Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997)

I discovered this book via Louise Erdrich’s The Sentence: it’s one of Tookie’s short, perfect novels. It’s both earthy, scatalogical even, and philosophical, as the protagonist Haňťa, with his unwitting education, contemplates eternity from the corruption of the cellar where he’s compacted wastepaper for thirty-five years. In its very few pages (112 in the ebook I read, which rendered as 46 in the display style I used), it manages to take jabs at censorship, fascism, communism, show more the depersonalization of industrial advances, among other themes, and be both comic and tragic. It might not be a “perfect” novel, but it distills a lot more human wisdom about the meaning of life than most longer novels. show less

This is a few weeks in the mind and life of Hant’a, in mid 1970s Prague, who has been drunkenly compacting wastepaper in a hydraulic press for 35 years, in a dark cellar infested with mice, flies, blood, and sometimes shit.

Well, it is that. But it absolutely is not that at all.

“Every beloved object is the center of a garden of paradise.”

This is a beautiful paean to the transformative power of words on paper.
About finding beauty in the dirtiest, most unlikely places.
How devotion can show more manifest itself in pleasure at saving and destroying.
How destruction of what one loves can become a sacramental, sacrificial art.
How a person can become one with the focus of their life and passion.
“I have a physical sense of myself as a bale of compacted books, the seat of a tiny pilot light of karma.”

The opening pages made me deliriously drunk as they piled more and more ways to express a passionate, visceral love of books. More delirium from the disconcerting awareness that this booklover destroys far more books than he saves. He describes himself as “a refined butcher”, relishing the physical sensations of his work.
“I loved the feel of paper in my fingers… to experience the palpable charm of wastepaper.”

Nevertheless, through the "subterranean subtext", I read him as more priest than butcher.

“When I read, I don’t really read; I pop a beautiful sentence in my mouth and sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart.”

I was hooked from the start, as any booklover should be.

Status Quo

In the first half, Hant’a doggedly does his work, biding his time until retirement. Repetitively ripping books apart, putting them in the drum, pressing the green and red buttons, compressing them into bales - even if there are mice inside. His boss rails at him. He looks forward to visits from gypsy girls. He drinks. But he’s always looking out for special books, mostly for himself, but also for one or two friends. His home is heaving with them; shelves piled perilously high, even over his bed.
“I hear the books above me plotting their revenge… the Sword of Damocles that I’ve hung from my bathroom and bedroom ceilings.”

Hant’a reads and loves great literature, especially ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, whose ideas he applies to who and what he sees around him. He views his job as a profession requiring a classical education and ideally a degree in divinity, which seems a bit back-to-front: he has acquired such erudition by doing the job, or by not doing it.

In every bale, he puts something special, “like a priest on the altar”: a book open at a beautiful passage, or a print of a great painting: “my ritual, my mass”. The press squeezes “like fingers clasping in a deeper prayer”. He relishes the secrecy, “I am both artist and audience”, while hoping someone notices and is uplifted.

The circle of life is not limited to people: his press destroys books to make clean paper for another press to print new books.

Progress is The End

“The dreams I never dreamed came true.”

One day, he visits a huge new processing plant: full of sunlight and sparkling equipment. Like a cathedral. But not his church. The future. But not his future.

The happy young workers in their jolly uniforms have “no feeling for what the book might mean, no thought that somebody had to write the book… edit… design… proofread… print… bind”. Worse still, many of the books are remaindered, pulped “before a single page could be sullied by human eye, brain, or heart… Workers tearing open the boxes, taking the virgin books out of them, pulling the covers off, and tossing the naked insides on the belt”. It’s like ripping chickens apart in the slaughterhouse. Suddenly, it’s easy to see the beauty of Hant’a’s work, in his filthy cellar.

He plucks a precious old book from the conveyor belt:
“It shakes in my hands like a bride’s bouquet at the altar.”

The visit is transformative. Hant’a wanders the city in a daze, revisiting friends and old haunts:
“The clock told a useless time: I had nowhere to go, I was floating in space.”

The ending was sublime.

Image from the 1996 film, which I've not seen. See imdb HERE.

Quotes

I want to copy out the whole first chapter and large chunks of the rest. Here’s a taste from only 98 pages.

• “I am a jug filled with water both magic and plain; I have only to lean over and a stream of beautiful thoughts flows out of me.”

• “When my eye lands on a real book and looks past the printed word, what it sees is disembodied thoughts flying through the air, gliding on air, living off air… just as the host is and is not the blood of Christ.”

• “Thousands of cobalt-colored flies… their metallic wings and bodies embroidered an immense tableau vivant made up of constantly shifting curves and splashes like the flow of paint in those gigantic Jackson Pollocks.”

• “Ineffable joy and even greater woe” come from literacy.

• “I am never lonely. I’m simply alone, living in my heavily populated solitude.”

• “My head spinning from too loud a solitude” in the cellar.

• “For we are like olives: only when we are crushed do we yield what is best in us.” From the Talmud.

Related Reading

Before this, there was Kafka’s In The Penal Colony (see my review HERE).

After this, there was Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (see my review HERE).

And there's a real-life garbage man in Bogota who's saved 25,000 books: HERE.

Hrabal writes:
“Inquisitors burn books in vain. If a book has anything to say, it burns with a quiet laugh.”
When Hant’a rescues a book,
“I walk home like a burning house… the light of life pouring out of the fire, fire pouring out of the dying wood, hostile sorrow lingering under the ashes.”

Here's a link to a 2-minute excerpt of an animated adaptation from 2007 (thanks to Diane S): HERE.
Details on imdb HERE.

GR Friends

This book had been vaguely on my TBR, but it was a delightful day in London with Laysee, including a trip to the renowned Foyles, that meant I bought and read it. Thank you, Laysee. show less

Bohumil Hrabal's Too Loud a Solitude is a short but profound novella that combines existential contemplation, dark humor, and a deep love of books to create a singular reading experience. This small book, which is only 98 pages long in my paperback edition, was translated from Czech and published in 1976. Despite its small size, it has a powerful emotional and philosophical impact.

Hantá, an elderly, reclusive man who has operated a wastepaper compactor in Prague for 35 years, is the main show more character of the story. His task is to destroy books—tons of them—pulped into oblivion under the close supervision of the communist government. But Hantá is more than a laborer; he is a clandestine cultural salvager who hoards books in his tiny apartment until the weight of them makes the ceiling creak. His strange, stream-of-consciousness narration gives us a mix of absurdity and melancholy as he muses on his life, his lost love, and the relentless progress of modernity that threatens his tranquil, bookish existence.

Hrabal's prose, as translated into English by Michael Henry Heim, is striking; it is lyrical, dense, and deliberately repetitive, reflecting Hantá's compulsive thoughts. Phrases like "I am a jug filled with water, both magic and plain" are repeated, imparting a hypnotic rhythm to the discourse. The story veers between memory, philosophy, and detailed descriptions of Hantá's grimy work, like the rats he fights or the "beautiful" bales of compressed paper he meticulously crafts, making it hard for readers who prefer linear storytelling to follow. It is oddly captivating, though, if you accept its rhythm.

The book's themes include the conflict between tradition and progress, the quiet dignity of a marginalized life, and the fragility of knowledge in a world where censorship is common. Hantá's love of books contrasts sharply with the regime's disdain for them, as he claims to be "educated" by the passages he reads before they are destroyed. Hrabal takes full advantage of the tragic irony of his dual roles as a preserver and a destroyer. The novella honors Kafka and Czech absurdism as well, but Hantá's humor and small acts of defiance make it less melancholy.

It is more of a character study than a story with a clear arc, at least until the shocking ending, which I won't reveal but will say feels both inevitable and unsettling. It is a love letter to books and a middle finger to those who would destroy them, all wrapped up in a voice so distinctive that it stays with you long after the last page. If you like quirky, introspective novels and don't mind a slow burn, this is a gem. You and I might like it with a strong drink—Hantá would be happy, since his mind is often dripping with beer. show less

Un libro sui libri e sulla, apparentemente poco salvifica in questo caso, passione per i libri, il cui contatto ossessivo, sotto forma di carta da macero, rende il protagonista infelicemente sensibile alla lettaratura, alla filosofia e al bello, cosa che non è richiesta dalla sua mansione, ma soprattutto nella società in cui vive. Libro difficile e per certi versi straziante, che porta inevitabilmente a immedesimarsi col protagonista.
Dato che si tratta di poche, densissime pagine, show more l'editore ha fatto un po' di scelte discutibili per rimpinguarle un po', per cui consiglio di godersi la lettura evitando tutto ciò che non sia stato scritto dall'autore. show less