Group Read, April 2017: The Good Soldier Svejk

Our April group read is The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek. Please put any comments and thoughts on this book below.

I'll be joining this one, just have to finish Wolf Hall first (not for the list).

I'm looking forward to this one - just have to get my hands on a copy first.

(The local secondhand bookshop had a copy but volume two of the set is currently lost somewehere in the shop. Knowing the shop that is not all that surprising - there are piles of books everywhere. Hopefully they find it next week.)

I'll have to grab a copy from a library in the city as well. It looks good!

Wolf Hall is great!

Heck, I want to join in but will be late (I need to flip-flop group reads -- must finish Spring Torrents for April).

I plan to read this as well, but haven't started the March group read yet so I'll be a bit behind on this one too.

I picked it up from the library yesterday but I'm going to finish At Swim, Two Boys first.

I'm about 300 pages in now and not quite sure what I think about it. On the plus side it is an easy read, mildly humorous. On the other hand I'm not sure whether it will sustain 800 pages. You fairly quickly get the idea - Svejk is either simple and naïve, or deceptively cunning and through an appearance of honesty and subservience manages to work his way out of one piece of police/military bureaucracy only to end up in another, and another....

I am reading the Penguin Classics version and in the introduction the translator confesses that the humour doesn't easily translate in to English as much of it comes from subtle tones of the original Czech/German. He also believes that the book could have benefitted from some editing before its original publication.

It's certainly not a difficult read, and I have a smile on my face much of the time, but I'm yet to laugh out loud, and haven't seen any deeper meaning (though this may come as Svejk reaches the Eastern Front - the book is famously anti-war).

I haven't read the book but am under the impression that anti-war spirit is expressed mainly via satire and humour...

I'm about 100 pages in and enjoying it very much. I needed something light this month and it perfectly fits the bill. I can't imagine a "deeper meaning" emerging here but the social satire is often extremely funny and the illustrations are great.

I read this one a couple of years ago, starting it right before I went to Prague. They have a Svejk-themed restaurant (or actually at least two locations of them, there may be more). I hope no one minds if I post a few pictures from them ....


The entry to the location in the main part of the city.


The menu from the one near the Kafka museum (we stopped into this one and had a couple of beers).

And finally, couple of the murals inside:

>12 ursula: I hope they offered some of the numerous spirits that are footnoted throughout the book!

>12 ursula: of course there is one near the Kafka museum!! Thanks for sharing, these are great. Makes me want to go to Prague.

Finished the book this morning. The second half shifts from Svejk's run-ins with the police to the confusion of military maneouvres. This does include some more serious scenes of carnage on the battlefields though Hasek continues to deal with even this with satirical humour (debating the fertiliser benefits of corpses on crops). The story does sustain itself through its length even if it never reaches any great heights. I was taken aback a little by the anti-Semitic portrayal of Jews (particularly in the illustrations); I know this is a picaresque caricature of all strata of society and Hasek is merciless with them all, but it is sobering to think that the Jewish communities along the Hungarian-Russian front that he portrays bore the brunt of Hitler's extermination campaigns around 15 years after Hasek wrote this book.

I'm about a third of the way through this now and I agree that it can get a bit 'samey'. I'm enjoying it but it's not gripping me with the force that a really good book can if it grabs onto my emotions.

I read a review which claimed that this was much better than the over hyped Catch-22 which I definitely don't agree with. If it keeps going in the same fashion it will be a 3 1/2 star book.

I also went to Prague for 5 days or so many years ago but I obviously wasn't in a literary sphere at the time because I missed all of those references and I didn't even see the Kafka museum if I was even aware that it existed!

I'm just finishing the first book and cannot believe he intended there to be 6 of these. Not that I'm glad that he died or anything but 4 will be enough. Definitely not as good as Catch-22, a recent read for me as well. Glad to know, >15 puckers:, that there are actually different textures to the different books. Can't say that I look forward to carnage or anything, just to some changes.

>18 annamorphic: The carnage is more in passing (observing recent battlefields and the smoke of burning villages) rather than any actual action - it's no All Quiet on the Western Front!. However I did think these later books had more entertaining characters than the first book, and the anti-war satire is more biting. Don't expect any major plot twists though. A 3 star read from me.

I am a bit behind but just finished the first book. I think Svejk is a nice enough person and the book was amusing (despite all those anecdotes) but I do wonder how I am going to think of it after three books more of the same... I do hope the second half is different indeed, as >15 puckers: says.
For now I need a short break and will read some Turgenev in between.

I'm the same, I've progressed a little way into the next book but I've taken a break to read some other books.

I finished the second one. Less interesting, in my opinion. I caught myself skipping some of the many stories, especially those by the Volunteer.
However it is interesting to see, at times, that Svejk is not as stupid as he pretends to be.

He's definitely not stupid :-) I was a little unsure at first but it's pretty clear now that he just loves winding people up!

I'm halfway through and I recognize much of what has been said already: There is a certain amount of repetitiveness in the novel. It has been compared to Catch 22 but to me it seems more obvious to compare it to M.A.S.H. Both are anti-war satires and the value of Svejk, much like traditional tv-series, seems to be more in the episodes than in the overarching story.

>24 Henrik_Madsen: That is a good comparison!
I loved Catch 22 and watching M.A.S.H. made me not really laugh, which indeed is comparable to my attitude towards Svejk!

I find the novel too anarchic to resemble M.A.S.H. They did at least follow rules and protocols when it actually mattered. This book is all over the place.

I also found M.A.S.H. often very funny and sometimes moving, which I can't say about this.

I enjoyed the first book. Couldn't make it through the second, ended up skimming parts of it. Now involved in the third. This was a book that would have been improved by serious editing. But the illustrations are a great help!

Still no experience with this particular book but I'd note that some episodic and rambling books benefit from being read in installments over a long time instead of being read with dedication cover to cover, and this sounds like this might be a case.
(I enjoyed I Am a Cat by Soseki when I read it over five months or so, and note on reviews I have seen that people who complain about it seem to have burned out from too intense reading...and I have heard e.g. Dickens to benefit from taking an unhurried pace, reading other books in the middle etc.)

I've stopped reading it in big blocks. It will take longer but im worried I'll be put o reading again if I try to force it.

I finished it. Just like >27 annamorphic:, I think the book would be improved by some serious editing.

I did enjoy parts of it, but got the overall idea pretty quick and then it became a lot of repetition. Svejks 'examples from his chronicle of human suffering' are sometimes great and funny and poignant, but in my opinion way too much.
Just like Puckers mentioned, I thought the way Hasek writes about the Jews with the knowledge we have now, quite sobering.

Anyhow, the book definitely had an impact on later readers, writers, thinkers and the Czech people so I think it deserves its place on the list.

>28 hdcanis: >29 M1nks: I thought it would help to take breaks so I stopped and read another book. When I got back to Svejk, I found that I'd lost the rhythm and it was almost impossible to really pick it up again. I'm afraid that I ended up doing a lot of skimming. The first book was great fun! The rest, not so much.

I've skimmed a fair bit too. After about 100 of his stories my eyes do glaze over a bit!

I've only got around 100 pages to go though so the end is in sight!

I don't think it is a great novel, but there was definitely good parts, and I do understand why the character Svejk has become even more famous that the book itself.

A few points:
I was a good idea to read it as a group read so shortly after All Quiet on the Western Front because they complement each other really well. The horror of the trenches is the most well-known part of the war, but most of the time soldiers were training, resting and being moved around behind the front.

There were few real characters in the book. Most of them were stereotypes, but I did feel a lot of sympathy for lieutenant Lucas. Spending time on womanizing rather than nationalistic bravado is nice, and he suffers with dignity even though he is surrounded by idiots on all sides. (At the end he is even starting to like Svejk and seeing him as a kindred spirit who can be unleashed on Dub and other fools.)

One final point: Hasek was a chzeck nationalist and it showed. The animosities between the many ethnic groups in the Austro-Hungarian empire is very prevalent. This justifies the breakup of the Habsburg empire after the war, but it also predicts the unstability of the interwar years.

I finally finished off the last 50 pages -whew!

I don't think I have anything startling to add; it was funny and well written but too long and rambling. Yes a good editor would have been the making of it I think. Still, I guess it's a good reflection of the sort of book an anarchist would write!