[Metrujectiktus]

Closely Observed Trains is a novella by Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, Bjorn has written up four of his other works which hopefully will get linked to this post.

Closely Observed Trains is the story of a young railway signalman working on a very small but strategically important railway station in the dog days of WW2. It's a comic novel in parts, often very funny, but mixed with the tragic and indeed the horrific throughout. It's not quite right to say it's a black comedy, some of the comedy is almost slapstick, but it is a mix of the comic and the very black indeed.

It's well written, and in the Abacus edition I read ably translated by Edith Pargeter, better known as Ellis Peters.

Our protagonist, Milo? Hrma, is concerned with losing his virginity, is dealing with the fallout from Dispatcher Hubicka's action using all the official stamps in the station on the backside of the telegraphist, is almost shot by the SS because a train nominated as being for close observation due to its importance got held up on the line and then shot up by partisans. As all this and more happens, we come across issues of collaboration, resistance and simply living ordinary life under military occupation.

The work is, despite its brevity, full of life, yet also with death constantly near. Milo? encounters a lot of death, of animals and men, but in the midst of it all there is humour and life, yet without falling into sentimentality.

I write it up in more considered form on my blog here, it's a very short work by an author not as well recognised as perhaps he should be, and I recommend it.

[zlopikanikanza]

Recently I've heard a lot of this author and based in what I've read about him it sounds really appealing. Could you tell me which of his works are a better start and which novel can be considered his masterpiece. I'd really appreciate it from you or Bjorn who seem to be the experts on this topic.

[Metrujectiktus]

This is the only one I've read, so Bjorn may be your better bet for a good answer, that said this is less than 100 pages, it's a good translation and it's an easy to relate to subject matter.

His two most famous works (not necessarily his best regarded by critics of course) are Closely Observed Trains and I Served the King of England. I've just placed an order for the second of those two, but it will probably be a few months before I read it.

I'm happy for Bjorn to correct me, but I bought Closely because like you I'd heard lots about Hrabal and wasn't sure where to start. It worked for me, so it may well for you too, one advantage of a shorter work is if it turns out you don't like the author at least you're not 500 pages down before you find out...

[Ruiceara]

I haven't read Closely Observed Trains, but I've read everything by Hrabal I could get my hands on (5 or 6 novels/novellas, I think) and of those I'd probably recommend I Served the King of England or Too Loud A Solitude as good starting points; the latter is a masterpiece IMO, but the former might be slightly more accessible. Then again, the only one I wouldn't recommend is Dancing Lessons For The Advanced In Age, which came across as a failed experiment (a 100-page novella consisting of one interminable sentence); apart from that one, I've yet to read anything by Hrabal I didn't love.

Thanks for the write-up on this, Max, I'm going to have to dig this one up. I know what you mean about Hrabal's weird mix of very serious subjects and silly - bordering on obscene - slapstick humour; showing a gleefully sharp lack of respect for the society he lived in. (In one chapter of I Served The King of England, our intrepid anti-hero, who's been on just about every side there is in mid-20th century Central Europe, is released from jail together with another survivor, and it's all played more or less for laughs until they arrive at the other man's former home town and can't find it... turns out the town is Lidice.) It's a tradition that echoes in a lot of dissident literature, of course - the underdog laughing in his oppressor's face, or at least behind his back, and hiding the serious meaning behind jokes - but Hrabal manages better than most to have the two balance out in a way that gives his books a more general meaning than just "the current government of the CSSR sucks;" the absurdity of life under the boot. Come for the dick jokes, stay for the cold showers.

[Ruiceara]

Repeating some things Max said above, but:

Closely Observed Trains (Ostře sledovan? vlaky, 1965)

It's short and to the point, boiling down to a big bang finale that might be straight out of an action movie within just over 100 pages, covering some very heavy subjects (war, resistance, holocaust) in between... and yet it manages to lull you into a false sense of security with its burlesque charm. Like all of Hrabal's heroes, the young train station attendant Milo? Hrma comes across as a pretty simple guy - both in the sense of not having any huge aspirations and in the sense of not being the sharpest tool in the shed - and the people he works with are a collection of originals who add to the at times almost obscene slapstick humour. The dispatcher is a casanova, the telegraphist a slut, the stationmaster doesn't care about anything but his pigeons, and Milo? is just trying to work up the courage to lose his virginity to the cute conductor on one of the trains.

It just happens to be winter 1945 and the Germans are all but running in orderly panic from the Eastern front, and many of them have to pass through the little Czech town where Milo? and his colleagues are required to keep the trains running on time. And the Czech resistance is starting to see the light in the tunnel, but you know what they say...

...It's just a freight train coming your way.

[jeargefef]

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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[Ruiceara]

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

Oh, absolutely, I didn't mean to imply they were just their types. Hrabal always does this; he depicts multi-faceted characters through a joke mirror, with brash colours and pratfall jokes, yet he always gives you enough to see the very real person behind the mirror. Nothing's ever as simple as it seems. Thanks for correcting me on that; I tend to take that for granted when reading him.