in Mr. Kafka is the foolish reality of imposing a culture on an existing people from above: no matter how restrictive their roles, the people of Hrabal’s Prague carry around the comedy and the tragedy of their lives before the cult, and no degree of external tampering can force them into either repressing or correcting their own passions. They find ways of expressing themselves even through the maddening fog of industrial efficiencies and state planning, and even their incompetence stands as a sort of beacon of their humanity. Like Hrabal’s stories, they are shambolic and disorganized and wrapped up in the shortness of their own perspectives; but they are human, all too human, and like the poor humans who faced the state in another great Czech writer’s work, this is both their triumph and their failure.

[Chuck LoPresti · Rating 4 out of 5]

This reads like preparation for what was eventually Too Loud A Solitude which is a full 5 stars with ease. The steel mill becomes the center of the work. Metal is smelted and ingots are formed - then go through the cycle again. There are no heroes among the characters here - but instead time and change are observed in great detail that creates what we might call the beauty of life. Think Ensor's Entry Into Brussels for example - two parades collide and the result is a glorious mess that is on the surface ugly - but none the less glorious. I think experienced readers of Hrabal know that the murk and lurk of the characters will eventually give way to a transcendent moment when Hrabal's attention will eventually rise above the fray with something like the Eames film's focus that moves out in exponential increments - but still rooted in the same spot that was in focus in the first frames. It also reminds me of Bruno Schulz where the detritus of life is rearranged and examined to transcendent results.

[Yasmeen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not Too Loud a Solitude.

Towards the beginning and the end, there are some memorable moments- some of that somehow simultaneously cheerful and painful just-not-quite-right eeriness that I was looking forward to when I picked it up. But I found it difficult to really get into most of the middle stories- it might just be me, but I feel like they would hit a lot harder had they been read in their proper historical/political context. Not until "Beautiful Poldi," the very last part of the book, did I find myself eager to read more. Had this been my first introduction to Hrabal, though, I'm not sure I would have cared enough to look further into his work.

As it is, they weren't. And though these didn't have a truly profound impact on me or anything, I still do want to read more of his stuff.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little book of short stories, written just as the communists had seized power and were leading Czechoslovakia to a socialist nirvana.

The stories reflect peoples struggles as they adjust to the new truth. There are some powerful scenes - in particular the contrast where a stonemason repairs a church statue whilst in the distance he witnesses the destruction of a monstrously huge statue of Stalin, and the rape and reporting of a blind drunk young girl who is late in presenting herself to prison - but in truth I found the book patchy.

[Rhys · Rating 5 out of 5]

An utterly superb collection of stories by a truly remarkable writer. These tales are thematically linked and are muscular, disturbing, strange, lyrical and uplifting all at the same time. The atmosphere of postwar Prague and the steel works on the outskirts is evoked with remarkable skill. The Czech Republic has long been the source of much world class literature and genius writers. Hrabal is rapidly becoming my favourite Czech writer of all.

[Marta unmillondepaginas · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Una cadena pulida a manos de los obreros, eslabón tras eslabón, destellaba a la luz de tiras y cintas de sol que brotaban de las celosías en las torres de ventilación de la acería. Casi rozando el techo se alzaba una grúa, en cuya cabina dormitaba una gruista, su brazo blanco extendido y su cabeza decolorada apoyada en el codo. Un haz de luz seccionaba tanto el brazo como la cabeza”.

¿Puede haber una descripción de una fábrica tan perfecta como esta? De nuevo me meto en la maravillosamente poética prosa de Bohumil Hrabal. Después de su Trenes rigurosamente vigilados, que me cautivó absolutamente en 2021, llega a mis manos esta colección de siete cuentos nunca traducidos al español hasta ahora, ambientados en la Praga estalinista.

Hrabal, en su línea, mezcla el horror y la miseria con la locura, las sonrisas, lo esperpético, lo tierno y lo luminoso.

“En la metalúrgica Poldi, gente desesperada mantiene en alto una esperanza arrastrada por el barro. Por extraño que parezca, se sigue reinventando y amando la vida, incluso cuando el cerebro de papel de aluminio engendra imágenes distorsionadas y el pecho aplastado escupe miseria”.

Sus escenas están llenas de vida, combina como nadie las situaciones más desesperadas con un resurgir de esa la fuerza humana que nos hace enfrentarnos a la adversidad y sobrevivir pese a todo. Y no se ahorra detalles duros o imágenes violentas y sórdidas que hoy tal vez no se escribirían, o algún editor criticaría y eliminaría en la fase de corrección previa a la publicación. Hay jueces caídos en desgracia que aceptan felices su nueva vida, reclusas que tratan de huir de su destino a través del alcohol, brigadistas entregados, escultores decepcionados, un acomodador de cine que se transforma, un vendedor de juguetes, trabajadores del metal y recolectores de chatarra, gente inmunda, gente con esperanza, gente rara… Es un deleite leerlo.

Sus descripciones consiguen emocionarte con apenas unas palabras, una simple frase como esta encierra toda la belleza de una danza: “Era como si los bailarines se bebieran mutuamente la respiración…”

Mis relatos preferidos: Gente rara, El ángel y A través del tambor. ¿Cuáles son los vuestros?

[Steven R. Kraaijeveld · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Life is still magnificent as long as one maintains the illusion that an entire world can be conjured from a tiny patch of earth." (120)

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cool writing but there was way too much metaphorical stuff that I didn’t get. Maybe the book deserved five stars and it’s me that only deserves three stars?

[Alberto Martín de Hijas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Los relatos más "kafkianos" que le recuerdo a Hrabal (Tienen referencias bastante explícitas aparte de que transcurren en los años duros del Stalinismo en Checoslovaquia que fueron kafkianos de por si) Ese punto de surrealismo oprimente que se asocia con Kafka combina muy bien con el humor absurdo característico del autor en unos cuentos excelentes.

[Baz · Rating 3 out of 5]

As always I liked some stories more than others but overall, it’s a wonderful collection. Some of them are linked, and all of them share life in postwar communist Prague as their subject. As you can imagine there are hardships depicted within, but anyone who’s familiar with Hrabal knows that his world is one in which lightness and harshness are twined together. The stories are simultaneously affecting, disturbing, charming and amusing.

They are beautiful, and a couple of them are intensely poetic, as Hrabal initially intended them to be ‘epic poems’, and later reworked them as prose.

Hrabal has a big heart, and in his tales the characters, who are damaged traumatized souls, working at factories, are ennobled by his compassion and respect and love. Hrabal highlights the fullness, of the existence of art, in their mundane battered lives. There’s play, passion, and boldness.

“At the Poldi steelworks, hopeless people hold their muddied hopes aloft. Life, strangely enough, is constantly being reinvented, and loved, even though a tinfoil brain will bring forth crumpled images, and a trampled torso will ooze misery… Life is still magnificent as long as one maintains the illusion that an entire world can be conjured from a tiny patch of earth.”

“The world is full of art, it’s just a matter of knowing how to look around you and then surrendering to inexhaustible whisperings, to small details, to longing and desire.”

“I close my eyes and see that everything is quite different from how it appears, from what it is… Everything exists in the elasticity of perspective, and life itself is an illusion, deformation, perspective…”

Favourite stories were Strange People, Ingots, A Betrayal of Mirrors, and Breaking Through the Drum.

[jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

life, strangely enough, is constantly being reinvented and loved, even though the fruits of a tinfoil brain will be crumpled images and a trampled torso will ooze misery. and yet, it is still a beautiful thing when a man abandons dinner menus and calculating machines and his family and goes off to follow a beautiful star. life is still magnificent as long as one maintains the illusion that a whole world can be conjured from a tiny patch of earth.

containing seven stories written mostly in the 1950s (very early in hrabal's writing career), mr. kafka and other tales from the time of the cult (inzerát na dům, ve kterém už nechci bydlet -- or "want-ad for a house i no longer wish to live in") was originally published in 1965, the same year closely watched trains first saw print in its native language. the style, themes, and quotidian observations that would make the czech master's fiction so beloved are present, albeit in more incipient forms. set in post-war prague, hrabal's stories, as he would do for decades to come, concern the daily lives and happenings of his fellow townsfolk, many of whom spent their labors within the city's factories. with characteristic humor, grace, and compassion, hrabal conveys a rich, spirited milieu - one often contrasting with the socioeconomic and political climate of the time.

"i'll tell you what. i believe in people who wrestle with their fate," said the doctor of philosophy bitterly. "for me, there's nothing greater than that because ignorance - not knowing - reigns in my field too. the moment a philosopher comes up with a rational explanation of the universe, or of himself, he turns his back on it... lao tzu: the art of not knowing. socrates: i know that i know nothing. erasmus of rotterdam: in praise of folly. nicolas of cusa: docta ignorantia, learned ignorance. and what has our precious twentieth century given us? the revolt of the masses! and in art? we're happily going back to the time of the flood."

*translated from the czech by paul wilson (havel, klíma, škvorecký)
**fantastic cover art by portland artist/designer dan stiles

[paul holzman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and concise stories that personify factories from a Prague of the past. These same factories were the historic backbone and the bloodline to the industrial revolution that would forever knead the world into its most recent mold. Thankfully, Bohumil Hrabal generously envisages a Czechoslovakia quite unknown, or too difficult to know by the mildly curious Anglophone. This short story, much like the other translations of his work into the English, will coerce and foment a curiosity difficult to satiate. The western (English speaking reader) will find an upshot of communism foreign to the paradigmatic concept that unintentionally- in these short stories- brings philosophers, writers, doctors, criminals, women, and other common folk into a daily interaction. They work side by side in a grueling environment that requires excessive clothing and excessive exposure, creating a vulnerability to the systematic oppression and humanistic oppression already established by a more universal society.

However, the seemingly chaotic threads in these seven short stories must be taken into account. They leave the reader with a ware much like the ingots themselves– better conceived as shrines, meccas, or nebulas at the helm of an existence and essence of the eclectic group of individuals found throughout Mr. Kafka: And Other Tales from the Time of the Cult. The dichotomy of destruction and creation is beautifully narrated by a Hrabal, who himself was submitted to the democratically elected communist regime that delivered him into the crucible that would ironically forge his style and tone that would consequently establish him as a Czech writer; decisively severed from his influences. It cannot be denied, however, that Bohumil was continuously tempted to stray towards the surrealistic and western influence instilled in him early on. That is especially telling in his moments of poetic narration. God bless the hammer, the sickle and the Phrygian cap. God bless Bohumil Hrabal!

[James Klagge · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm always up for the latest translation of Hrabal.
These are stories from the 1950's and early 1960's--the first stories that Hrabal wrote. He is experimenting with various styles, and there are not the countless lyrical passages of his later writing. He uses stream-of-consciousness, alternating situations, and slice-of-life conversations at various points. There are some bright spots. "Strange People" is set in a steel recycling plant, and though the events are anything but attractive, Hrabal uses the light patterns to make the actions look like a ballet of moving light patterns. The one passage that made me laugh out load was his description of a man barfing (p. 94--but I won't spoil it by retelling it). The last 4 pages of the book come the closest to a lyrical passage.
Hrabal is a great advertisement for the value of real living as the best preparation for writing (as opposed to studying writing at a university). Hrabal worked as a rail worker during the war (from which came "Closely Watched Trains"), a manual laborer at Kladno Steelworks (from which came some of these stories), and a paper recycler ("Too Loud a Solitude"). These jobs were forced upon him, and he made the best of it. He manages to find beauty and fascination in the most ordinary circumstances. I think what fiction writers most need is the experience of something worth writing about.

[Olga · Rating 5 out of 5]

"At the Poldi steelworks, hopeless people hold their muddied hopes aloft...Life is still magnificent as long as one maintains the illusion that a whole world can be conjured from a tiny patch of earth."
Beautiful stories about moments of humanity in the bleak industrial setting of Stalinist Czechoslovakia. The title "Mr. Kafka" is not the original Czech name of the collection (the original title is Inzerát na dům, ve kterém už nechci bydlet/Advertisement for a House in Which I No Longer Want to Live), but is a fitting reflection of Hrabal's surrealism, which pays unmistakable tribute to the master himself.

[Brendan]

Rating: 3 1/2

A couple strong stories, a couple weak ones, with the rest somewhere in the middle.

Favorites:
"Mr. Kafka"
"Breaking Through the Drum"

Prague, its broken ribs in the river, moans in pain.
- "Mr. Kafka"

The newspapers, meanwhile, publish glowing accounts of the volunteer laborer who comes home from work and dances the Cossack Dance while sending mental telegrams of gratitude to the authorities, whereas in reality he coughs up black bile and collapses into his bed.
- "Beautiful Poldi"

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bohumil Hrabal is an odd kind of surrealist writer working in a steel mill under the last days of Communism in Czechoslovakia. His Mr Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult is mostly set at the Poldi steel mill north of Prague where Hrabal worked. His stories are surrealistic glimpses of Czech white collar workers who were required by the Stalinist regime to put in time turning scrap metal into steel ingots.

There is a great deal of humor here, plus some digs at the West that were de rigeur under the Kremlin rule at that time.

[Matt Bird · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wanna know what it was like to live in Stalinist Czechoslovakia in the 50's? Wanna hear it in a really atmospheric, describe-the-dirt-under-your-fingernails kinda way?

This was a lot of work for a teeny little book, and maybe a little emotionally draining... so I'll recommend it! But probably only for a select, committed few who are into this sort of stuff and like to brood in dark bars coffeeshop corners.

[Dymbula · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tuhle knihu miluju kdykoliv si ji čtu znova a znova. Kdoví pokolikáté již. Hrabal je pouliční fotograf vět a výjevů, které se mi nikdy neomrzí.
"Přešla prostitutka, krásná a v bílých šatech, jak anděl, otočila se a lusk jejích úst se rozpraskl a vysypal se bílý hrášek ve dvojstupu. Zatoužil jsem vyškrábat do jejího úsměvu několik barevných slov, domnívaje se, že si je ráno přečte v zrcadle, před kterým bude stát s kartáčkem na zuby."

[Bram · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not quite the jaw-dropping brilliance of Too Loud a Solitude or Closely Observed Trains but a very welcome addition to the limited English language translation of this Czech master. Moments of hilarity, moments of tragedy, moments of drudgery. In other words, the Communist experience in a nutshell.

[Ivana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Knižka poviedok prečítaná v rámci jednej výzvy.
Od Hrabala som nikdy nič iné nečítala a musím povedať, že keby som nemala odporúčania na ďalšie knihy, tak už si od neho asi nič neprečítam. Jazyk, hranie sa so slovami za to tie 3 hviezdy. Ale veľmi sme si s týmto dielkom nesadli. Prenechám iným.

[ger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderfully evocative, richly humorous and full of extraordinary language. Short early stories from a unique voice.

[terka · Rating 2 out of 5]

Když probírám se studenty Hrabala, tak jim vysvětluji, že Hrabal má takovou škálu srozumitelnosti - na tom nejsrozumitelnějším konci jsou Ostře sledované vlaky, na Hrabala velmi dějová a strukturovaná kniha. Postřižiny a Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále už tak daleko na škále nejsou, protože kromě děje mají i typické Hrabalovské odbočky a ukecané části. Takže moje škála by vypadala následovně:

Nesrozumitelné---------------------------------------------Srozumitelné

---------------------------Postřižiny---Obsluhoval....--Ostře sledované vlaky.

Kam bych tedy do této škály šoupla Inzerát na dům...? Úplně vlevo. Tohle bylo místy tak strašně poeticky abstraktní, že opravdu musím uznat (profesoři z mé alma mater prominou), že fakt nevím, co chtěl autor říct. Někde jsem tušila strukturu a pochopila autorovu hru, jinde už to bylo opravdu jako šifra - tak náročná, že už mě to ani nebavilo.

Pocity teda smíšené. Poslední povídka, Krásná Poldi, byla asi nejlepší, ale zbytek.... eh. Tohle je opravdu extrémní esence Hrabalovy estetiky.

[Il Pech · Rating 2 out of 5]

⭐⭐½


In questa raccolta di racconti Hrabal predilige una prosa parlata, ricca di dialoghi tra personaggi e gag che faticano a strappare mezza risata.
C'è un surrealismo d'ispirazione kafkiana mixato alla voglia di sperimentazione tipica del periodo ma purtroppo il risultato ricorda vagamente il Barthelme più confusionario e meno efficace. Poi, vabbè, Barthelme nasce e muore intellettuale, Hrabal è tutto un fabbrica e osteria che più popolare non si può.

Per fortuna gli ultimi due racconti della raccolta sono totalmente privi di dialoghi, hanno molto più ritmo e la prosa si fa finalmente Hrabaliana.

Nel complesso questa Inserzione è Distantissima dai suoi libri migliori, ma è interessante vedere un Bohumil che stava ricercando uno stile e non aveva ancora perfezionato quella voce unica e il suo caratteristico muro di testo che troviamo in Ho servito il re d'Inghilterra e Una solitudine troppo rumorosa

[Lila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Odpryski upodlenia spisane przez przetrąconego anioła. Hrabal lawiruje w labiryncie wyrywkowych rozmów i wielopłaszczyznowych metafor. Gorzki (a może groteskowy?) oniryzm oczami "tego sobowtóra w lustze" nie jest najlepszą lekturą do przełknięcia jesienią, ale czy istnieje piękniejsze wyznanie miłości niż to które zaczyna się słowami "Ciebie nienawidzę najmniej"?

[Grant Price · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth it just for "Beautiful Poldi", but I have to admit the surrealist politics went way over my head. Nice apocalyptic industrial vibes, though. Oh, and amazing job by the translator. I can't imagine how hard he must have had to work.

[Henry Bayle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un ejemplo de cómo retratar la realidad de un modo poético y surrealista.