Judge on Trial

A man is charged with murder and faces the death penalty. The case, which has a few questions, is given to a judge who is an opponent of capital punishment. This could be the set-up for quite the thriller - the judge trying to get to the bottom of the case and serve justice while trying to avoid the traps his corrupt bosses have laid out - but Ivan Klima doesn't quite follow that path in his Judge on Trial.
To be sure, the basic premise plays out. The judge, Adam Kindl, does dig a little deeper into the case while wrestling with his feelings on the death penalty. His bosses make it clear that he has been given the case as a test; he is expected to sentence the accused murderer to death, or else he may be jeopardizing his job. But instead of a pulse-pounding caper that plunges ahead recklessly, Klima's book almost hits the brakes and meanders around, without really going forward at all.
This is by design, mind you. Klima wrote the book in the 1970s, but it wasn't published until over a decade later because it was banned by the Czechoslovakian Communist regime. It's not much of a surprise why; the book is essentially a long exploration of the ways the repressive dictatorship can ruin people's lives and the paralysis and the hopelessness they're left with:

He didn't like complaining but now he felt a need to talk about himself. In the old days, when he was still a boy, he would go to his mother every so often and launch into a lengthy narration of everything that had befallen him recently. She would listen and he would find relief. But what was he to tell her now? That they were piling cases on to him and making him attend endless meetings and pep talks where he was forced to listen to things he found repugnant? That he was sleeping badly and waking up in the small hours worrying about what he would do when they kicked him out of his job? That for a long time his wife had not felt amorous towards him? That he now hated getting up in the morning as there was nothing to look forward to, nothing hopeful? That, on top of it all, for the past week he had also had the household to look after, with all the shopping, the children's meals to cook and even the laundry? That this afternoon he had been to see a friend, but found only his friend's wife at home, and she had said things to him which, however meaningless, still rang in his ears?

Again, Klima does this without any big dramatic showdowns - almost everything is expressed implicitly or subtly. There are no police breaking down doors in the middle of the night, just an unspoken fear. It's not even clear the characters know exactly what they're afraid of.
What they do know - especially Adam - is that they are not happy with the way life is at the moment. Adam finds he is unable to do his job the way he thinks it should be done; he also finds himself increasingly distanced from his family. His wife, meanwhile, also senses a drift in their relationship, and spends her time trying to figure out what to do about, while also largely ignoring her own role in the situation.
The action is interspersed with flashbacks to Adam's life up until this point. In between each regular chapter of the book are flashback chapters, called "Now We Drink From the Waters of Lethe", which tell Adam's story, which includes time in a concentration camp and his role in the Communist revolution.
While the book mostly succeeds in its task of trying to portray the personal struggles and tragedies facing those who must live in such conditions, it also falls a bit flat sometimes. The book raises more questions than it answers. This is almost certainly intentional, since the idea is the characters can't get answers to their questions. However, sometimes things slow down a bit too much, and the momentum of the book is lost. This is especially true of the parts involving Adam's wife. Though her desperation can be seen as another consequence of the crushing pressure Adam feels, sometimes it just distracts from the overall tone and tenor of the book. Ultimately, it is Adam's book, and the other passages just take away from that.
Judge on Trial is, overall, a good book; it is a patient and insightful look at life under Communism. Though the deliberate pace and uneven parts take away from its effect somewhat, it is still a good read to get an idea of what everyday life is like for people living with strict limitations imposed upon them.

Too Loud a Solitude

Bohumil Hrabal is not a particularly well-known writer in the English-speaking world. While it would be wrong to call him unknown, his fame does not match that of fellow Czech Milan Kundera. Hrabal never won the Nobel Prize or another other literary award with a high profile in North America.
What with the incredible number of books in the world and the problems and vagaries of translation, there are probably a lot of authors that should be read but aren't. Hrabal is one of them, and Too Loud a Solitude is probably the best place to start. It's a short, stream-of-consciousness story that neatly showcases the best of Hrabal. Through his story of a man who works as a trash-compactor, Hrabal is able to showcase his gifts for relentless storytelling, off-beat philosophy and beautiful sentences.
Hrabal was not much of a political writer, which is probably why he was able to stay and work in Czechoslovakia after the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968. (Although he too was susceptible to having books banned, and much of his work was published illegally or semi-legally). Too Loud a Solitude is probably one of his more political works, certainly among those that have been translated into English. Hanta, the main character, has been compacting waste paper for 35 years. Included among that waste are books that the (unnamed) regime has banned. Often, Hanta collects those books and reads them, or takes them home. He sleeps under an enormous canopy of books that he sometimes worries will crush him.
There is certainly an element that is critical of book-banning regimes here; Hrabal demonstrates both the futility and the foolishness of this tactic. With a main character whose job is to destroy banned books but who actually reads them and therefore preserves them, there is a superficial resemblance to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, but the similarities don't run too deep. Bradbury's work is aggressive and loud in its point about the danger of losing books and the power of reading. Hrabal is more subtle; the book is funneled entirely through the point of view of Hanta, who is not politically oriented, and so there is nothing obvious with which to condemn the Communist government. Instead, any such conclusions must be inferred from Hanta's solitude, possibly a consequence of his inability to discuss his books or ideas with others.
Any conclusions from this main character, who also serves as the narrator, must be made carefully because it is difficult to know what to make of him. Hanta is what could be called a "wise fool"; he has read a lot, and has a lot of knowledge in his mind, but it is not clear he understands everything. He does not take baths or showers; when he yearns for the Greek ideal of beauty, he washes, perhaps, his neck. Hanta alternates between perceptive philosophy and bawdy, silly stories, often mashed right up against each other in Hrabal's free-flowing style.
Hrabal was a great admirer of Jaroslav Hašek, the author of The Good Soldier Švejk. Hrabal's style is similar, in that the stories come quickly and freely, but in Too Loud a Solitude I think he takes Hašek's style to a different level. Whereas Hašek let the stories spill out regardless of whether they worked or not, Hrabal's short novel focuses all that digression into a kind of rhythm. You are swept along with the ebb and flow of Hanta's thoughts, but before you drift away, you are brought back to the main track, slightly farther along than when you left it.
Hrabal, while obviously a literary man, also spent much of his time in pubs (he once met U.S. President Bill Clinton and Czech President Vaclav Havel at his favourite Prague watering hole). In Too Loud a Solitude he combines the high-mindedness of philosophy with the typical stories of the pub; his style, flowing from one disconnected story to the next, makes this work perfectly in the book. Hanta, the narrator, is someone with whom you're not quite sure what you're dealing with; he could be a genius, he could be an idiot, or he could fall somewhere in between. That adds an extra layer of distortion to passages like this:

As for me, with my unwitting education, when I lie falling asleep under my two-ton canopy of books, I see visions of Schelling and Hegel, who were born in the same year, and once Erasmus of Rotterdam rode up on his horse and asked me how to get to the sea. So I wasn't surprised when another two of my favorites showed up. Seeing them side-by-side, I realized for the first time how important their age was for an understanding of their teaching, and leaning through the flies' fandango in my wet, blood-soaked smock, I pushed first the green button, then the red button, and watched Jesus, an ardent young man intent on changing the world, rise up and take over Lao-tze's place at the summit, while the old man looked on submissively, using the return to the sources to line his eternity; I watched Jesus cast a spell of prayer on reality and lead it in the direction of a miracle, while Lao-tze followed the laws of nature along the Tao, the only way to learned ignorance.

The power of books, especially in a country that doesn't allow them full freedom, the combination of philosophy and fun plus the dream-like rhythm of the book make Too Loud a Solitude a very good book. What made it a great book, for me, however, was the quality of the writing itself. Rather than just describing the action, of which isn't that much anyway, Hrabal shows how great writing can itself infect the reader and show beauty. Early in the book, Hanta describes his method of reading, and it's one that could be used to describe reading this book:

Because when I read, I don't really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to the root of each blood vessel.

Of course, since I read this book in translation, much credit should go to translator Michael Henry Heim. Hrabal is a notoriously difficult author to translate; he was apparently a master of using the Czech language in new and inventive descriptive ways. Here Heim has done a magnificent job of rendering Hrabal's work into English in polished, beautiful prose.
At only 100 or so pages, Too Loud a Solitude is not a long book, and one that can be digested quite quickly - although it will likely reward closer readings, or additional readings. It's certainly a worthy introduction to a man who was a major author.

The Good Soldier Švejk

Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk is not the best Czech novel. It is not the most famous, at least not in the English-speaking world, nor is it the first. But for a look at Czech literature, it is almost necessary to start with this work.
There are two reasons for this. First, the character of Švejk has become a cultural symbol in the Czech Republic. In many towns, there are pubs named after Švejk, and his cartoon likeness (drawn by a friend of Hašek and included in many versions of the book) can be found on all kinds of trinkets and souvenirs. Švejk is the Czech Everyman, a symbol of the Czech national character for many (although as with any such symbol, others would dispute it).
The adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk take place as the First World War breaks out. Švejk is eager to join up with the Austrian Imperial Army and do his part for the emperor, though most of his fellow countrymen are decidedly unenthusiastic about the venture. Švejk's enthusiasm, however, rarely translates into positive results for his Austrian commanders. Švejk takes their orders without complaints, and never directly disobeys them - but never seems to get the orders done in exactly the way the officers intended them. This doesn't worry Švejk. The officers generally regard Švejk as an idiot, but the reader is given another choice: that Švejk is cleverly foiling the plans of an army he has no love for.
The Czech Republic is a small country and one that has been buffeted by neighbouring great powers for much of its existence. At the time of The Good Soldier Švejk and for most of the previous three centuries, it was part of the Hapsburg Empire. It was later swallowed whole by Nazi Germany, and after freed from that yoke, immediately came under the domination of the Soviet Union. It is not so hard to see, then, one possible reason why Švejk has become a touchstone. Knowing it is pointless to resist a much greater force (Czechs in the book who speak badly of the Emperor quickly meet punishment), Švejk cheerfully goes along with their schemes, while rarely putting any care or thought into whether they succeed or not - and may, in fact, hope they don't.
The second reason is Hašek's style, which has been an influence on almost a century of Czech writers. His prose flows nonstop, with fews pauses to let you catch up with the story, both in a literal and figurative sense. This is mostly reflected through the main character of Švejk, who is depicted as an eager storyteller. Indeed, much of the novel is taken up by side stories, which are usually some incredible tale that Švejk is regaling other characters with, though he is sometimes the audience for someone else's story.
When I say Švejk's stories are incredible, I don't mean to imply that he is fibbing, although there is certainly the impression that he is exaggerating, like many great storytellers. Rather, his stories are somewhat improbable, and that improbability is almost uniformly comic. This is probably the biggest reason for the success of the book: its humour.
Hašek writes the story like someone who loves to talk. The stories come freely, quickly and he can't seem to wait to get to another one.

'In our regiment at Budějovice there was a soldier, a dear old fathead, who once found six hundred crowns in the street and gave it up to the police. In the newspapers they wrote about him as an honest finder, but it only brought discredit on him. No one would talk to him; everyone said: 'You half-wit, what's this bloody nonsense you've done? Why, you must be quite disgusted with yourself, if you've still any sense of honour left.' He had a girl and she wouldn't speak to him anymore. When he came home on leave his friends threw him out of the pub during a dance-party because of it. He got ill and took it all so much to heart that he finally threw himself under a train. And then again in our street there was a tailor who found a golden ring. People warned him not to give it up to the police, but he wouldn't listen. He got an unusually kind reception there and was told that the loss of a golden ring with a diamond had already been notified to them. But then they looked at the stone and said to him: 'My good man, you know very well that it's glass and not diamond. How much did they give you for that diamond? We know very well your kind of honest finder.' In the end it came out that another man had lost a gold ring with a false diamond, a kind of family heirloom, but the tailor sat three days in prison all the same, because he got het up and insulted a policeman.

The main thread of the story is often lost for pages at a time as Hašek follows at least one, often more, of Švejk's fanciful stories. This technique gives the book a conversational tone; you can imagine yourself sitting in a pub listening to Švejk go on. It also heightens the comic sense of the book, as the stories themselves are often humourous and the tone of the stories - and the situations in which they are told - add to the humour. Often, as with the passage above, a tragic story (the man throws himself under a train) is told with a great deal of humour, and the ending is quickly glossed over, as if it was an unimportant to the point of the story (finders keepers). Hašek's style, a sort of stream-of-conscious way of writing, was admired and emulated by later Czech writers.
So it's important, but is it worth reading? Yes and no. It's a 750-page, unfinished novel, which alone might put off some people. Moreover, the freewheeling nature of the narrative works both ways. While it gives the book much of its humour, the ease with which the main thread of the plot is lost can be frustrating, and sometimes Švejk's stories are boring and eventually infuriating, rather than amusing. Hašek's prose clearly shows he loved writing, and was eager to get his ideas down; it also shows that he was a lot less eager to edit or revise it. In the introduction, translator Cecil Parrott notes "Sometimes it is apparent that he must have been drunk when he was writing, so confused do his thoughts and sentences become."
Fortunately, The Good Soldier Švejk is a novel that lends itself to reading in chunks. The point is the comic episodes; there is little in the way of an overarching plot, which wouldn't have concluded anyways, since Hašek died before finishing it. (Astute history buffs can probably figure out how things turned out for the Austrian army anyway.) And there are genuinely funny parts, including one memorable one where Švejk tries to avoid testifying at a court martial hearing. Taken in small doses, where the reader can ignore or overlook Hašek's weaker moments, and the true comic genius of the story can be seen - as well as the reasons Švejk resonates so much with Czechs.

Harry Potter

After avoiding it until it was over, I read through the entire Harry Potter series this summer, beginning with The Philosopher's Stone in August and wrapping up with The Deathly Hallows sometime in November. (They're pretty quick reads, even the longer books in the series). I did see the first three movies when they came out in theatres, and of course it was nearly impossible to come to the series at this late date without some idea of what the books entailed.
With an initial read through the books, it's easy to understand why they are so popular. The story, which of course centres around Harry and his encounters with Lord Voldemort, is interesting and kept me reading until the end of the series, because I wanted to know how it turned out. On that basic level, J.K. Rowling succeeded admirably.
That success, I believe, stems not from an original, carefully crafted story, but rather from the characters she created back at the beginning of the series. Indeed, the story itself is fairly boilerplate stuff; pick up any other fantasy epic aimed at young readers, and it will probably feel very similar. The plots are serviceable, but don't support too much thinking - witness the huge plot hole that encompasses most of book four. What made the Potter series interesting was the characters; I kept reading because I wanted to see how Harry, Ron and Hermione would deal with the situations they faced, and how the situations affected them.
It's a testament to Rowling's imagination that she was able to create such vivid characters. It's not just true of the main characters, either; even the secondary characters, usually, have quite a bit to them and evoke the empathy of the reader.
The one drawback to the characters is that they don't develop much over the course of the series - especially considering the main characters age from 11 to 18 during the seven books. While for most people these years constitute a lot of growing up, for the main trio very little is different. Harry and Ron are each introduced as fun-loving, a little bit afraid of attracting attention and with almost no interest in homework. This never changes, even when they decide they want to become aurors. (Likewise, it seems every book features Hermione finally overcoming her goody-two-shoes nature, only to be right back at it in the next one). Harry basically never overcomes his largely irrational hatred of Snape, even though he is proved wrong many, many times over the course of the series (although it may be worse that Snape and Sirius Black, grown men and presumably mature characters, are also unable to do this). Secondary characters, like Neville and Ginny, do change and mature, but they do it off-page; all of sudden, they've become different people. It was for this reason I was a little disappointed in the ending; as I was more interested in the characters than the plot, I would have liked more reaction than a simple climax. How did the final events affect the main characters, and how would their lives change? The ending, even the epilogue, don't give much of an answer, in my opinion.
Rowling is not a great writer, in the sense that if people admire these books in 100 years it will be for the characters and the story, not her language. To her credit, though, her writing did seem to get better over the course of the series. The first three or so books were full of cliches; at one point, I think at the beginning of Goblet of Fire, I told Chelsey that if Harry, Ron and Hermione went to the candy store and came back "with their money bags considerably lighter" one more time, I was going to throw the book across the room. I didn't throw any books, and while perhaps that was because the main trio didn't go to the candy store in the final books, I think it was because Rowling's writing was more careful.
Despite that, I think the best book of the series remains the first one. It was here that Rowling was able to show off her greatest strength, her powers of invention. She created her own world, but it wasn't a completely separate world like Middle Earth, it was a world within our own. Because of that, many of the things Rowling includes are at once familiar and yet delightfully new. Her imagination for the details that would make up a magic world embedded in our own is amazing, and usually spot-on. These details are sometimes satiric (the Ministry for Magic) and usually humourous. In the first book we get to discover this world along with Harry. Indeed, Philosopher's Stone reads less like an epic and more like a series of adventures only semi-related to each other. (For this reason, I think Potter would have made a better TV series than a movie franchise, but I guess there's more money to be made in movies). Even by the end of the first book, however, some of the inventions hit their limitations; Harry, Ron and Hermione are put in a tough spot by the slow nature of owl post, when any muggle teenager would be able to IM or use their cell phone in a flash. And as the series goes on, there is less to discover, and that's a shame.
Still, as I said, those characters that Rowling introduced in the first book were good enough to keep me reading and engaged through the seventh book. It's not perfect, but it's good enough.