On reading a couple of the Central European books which we found to be a tad on the intellectual-navel-gazing side, Morag and I agreed maybe they were "the sort of books we would have liked when we were younger". This probably indicates that our capacity for intellectual reading is draining away with age. Soon we'll be harrassing the library staff to find us 'nice' stories.
However, I have moved on to Pavel Kohout's The Widow Killer, which is a more straightforward narrative, a crime story set in wartime Prague. Very interesting background as it's a period of history I'm morbidly drawn to. My 'book I might have liked when I was younger' was the very well thought of Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal. I must say that although I did get a little impatient with it at times, and just think, 'Oh, get over yourself, will you!', it was worth a read and there are a lot of strong images I was moved to write down. Some amusing bits - for example the narrator describes how he was once set upon by a man who pushed him into a corner at knifepoint, took out a slip of paper, read him a poem, then apologized and said it was the only way to get folk to listen to his verse! I think we should maybe do a version of this next National Poetry Day?
No comments:
Post a Comment