LAS AVENTURAS DEL VALEROSO SOLDADO (alkuperäinen julkaisuvuosi 1923; vuoden 2000 painos)

H1.1.5

A very amusing book, with rather diminishing rewards; there are only so many times you can make the joke about how the soldier ate the officer's food before it starts to get boring, and I more or less stopped paying attention to those jokes at the end of part two--which meant part three was more tedious than entertaining. Hasek didn't finish it, and that's probably a good thing. I fear the 1000 page monster which is still recycling jokes by page 989. It's also good because the point of the book as it stands seems to be that Svejk avoids ever actually, you know, fighting in the war, and if the book had ended, he would have had to i) fight, which would have ruined the effect, or ii) not fight, which would have led to still more endless jokes.

This review is getting as drawn out as the book, so: read this over a long period, long enough that you can respond to the repeated jokes the way people used to respond to repeated jokes in TV sitcoms. Hasek had an endless supply of stupid stories for Svejk to tell, which is the heart and joy of the book; he did not have an endless supply of stories for Svejk to act act, which means long stretches of this are static and uninteresting. Better, then, for dipping into than for concerted reading (which is, I regret, how I usually read).

And extra star for being the best-illustrated novel I have ever and probably will ever read, graphic novels included. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

la stupidité d'un monde stupide... ou bien la lucidité d'être stupide dans un monde stupide... ( )