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**jeargefef** · 06-09-2009, 11:40 AM

Closely Watched Trains was my first intro to Hrabal....
I started with it on the advice that it may be his most conventional work, and maybe his most famous (it was made into an Academy Award Winning movie in 1966). On one level it is a pretty straight forward story with a flashback or two, of the timid, bumbling young railroad dispatcher apprentice Milos Hrma. The depot is a microcosm of Czech life in the madness that is the Nazi occupation of 1946. Hrma to me is not as ‘simple’ as he seems. I would say he’s been emotionally flayed and significantly tries to become a ‘man’ in the world. His impotency is figurative as well as real. Hrma's as the narrator is the emotionally detached lens panning the scenes with little colloration, but given his distraction he renders it in the fashion of a often poetic daydream, so I can see where he comes off somewhat as a simpleton. The only thing that Hrabal has simplified is Hrma's emotional constructs. The reader gets to fill those 'gaps' in for themselves....

The characters also in the story level have their ‘types’ as Bjorn says, a clown, a casanova and a slut, but they are also more than caricatures by a wide margin, we are made to glimpse their fragile attempts to escape the imposed unreality to at least visualize a semblance of a future as in Hublika's "cloud writing" projections of his fantasy reality in the sky. The pigeon-encrusted station master tries to keep his sanity after conflicts by stomping upstairs in the depot and shouting tirades down the air vent shaft to his staff, as if he’s God shouting down from the heavens. Besides the 'Polish' Pigeons, which are pretty much the only form of life not subject to human attrocity, the domestic animals are abused, maimed and mistreated through out, as at one point, the SS call the Czechs ‘bestial’ and later the Nazis are referred to as ‘beasts’..
The Pargeter translated prose borders on the poetic. Sadness and humor in almost every sentence. One awesome novel...with a powerful ending that will be emotion-filled for some, or possibly a bit over-reaching for others...

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06-09-2009, 11:40 AM	#6
jeargefef Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 649 Senior Member	Closely Watched Trains was my first intro to Hrabal.... I started with it on the advice that it may be his most conventional work, and maybe his most famous (it was made into an Academy Award Winning movie in 1966). On one level it is a pretty straight forward story with a flashback or two, of the timid, bumbling young railroad dispatcher apprentice Milos Hrma. The depot is a microcosm of Czech life in the madness that is the Nazi occupation of 1946. Hrma to me is not as ‘simple’ as he seems. I would say he’s been emotionally flayed and significantly tries to become a ‘man’ in the world. His impotency is figurative as well as real. Hrma's as the narrator is the emotionally detached lens panning the scenes with little colloration, but given his distraction he renders it in the fashion of a often poetic daydream, so I can see where he comes off somewhat as a simpleton. The only thing that Hrabal has simplified is Hrma's emotional constructs. The reader gets to fill those 'gaps' in for themselves.... The characters also in the story level have their ‘types’ as Bjorn says, a clown, a casanova and a slut, but they are also more than caricatures by a wide margin, we are made to glimpse their fragile attempts to escape the imposed unreality to at least visualize a semblance of a future as in Hublika's "cloud writing" projections of his fantasy reality in the sky. The pigeon-encrusted station master tries to keep his sanity after conflicts by stomping upstairs in the depot and shouting tirades down the air vent shaft to his staff, as if he’s God shouting down from the heavens. Besides the 'Polish' Pigeons, which are pretty much the only form of life not subject to human attrocity, the domestic animals are abused, maimed and mistreated through out, as at one point, the SS call the Czechs ‘bestial’ and later the Nazis are referred to as ‘beasts’.. The Pargeter translated prose borders on the poetic. Sadness and humor in almost every sentence. One awesome novel...with a powerful ending that will be emotion-filled for some, or possibly a bit over-reaching for others...++ ---
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