#96: The Good Soldier Svejk

If I had to explain The Good Soldier Svejk in one sentence, I couldn't do it. It's dark comedy (in fact, a comic strip at one point).  It's political, and it's tragic.  It's historical fiction that spotlights a slice of military relations during the first World War.  If irony and comedy and horror combined, The Good Soldier Svejk would surely be the offspring.

Even the main character, Josef Svejk (last name pronounced "Shvayk") cannot be pinned by a single representation. At times, he appears as a hopeless idiot while at other times, he proves himself to be completely intelligent and adept.  From what I've read, this book is as confused and unfinished as its writer, Jaroslav Hasek, who went from being a scholar to a bum to an anarchist to a writer to a soldier to a communist and back to an anarchist and writer.

How, then, can such a book make it on the list of the best 100 novels of all time?  O ho, my friends, only a person who has not read it would ask such a question!  It's popular because it's powerful.  The Good Soldier Svejk was almost unknown during the writer's lifetime (he died before finishing it).  Unsurprisingly, many did not take kindly to the fact that Jaroslav Hasek was quick to poke fun at the horrors for which they had all so recently endured.  Furthermore, the imbecilic character of Svejk did little to promote the esteem of the Czech countrymen, but even worse was his representation of the Austrio-Hungarian military. 

It would be like if someone wrote a funny story about the incompetent U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and made the common soldier look like he was one step away from institutionalization.  We can laugh now, but I wonder if die-hard Czech patriots aren't still cursing the name of Jaroslav Hasek!

Jaroslav Hasek took a blight on his country's history and he exploited it for all its possibilities.  He wasn't afraid of controversy, and because of it, he lived much of his lifetime in drunkenness, shame, and poverty.  Ah, well.  Such is the sacrifice for good literature, right friends?

What I Loved...
was the comedy.  Svejk possesses a bumbling curiosity and proudly declares himself a half-wit.  The fact that he is in the army at all is apt to induce humor.  He is a likable dude, and his storytelling skills are exemplary.  But there are times when he is amazingly clever.  The police become desperate to trap Svejk into committing treason.  Since Svejk is a dog trader in civilian life, they try to make friends with him and buy his dogs.

      The St. Bernard was a mixture of mongrel poodle and a common street cur; the fox-terrier had the ears of a dachshund and was the size of a butcher's dog, with bandy legs as though it had suffered from rickets.  The head of the Leonberger recalled the hairy muzzle of a stable pinscher.  It had a stubbed tail, was the height of a dachshund and had bare hindquarters like the famous naked American dogs.
     Later detective Kalous came to buy a dog and returned with a wildly staring monster which was reminiscent of a spotted hyena with the mane of a collie...

And then, things just seem to work themselves out for Svejk:

     And that was the end of the famous detective Bretschneider.  When he had seven monsters of this kind in his flat, he shut himself up with them in the back room and starved them so long that they finally gobbled him up.

Svejk and his cronies are hilarious. There is so much humor worthy of showing you here that all I can say is that you have to read the book.  Sadly, another aspect of the book that I can only talk about and not fully portray are the pictures!  Didn't I mention that The Good Soldier Svejk was turned into a comic strip?  Due to Czech copyright laws, I can't show any of the pictures here even if I critique them, so all I can do is repeat:  you have to get the book.

And I think we all know how much I love history!  I gobbled up every page that profiled the trials of the Austrio-Hungarian military during World War I...and I sometimes got a good chuckle out of it, which is rare for historical fiction.  Like when the soldiers are given a motivational speech, Svejk makes his assessment:

     "Won't it be marvelous when, like the chaplain said, the day draws to its close, the sun with its golden beams sets behind the mountains, and on the battlefields are heard, as he told us, the last breath of the dying, the death-rattle of the fallen horses, the groans of the wounded and wailing of the population, as their cottages burn over their heads."

I don't know how to react to that.  Should I laugh or cry?  I think it depends on whether or not you see the glass as half-empty or half-full.

What I Hated...
was the drunken rambling.  My copy of The Good Soldier Svejk is 800 pages long.  I'm estimating that a good 15% of it is nonsense--and that is a conservative figure.  While entertaining, there are times when the writer's vices (Hasek was an alcoholic) show itself clearly on these pages.  Frankly, we could trim this book back by quite a bit and not lose a shred of significance.  Here is just one example of a character who is clearly as drunk as the writer:

     "It doesn't burn," he said despondently, when he had used up a whole box of matches.  "You're blowing it."
     But at that moment he lost the thread again and started to laugh: "This is a lark.  We're alone in the tram, aren't we, my dear colleague?"  He began to rummage in his pockets.
     "I've lost my ticket," he shouted.  "Stop, I must find my ticket!"
     He waved his hand resignedly:  "All right, let's go on..."
     He then began to wander:  "In the vast majority of cases...Yes, all right...In all cases...You're quite wrong...Second floor?...That's just an excuse...It's not my concern, but yours, my dear madam...Bill, please...I had a black coffee!"

And it goes on like this for six pages.  From what I can discern, there are no purposes for these moments except that the writer was wasted off his butt, thought he was hilarious, and wanted to fill pages.

But the worst part about this book is that it is unfinished.  Jaroslav Hasek was an interesting character who lived hard.  He possessed an inherent hatred for authority and alternated between being respectable and being repugnant.  He was a lawless drunk who, for much of his life, was forced to live under the radar and among the homeless.  He didn't necessarily take care of his health.  So, it happens that the writer dies and The Good Soldier Svejk ends abruptly before Svejk's battalion even makes it to the battlefront.  What would we have seen there, I wonder.  What piece of history will never be shown because the writer did not live long enough?

What's Next?

Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White.  I know next to nothing about this book except that it supposedly started the whole genre of mystery fiction.  Just think, Sherlock Holmes may have never existed had it not been for this book.  Let's get a preview and check out the trailer:

#98: The Three Musketeers

I was wrong.  This was my first time reading The Three Musketeers.  I recognized my mistake right away.  For instance, if you haven't read the book, but have only seen crappy reconstructions in various forms, did you know that d'Artagnan, the main character, is not even a member of "The Three Musketeers"?!   What crack was Alexandre Dumas smoking when he came up with his title?  Talk about misleading!  But you want to know what isn't misleading?  The fact that this book has been applauded for over a century and is #98 on the list of the best novels of all time.  I can see why.

(Check out The Book Club Book's new quiz, Which Musketeer Are You? )

What I Loved...
was the villain.  No, not Cardinal Richelieu.  He's a sad puppy dog compared to the real star of this book, the evil Milady Clarik de Winter.  Beautiful, seductive, brilliant, and with a soul as black as onyx, her vengeance was her downfall.  Like everyone else, I was as drawn to her as I was repulsed.  Watch her stalk her prey:
  
Then Milady collected all her energies, murmuring in the depths of her soul the name of Felton--the only beam of light that penetrated to her in the hell into which she had fallen; and like a serpent which folds and unfolds its rings to ascertain its strength, she enveloped Felton beforehand in the thousand meshes of her inventive imagination.
 
I was disappointed when she met her end with the Musketeers' revenge.  C'mon, don't lie!  You wanted the coyote to catch the roadrunner just as much as I did!

Aside from enjoying Milady's escapades, I also loved the lackeys, particularly d'Artagnan's lackey, Planchet.  Poor, 17th century lackeys.  The most they could ever hope for in life was to be the lowly servant of a great man, and in the (four) Musketeers, they could not have hoped for better.  But still, wouldn't it suck to stand on the sidelines, forever faithful, and never receive a bit of notoriety for the part you play in your master's successes?  And I'm not sure their treatment deserves so much devotedness.

D'Artagnan did reflect, and resolved to thrash Planchet provisionally; which he did with the conscientiousness that d'Artagnan carried into everything. After having well beaten him, he forbade him to leave his service without his permission.

Geez, let's tone it down a little.  This apparently took place before the Lackey's Union reformed the industry and ensured safe working conditions for lackeys everywhere.

What I Hated...
was Porthos.  Seriously, Dumas, you could have kept the title, "The Three Musketeers".  All you had to do was ditch Porthos from the story forever.  Let us ask ourselves, did he ever do anything to advance the plot of this story, was he necessary, cunning, useful in any way???  No, no, no, and no.  Ditch him.  Milady knows, just ask her:

"...tell him that among these four men two only are to be feared--d'Artagnan and Athos; tell him that the third, Aramis, is the lover of Madame de Chevreuse--he may be left alone, we know his secret, and it may be useful; as to the fourth, Porthos, he is a fool, a simpleton, a blustering booby, not worth troubling himself about." 

Well said, Milady.  I knew I liked you!  By the way, if you take the Which Musketeer Are You? quiz, and you get Porthos, I am truly sorry.  It isn't that you're a bad person  It's just...maybe "musketeering" isn't the best profession for you.

And then, being that I don't hate myself or my gender, I had a problem with the sexism.  Sure, The Three Musketeers made its appearance in the mid-1800's.  It was a different world, as they tell me.  That doesn't mean my blood doesn't run a little hot when I read things like this:

It is with valets as with wives, they must be placed at once upon the footing in which you wish them to remain. 

Hmm, I don't have to wonder as to why so many married women had lovers.  It wasn't a crime to bully your wife back then.  Laissez-faire?  I say, lasso their ass up and put them in jail!

What's Next?
I'm now reading Bram Stoker's Dracula, and I'm not much excited.  This will be the third time I've read this book, the first being when I was eight-years-old, and the last being just two years ago.  Ugh!  I detest to read a book more than once!  Isn't it enough that I've already broken that rule, but now, I'm going so far as to read it for a third time?  Well, I will do it, and do you know why?  Because I made a commitment, and I would not want to disappoint you, Dear Reader.  Undoubtedly, I will speed-read through this one.  There isn't much risk of missing anything.  I'll be surprised if I don't have the book memorized by the time I'm done!

#100: Gone with the Wind

Well, I made it.  I just spent eight days in Civil War-torn Georgia with Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler.  I'm tired, I'm downtrodden, and I'm heartbroken.  I'm so upset that I almost don't want to talk about it and just cast this post aside with a flip of my hair and a promise to think of everything tomorrow.  But I'm no "Scarlett".


What I Loved... 
was the incredibly rich, historical detail.  If you have only seen the movie, you haven't come close to revealing the true historical significance of Gone With the Wind.  It was published in 1936, and author Margaret Mitchell wasn't even born until almost 40 years after the setting for this book, so one wonders:  How did she get her information?  Well, it's rumored that she spent seven years writing the book and a further eight months just on research.  She was also raised in Georgia amid a hoard of Civil War veterans.  I'm guessing she picked up a thing or two.  

Being aYankee myself, it's easy for me to take the Civil War's impact for granted.  Our history textbooks say we freed the slaves and a war was fought, which appears momentous enough.  It seems a charming one-liner to justify a good cause.  But ugh, wars are so much uglier when you start looking at them more closely!  Worse, the lines of wrong and right, instead of getting clearer, just tend to become blurrier when examined under a microscope.  Yes!  The South needed to give up its slaves!  But did the North really have to crush them, ground them into the red dirt that they loved so much?  If the North was 100% pure in its motivations for war, why did the blacks still face so much discrimination in the northern territories?  Maybe Rhett Butler was right when he said,

“It isn’t the darkies, Scarlett. They’re just the excuse. There’ll always be wars because men love wars. Women don’t, but men do--yea, passing the love of women.” 

But maybe Scarlett was right:

When she looked at Tara she could understand, in part, why wars were fought. Rhett was wrong when he said men fought wars for money. No, they fought for swelling acres, softly furrowed by the plow, for pastures green with stubby cropped grass, for lazy yellow rivers and white houses that were cool amid magnolias. These were the only things worth fighting for, the red earth which was theirs and would be their sons’, the red earth which would bear cotton for their sons and their sons’ sons.

What I Hated...
was the obvious, prevailing racism in the book.  Like when Scarlett's old friend, Tony Fontaine says:


“But the worst thing was the way he kept the darkies stirred up. If anybody had told me I’d ever live to see the day when I’d hate darkies! Damn their black souls, they believe anything those scoundrels tell them and forget every living thing we’ve done for them. Now the Yankees are talking about letting the darkies vote. And they won’t let us vote. Why, there’s hardly a handful of Democrats in the whole County who aren’t barred from voting, now that they’ve ruled out every man who fought in the Confederate Army. And if they give the negroes the vote, it’s the end of us. Damn it, it’s our state! It doesn’t belong to the Yankees! By God, Scarlett, it isn’t to be borne! And it won’t be borne! We’ll do something about it if it means another war. Soon we’ll be having nigger judges, nigger legislators--black apes out of the jungle--”

It makes my skin crawl.  But then I remember, Margaret Mitchell isn't telling me that I should be racist, she is merely giving us a reflection of the South during the Civil War and wrong as it may be, that's how it was and to gloss it over is to be ignorant. 

In addition to racism, another thing that bothered me was Scarlett's complete disinterest in others (with the exception of Ashley) and more importantly, her lack of feeling toward her children.  Like when her "favorite" child dies, Scarlett says that she wishes it was her other daughter!  What kind of mother wishes that?  The memory of her unloved children will haunt me.


And then, of course, there was Rhett's complete disrespect and meanness.  Yes, I felt the customary sadness at the end when he vows to leave and says he doesn't love her anymore, but through the majority of the book, I was appalled at how he treated her!  It serves him right that he got his heart broken, if you ask me.  And why did the book end like it did?  Because Scarlett always gets what she wants and of course, we know that they will reconcile, with time, and live a boring, happy life from that moment forward.  At least, that's what I'm telling myself. :)

What's Next?
Sir Aruthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, and I couldn't be more relieved.  After spending eight days breaking my heart with Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, I really need a Sherlock Holmes mystery, with an ensured happy ending, to brighten my mood.  Mysteries always end well, don't they?  Don't they??