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Title: Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal, Michael Henry Heim ISBN: 0-15-690458-6 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.35 (17 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Too Loud a Solitude
Comment: Simply brilliant! Hrabal's story is a stunning piece of work told through the eyes of one of the most interesting charactors in literature. I have read the short novel at least once a year for philosophic ispiration and to take joy in the love of books, like the main charactor. When I finish I am left in wonder at how the western world has overlooked Hrabal for so long. What a poetic and marvelous book!
Rating: 4
Summary: It is from books I've learned the heavens are not humane
Comment: "For thirty-five years now I've been in wastepaper, and it's my love story." The narrator of Too Loud a Solitude expounds on his philosophy of life, of knowledge of books in this beautifully written and deeply rich and ironic book. He begins each chapter with a purposeful repetition, reminding us that he has been hard at work for 35 years, and this is his whole life. Although the book meanders without much plot, the metaphors put to work here are things of beauty, despite the fact that we are reading it in translation. "...When I read, I don't really read; I pop a beautiful sentence in my mouth and suck at it like a fruit drop..." The juxtaposition of art rotting among garbage is clear and prevalent throughout the book.
Hrabal's narrator spins brief vignettes about events in his life, "portrait of the artist as an old mushroom face", always coming back to the idea of heaven. "Neither the heavens are humane nor is life above or below-- or within me." Or, "The heavens are not humane, but I'd forgotten compassion and love." Or better still, as the narrator begins to feel the hopeless feeling of technology and progress encroaching on his insular world, as books were destroyed vigorously, indifferently, thoughtlessly, "The heavens may be far from humane, but I'd had about all I could take." The new automated hydraulic wastepaper compactors had filled him with a shock; there was nothing human left in their work. No one stopped to savor the content of the waste. He realized it was the death knell not only for smaller compactors but to his way of life.
He describes how he received his education from these books unwittingly over the 35 years he has worked in this job, committing what he calls "crimes against books". But it was in this way that he came to see the beauty of destruction.
"How much more beautiful it must have been in the days when the only place a thought could make its mark was the human brain and anybody wanting to squelch ideas had to compact human heads, but even that wouldn't have helped because real thoughts come from outside and travel with us like the noodle soup we take to work; in other words, INQUISITORS BURN BOOKS IN VAIN. If a book has anything to say, it burns with a quiet laugh..."
"It never ceased to amaze me, until suddenly one day I felt beautiful and holy for having had the courage to hold on to my sanity after all I'd seen and been through, body and soul, in too loud a solitude, and slowly I came to the realization that my work was hurtling me headlong into an infinite field of omnipotence."
Rating: 5
Summary: hrabl is great
Comment: it is amazing how much he accomplishes in such a short book and the diversity of his writing is amazing as well. this book is very not hollywood for example (as you will see) but "closely watched trains" which is also wonderful is very hollywood style. i served the king of england is in yet another style altogether. very beautiful stuff. i wish i could read it in the chezch because i am sure the language would be quite a bit more poetic. if you read more of his stuff you will see that he has a very weird unexplainable obsession with pigeons but other than that his novels make perfect sense.
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Title: Closely Watched Trains (European Classics) by Bohumil Hrabal, Edith Pargeter, Josef Skvorecky ISBN: 0810112787 Publisher: Northwestern Publishing House Pub. Date: 01 March, 1995 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal ISBN: 0679727868 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 November, 1990 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Total Fears Letters to Dubenka by Bohumil Hrabal, James Naughton ISBN: 8090217192 Publisher: Twisted Spoon Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.50 |
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Title: The Engineer of Human Souls by Josef Skvorecky, Paul Wilson ISBN: 1564781992 Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Good Soldier Svejk and His Fortunes in the World War (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by Jaroslav Hasek ISBN: 0140182748 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1985 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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