The Good Soldier Svejk (1923)

I've been on a roll with my reading recently. Love having time off.

Anyways - it is often said that this novel was an inspiration for Catch-22. Like Catch-22, it is hilarious. Unfortunately, it tends to go on for a little too long, also like Catch-22.

The moralizing in the end does tend to break up the monotony. The book ends abruptly, but this is due to the author's unfortunate death. This also explains some 'unpolished' sections of the book.

Despite these flaws, it is still hilarious and very much worth your time if you want a good rollicking anti-war novel. ( )

"The Good Soldier Svejk" is a 20th century classic, but that doesn't mean one will necessarily love it, or indeed finish it -- I read the first of the four volumes, and feel that I have done my duty. Moreover, there was a lot I enjoyed in the book, and quitting early may have kept it that way. Three more volumes, I suspect, would pretty much extinguish the enjoyment.

The book begins in 1914, when the Czech Republic was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Svejk (Schweik in German, same guy) is a Czech soldier in the Austrian army, whose attitude of glowing idiocy (assumed, we assume, but --) brings him into constant conflict with the military authorities. This is usually a lot harder on the authorities than on Svejk.

The book is about the futility and stupidity of war, of the military, of the Church -- of all the institutions of the State that screw up the lives of ordinary people. Svejk is the ordinary person who resists not by refusing to go along, but by cooperating so idiotically that he succeeds in avoiding (at least in Book One) actually going to war. He is a terrific character, and has become a key character in Czech self-definition.

So -- why the three and half stars, instead of five? There are three main problems, and they all have more to do with me than with the book.

First, I don't read Czech. The introduction tells us that Hasek used language in a revolutionary way, running up and down the linguistic social scale, switching between German and Czech (as Czechs did in those days) and using much more informal language than was accepted. Most of this does not come through in the translation, which in this case is probably more a problem of translation in general than of this translation. The Austro-Hungarian empire must have created a sort of linguistic goulash for anyone who wasn't down on the farm, and that's not something that can really be reproduced in 21rst century English.

Second, a lot of water has gone under the bridge (or blood under the battlements) since Hasek published this book in 1923. Anti-war sentiments are less shocking that they were, and more recent anti-war novels speak more strongly to at least this reader -- for example, Catch-22.

Finally, I'm female. Usually, this doesn't have much impact on my reaction to books, but in the case of military humor, it does. Like sports talk and trading room banter, this is a genre which is less than dear to my heart.

Anyway, I'm glad I read Volume I, but doubt I will forge on into 2, 3, and 4 ( )

Amazing moustachioed Schweik on front cover but also scary - bought it just for its cover design

Clever satire,worth the effort of reading in the original, Europe's catch 22 40 years earlier than Joseph H's excellent book. ( )

האבא של הספרים האנטי מלחמתיים בכלל ושל מלכוד ​22 בפרט. התפרסם בארץ בעיקר בזכות הדמות שעצב מרגלית.​ ( )