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3.9 AVERAGE
3.9 AVERAGE
It's not often I can find a book that make me laugh out loud. The character is unique, however, there were a couple areas where the intent of the narrator and the character seemed to clash. The book could have used a couple more edits, however, the comedy of the book makes it worthwhile.
To channel me inner Svejk, I humbly report that I wish that the writer was able to finish the book, even if he had died. Back in Prague, there was a popular novelist who died. Luckily, his widow kept finding the next few pages hidden in drawers throughout the house. Eventually, she found entire novels. The next couple novels became so successful, that no one realized that the writer had died till years after.
To channel me inner Svejk, I humbly report that I wish that the writer was able to finish the book, even if he had died. Back in Prague, there was a popular novelist who died. Luckily, his widow kept finding the next few pages hidden in drawers throughout the house. Eventually, she found entire novels. The next couple novels became so successful, that no one realized that the writer had died till years after.
This is a really funny book. It's got very much the absurdist comedy I enjoy and feels very similar in tone to Candide, another work I similarly enjoy.
One of the more bizarre anti-war books, probably worthy of a rereading.
Not going to lie, this got a bit boring during end of second book and a good part of the third, but it still was enjoyable read and can easily breeze through.
The experience of reading good soldier is intimate and not as intense as much of its contemporary makes it out to be. When it comes to war, our reading experiences surround the horrors of its aftermath or during on people or soldiers. But there are some books out there like the one by Joe Sacco that deals with everyday life of those who are affected by the war and are pulled into it purely because of their geography. Good Soldier is that book where we see the banality of everyday life of a soldier who were mostly drafted, had no inclination for war nor any interest. The character Svejk is one such soldier who was let go based on mental health reasons. He is self-aware, intelligent, witty and clever when situation demands it. But he puts up a front of idiocy and naive innocence which is very hard to get through as the combination becomes an almost impenetrable shield.
With this shield in place, Svejk very early on, since the very first chapter, starts on his journey in the war that's inevitable and the life that comes with it, traumatic. His prophetic perspective on impending doom that lies ahead of them after assassination of the Archduke is the start of his intelligence on display and it continues in a subtle variance of biting sarcasm and satire.
Svejk makes an interesting storyteller and a traveling companion. It only makes me wonder what he would think of the modern warfare.
The experience of reading good soldier is intimate and not as intense as much of its contemporary makes it out to be. When it comes to war, our reading experiences surround the horrors of its aftermath or during on people or soldiers. But there are some books out there like the one by Joe Sacco that deals with everyday life of those who are affected by the war and are pulled into it purely because of their geography. Good Soldier is that book where we see the banality of everyday life of a soldier who were mostly drafted, had no inclination for war nor any interest. The character Svejk is one such soldier who was let go based on mental health reasons. He is self-aware, intelligent, witty and clever when situation demands it. But he puts up a front of idiocy and naive innocence which is very hard to get through as the combination becomes an almost impenetrable shield.
With this shield in place, Svejk very early on, since the very first chapter, starts on his journey in the war that's inevitable and the life that comes with it, traumatic. His prophetic perspective on impending doom that lies ahead of them after assassination of the Archduke is the start of his intelligence on display and it continues in a subtle variance of biting sarcasm and satire.
Svejk makes an interesting storyteller and a traveling companion. It only makes me wonder what he would think of the modern warfare.
This book is in 4 volumes, and really my rating is 5 stars for volume 1, 1 star for volume 2, and I didn't even start reading volumes 3 and 4. The first volume would make a lovely (and already fairly long) stand-alone novel, in which Hašek uses Svejk as a sort of universal "wise fool" character to show up the stupidity of everyone else around him, imperialism, reverence for royalty, patriotism and war. It's lightly written, but often quite cutting, and for a few hundred pages it's a delightful read. The trouble is, by the end of volume 1 it's already starting to get repetitive, so volume 2 became a real slog, and ultimately I lost patience with Svejk's monologues and gave up.
The tale of a Czech soldier in the army of the Austro-Hungarian army during the first world war, this is both very long at 750+ pages and incomplete, due to the untimely demise of Hasek in 1923. I started reading it last spring, and while it is very well written (and presumably very well translated), I couldn't get into it at all. After about 200 pages, I started to see glimpses of why it is often heralded as a ancestor of Catch-22, but I was finding it a huge slog. It prompted this exchange at the time;
I wrote:
On 'the Good Soldier Svejk' atm. Not really enjoying it. First 200 pages were , it's improved a bit - to the point where I can see why it's heralded as a forerunner to Catch 22, but still not really liking it.
Scruff wrote:
Yeah I struggled. Got to about 5/600 pages and moved onto something else. It's wonderfully written, but there's only so many times I can read:
Svejk gets in a bit of bother
Svejk bores his captor with an anecdote
Captor becomes enraged
Svejk gets in trouble with captor's superior
Svejk is ok again
And I agreed entirely with Scruff. I made it to the end of part 2, 450 pages in, then set it aside. As part of the "clear my backlog" book challenge I've set for this year, I picked it up again recently with a certain amount of trepidation. Whether it was the break or a change in the book, I much preferred the second half. I think the issue parts one and two had was that every few pages the entire supporting cast would change, as Svejk would move to a different village to meet new guys in the pub and get into trouble with someone else. O the flip side, part three finds the company he belongs to on a long train journey, and settles down on a central cast of about 10 guys, split between the officers and their staffs.
I think this made it much better, because you got to know some of the other characters in a way I felt never happened in the first half of the book, and the comedy was then knowing how they would react and seeing it unfold anyway. Rather than the pointless anecdotes of Svejk being the driver of the comedy, they transformed into a vessel to laugh at the others just as Lt. Dub or Baloun. After this, even when the book again resorted to taking Svejk somewhere new, I thought it worked much better. Or I just came at it much fresher than the first half
Either way, it's well written, and there are plenty of funny moments in here, it's just that much of it is hidden behind a slog of repetitive situations that grate a little after a while.
6/10 as a provisional rating, I may go back and read the first half again at some point to see if it's as bad as I remember
PS: Some of the pictures are brilliant tbf
I wrote:
On 'the Good Soldier Svejk' atm. Not really enjoying it. First 200 pages were , it's improved a bit - to the point where I can see why it's heralded as a forerunner to Catch 22, but still not really liking it.
Scruff wrote:
Yeah I struggled. Got to about 5/600 pages and moved onto something else. It's wonderfully written, but there's only so many times I can read:
Svejk gets in a bit of bother
Svejk bores his captor with an anecdote
Captor becomes enraged
Svejk gets in trouble with captor's superior
Svejk is ok again
And I agreed entirely with Scruff. I made it to the end of part 2, 450 pages in, then set it aside. As part of the "clear my backlog" book challenge I've set for this year, I picked it up again recently with a certain amount of trepidation. Whether it was the break or a change in the book, I much preferred the second half. I think the issue parts one and two had was that every few pages the entire supporting cast would change, as Svejk would move to a different village to meet new guys in the pub and get into trouble with someone else. O the flip side, part three finds the company he belongs to on a long train journey, and settles down on a central cast of about 10 guys, split between the officers and their staffs.
I think this made it much better, because you got to know some of the other characters in a way I felt never happened in the first half of the book, and the comedy was then knowing how they would react and seeing it unfold anyway. Rather than the pointless anecdotes of Svejk being the driver of the comedy, they transformed into a vessel to laugh at the others just as Lt. Dub or Baloun. After this, even when the book again resorted to taking Svejk somewhere new, I thought it worked much better. Or I just came at it much fresher than the first half
Either way, it's well written, and there are plenty of funny moments in here, it's just that much of it is hidden behind a slog of repetitive situations that grate a little after a while.
6/10 as a provisional rating, I may go back and read the first half again at some point to see if it's as bad as I remember
PS: Some of the pictures are brilliant tbf
The book contains quite a lot of brilliance and humor, though I did find myself having to breeze through a lot of pages. Admittedly, it's not really "my kind" of book but I still enjoyed a few parts of it, even if I did sometimes feel it meandered on.