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the complete review - fiction

Vita Nuova

by
Bohumil Hrabal

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B+ : slight shift in style, but continued (auto)biographical charm

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "(B)uchstäblich ohne Punkt und Komma erzählt. Man gewöhnt sich, überraschend schnell, daran. Und der geübte Hrabal Leser erwartet es eigentlich nicht anders von seinen schon sprichwörtlich gewordenen Bauern, diesen tschechischen Schwätzern der Sonderklasse. Nur - die Bafler zählen zu Hrabals Anfängen, das vorliegende Buch aber, buchhalterisch gesehen, muß zum Spätwerk gerechnet werden, wiewohl es vor allem, umständlich, ausführlich, von den Anfängen erzählt." - Martin Lüdke, Die Zeit

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Vita Nuova is the second volume in Hrabal's autobiographical trilogy, in which he presents his life as seen through the eyes of his wife, Eliška ('Pipsi'). This volume comes with a short preface of sorts, in which Hrabal explains why he wrote the book (more or less) without punctuation. Though divided into chapters (i.e. clear-cut breaks in the text) and with plenty of ellipses (...) -- less omission than allowing the sentences to wordlessly peter out -- and new sentence (fragments ?) that begin with the first word capitalized, Vita Nuova is presented as one long monologue of sorts. Hrabal says he wrote it: "in one long inhalation and exhalation", and it does have that near-breathless sort of feel to it; nevertheless, its episodic presentation -- and Pipsi's voice -- do ground the text in the more traditional. Hrabal suggests that many readers practice a sort of "diagonal reading" -- a skimming "crosswise probe of the pages" -- and he writes accordingly ("I allowed myself the luxury of diagonal reading a priori").
       This installment of the autobiography describes the first decades of the Hrabals married life, leading also to Hrabal's first: "chance to become a champion writer" (with the collection Larks on a String) -- and the predictable outcome (the chief editor berating the editor in charge, and demanding: "Destroy the typeset immediately and tear up the author's contract"). Hrabal's writing-passion is again central -- he's constantly clacking away on his typewriter ("he played that machine like an instrument it was grown into him like an artificial kidney like a pacemaker") -- and his hopes of becoming a (published and successful) writer stronger. He knows: "all it takes is one little book just a little missive".
       There's also a good deal about his intellectual friends and their conversations, and the art that influences and moves them (including by foreign writers and painters). Amusingly, Pipsi keeps things down to earth by enervating them with her needlepoint and kitsch-patterns (and she (i.e. he) claims: "The sole reason I did needlepoint was because I knew it sent my husband round the bend"), a corrective to keep intellectualism from encroaching all too far. It's a curious mix of frustration and appreciation that Hrabal harps on with repeated examples of Pipsi simply not getting the higher arts:

I intentionally washed dishes and sometimes washed them twice out of frustration because I didn't understand those symphonic epics and I didn't understand when my husband tried to explain it when he tried to draw me into the beauty of that symphony music by quoting T.S.Eliot the author of The Wasteland

he was in fact a child of his time a reflection of the environment in which he lived and come to think of it so was I ...

- M.A.Orthofer, 19 January 2011

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Links:

• Suhrkamp publicity page

• Threee Percent
• Die Zeit (German)

• Bohumil Hrabal at books and writers

• In-House Weddings

• See Index of Eastern European literature
• Other books from Northwestern University Press - Writings from an Unbound Europe under review
• See Index of Biographical works under review

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About the Author:

       Czech author Bohumil Hrabal lived 1914 to 1997.

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