[h0ldem]

On reading ?Too Loud A Solitude?; a short imagined dialogue.

- What the hell are we supposed to do about Haňt'a?

- What do you mean?

- I mean that the old coot has completely misunderstood his job. How hard can it be? He?s supposed to sit in his cellar, have all the literature that we deem unnecessary or untimely delivered to him, put it in his hydraulic press and compress it so it can be recycled to print new books.

- And? Are you saying he doesn?t do that?

- Well sure, he does, at least for the most part, but... he reads them first! What?s the point of destroying dangerous or outdated books if someone still reads them? He sits there in his cellar, compressing the world?s literature into little bite-size bricks that almost give him indigestion, but he keeps reading them with a complete lack of respect for proper control by authorities or experts. And he even seems to have the gall to hint that we treat people the same way he treats the mice that nest in his piles of books.

- The nerve of some people. We just want what?s best for everyone. What does he do to the mice?

- Throws them in the press along with the books. Squish.

- Damn. Oh, remind me again: what are we supposed to do with the books we print on the recycled paper?

- Recycle them and print new ones, of course. But more efficiently. We need books that pass through the system easier. The goal must be a literature that?s as smooth and free of fibers as possible, the sort of literature that we could just as easily drive directly from the printer?s to the recycling plant since it doesn?t really make any difference whether or not someone reads it.

- So is that what happens in Too Loud A Solitude?

- That?s a strange way of putting it. ?Happens.? A book is just a stack of papers and ink, it doesn?t ?happen.? The problem is that the wrong books might give people the idea that they can make things happen.

- Are you saying Haňt'a is dangerous?

- Oh no, not him personally, he?s much too old and has his head too full of old philosophers for that. But it?s a matter of principle: readers are untrustworthy bastards. That cellar Haňt'a works in is just supposed to be a place of work, a dusty, noisy, industrial building, and instead it becomes sort of a metaphor for all the knowledge we?d rather people didn?t have, all the thoughts we?re trying to stop them from thinking...

- Careful. You?re getting pretentious.

- I know. Sorry. I should probably read a murder mystery or something. Instead I read Too Loud A Solitude, and I can?t get rid of it. It?s somewhere down there in my cellar, and it won?t go away.

- Right. So... let?s just toss it in the hydraulic press. Problem solved.

- We can?t.

- What do you mean we can?t? It?s only about 100 pages.

- Exactly. It?s already so compact, you can?t really compress it any more. And I think it might be too great to fit in the press anyway.

- Can?t we burn it?

- Manuscripts don?t burn.

- I'm sorry, what did you say?

- Oh, um... nothing. Let?s just have Haňt'a retire, OK?

[MzTT]

5 stars indeed.

Fantastic book. A few pages in I wasn't sure I was "getting" the novel. Apparently I wasn't. Yet. Shortly thereafter I couldn't put it down. Hant'a was a fantastic narrator. On the whole the book was a fun, almost intoxicating read. Is the destruction of culture fodder for hilarity? In Hrabal's hands, yes. This was my introduction to the the writer and I'm looking forward to the rest of his oeuvre.

[iceleliewBync]

Fantastic review.

[jeargefef]

Just finished this. Beautiful, funny, sad, tweaked, and just a great great novel. I only wish that he had written about 10 more books.
Five big stars all the way.

I also read the first piece, The Magic Flute, (which is in a way a lead in to Too Loud a Solitude), from Total Fears, his quasi-memoir, its also first rate. What a writer.