Waiting for the Light, Waiting for the Dark by Ivan Klima

In 1968 when the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia, Klima was in London. Unlike the quarter of a million Czechs, including the writers Skvorecky and Kundera, who escaped into exile, Klima chose to return to Prague. His books were banned for twenty years, but smuggled out in samizdat and published overseas.

The book's main character is Pavel Fuca, a film director who can no longer make his own films, so works as a camera man under state censorship producing trivia and sacrificing his principles to expedience. Pavel consoles himself by planning the film he will make when he is free, but when that freedom arrives he has already lost hope.

Some passages that made an impression:

Wretchedness was the lot of those who hadn't the strength to be honourable nor the courage to be dishonourable.

There's nothing easier than persuading yourself you could really do something if you tried, as long as you know that you'll never get the chance. the system never allowed you to win, and so it saved you from defeat as well. ( )

Ivan Klima's book "Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light" was a really interesting look at the fallout from the fall of the Communist regime in Prague.

Set in the days before and after the Velvet Revolution, its narrator, Pavel, is going through a midlife crisis of sorts. He lives in a world where there are few choices and then too many-- either way he is completely stuck and unsure of where he is going.

Pavel has a rich fantasy life that really bleeds into the story... it was difficult to keep what was supposed to be true and what was supposed to be fantasy straight.

Overall, it was an interesting and thought-provoking book, but hard to follow in places. ( )

This is a sad, slow, well-written book. It takes place in Prague before the fall of the Communist regime and deals with the accommodations that people must make and the decline of idealism. Pavel, the main character, is a filmmaker who works for the government-run television station. He films the events (political protests) but doesn’t participate in any way – perhaps a bit of an obvious symbolism for his detached character. However, the filmmaker also has the potential to be an artist who can create something meaningful. The book explores this dualism – detachment vs creative activity - in Pavel’s frustrated ambition to be a director/producer making art films and the sections of the book entitled “Film” which describe actual films that Pavel has made, only changed and twisted.

Pavel himself is not the most likeable or interesting character. He fits in the group of middle-aged disillusioned men often with frustrated ambitions/disdainful of material success/in indifferent relationships/filled with ennui/having a midlife crisis. In a relationship with a separated woman, Pavel doesn’t love her and nostalgically remembers past relationships. This is also a rather predictable element of the disillusioned man character. However, his ideal women are shown, at the end, to be constructs like many of his dreams. Pavel is different from many of these characters in that he has a legitimate grievance and is not just some bored artist with a midlife crisis. His constant questioning – written in the book as the third person narration – is a probing examination of the government, as well as individual reactions and accommodations. The narrator will pose a question then answer it, often succinctly and bleakly. Pavel’s reaction here is, in fact, useless, but just one of the ways that he deals with his situation. The Film sections are another. Pavel describes several of the films that he is required to make – a profile of the president, a documentary describing an incident where two men took a bus full of children hostage and demanded to be let over the border – which are given a slightly altered, psychologically developed life in the Film chapters. Especially good is Pavel’s description of the president who is going slowly insane and becoming increasingly paranoid.

The author uses an interesting technique that can be a bit confusing. He describes Pavel’s memories seamlessly in another scene, so that it often seems as though he has actually described the future. For example, for a while I didn’t realize that one of the relationships that he was describing was in the past. Still, memories are always simultaneous – constantly there as a reminder or check to the present and I suppose this is Klima’s way of approximating this.

Klima in the end shows characters at every level capable of betrayal and accommodation of the regime. After the new government takes over, Pavel doesn’t go off to make artistic films and doesn’t go back to the woman he loves. As a young man, he tried to escape the country, was caught, paid the price, then joined the government-run station. While he imagined it was the system keeping him back, he finds that he has gotten used to his steady paycheck and starts making profitable commercials and pornography. But he’s not the only one. His coworkers are described as assessing the political situation, ready to make films for the current government or the opposition. Even personal relationships are dependent on whether the Communists are in power, as Pavel’s unloved girlfriend decides her husband is a better bet after the fall of the Communists. Pavel’s co-conspirator in the escape plan didn’t “sell out” as he did – though educated, he took a job as a caretaker to avoid dealing with his enemies. He, too, is capable of betrayal and jumps at an opportunity to do the same kind of censoring in the new government. Pavel’s creative work, the film sections, provides some relief for getting around the constant compromises, but in the end, even that is not enough. ( )

Apparently I read this in 2000, I ofund a bookmark to attest to such and I found references on our samizdat site. For the life of me, I can't recall this book.