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The Good Soldier Svejk

posted 17 years ago by crazyj89
8 replies | jump to latest

Has anyone read "The Good Soldier Svejk" by Jaroslav Hasek? I'm reading it now and the humor is really similar to "Catch-22". I read somewhere that Joseph Heller got inspiration from it when he was writing "Catch-22."

On the back of the book, it says: "'The Good Soldier Svejk' is the classic novel of the 'little man' fighting officialdom and bureaucracy with the only weapons available to him - passive resistance, subterfuge, native wit, and dumb insolence." With the exemption of the 'dumb insolence', I'd say that's pretty much Yossarian. Although there is a huge difference between Svejk and Yossarian in that Svejk does anything he's told to do.

If you enjoyed "Catch-22", you will most likely enjoy "The Good Soldier Svejk," but, mind you, "The Good Soldier Svejk" is about twice as long and has illustrations.

[–] Focke_Wulf 17 years ago

I have read this book! The English translation I had called him "Schweik" but that's neither here not there. It does for the Austro-Hungarian Empire what "Catch-22" does for the Airmy Air Corps. It would not surprise me if Heller had been somewhat inspired by this. Do you know when English translations were first published? And do you know the name of the illustrator? He had a rather unique style. I saw some prints of hunting party cartoons in the rest room of a Gemutliche type, European restaurant outside of Boulder, Colorado and recognized his work immediately from "Schweik." I know Hasek was Czech, so I guess "Svejk" is the more correct spelling.

In a similar vein, you might want to look for a book by William Eastlake called "Castle Keep" about a unit of replacement soldiers, most all of them recovering from various wounds and traumas, holed up in a classic fairy tale castle in the Ardennes just before the Battle of the Bulge. Funny stuff mixed in with some pretty traumatic combat sequences. They made a movie out of it in 1969 starring Burt Lancaster and Peter Falk, but I'm not sure they captured the comedic elements of the story as well as Nichold did in "Catch-22."

[–] crazyj89 17 years ago

My copy is a later translation, but I recently bought an older copy for a friend that had the name Schweik. I don't know when it was first published in English, but I know it was written right after WWI. I'm in the middle of it, and there are just too many similar instances and themes for Heller to not have been inspired by it. The copy I found was 1963, But there were probably earlier, since that copy said it was "the classic tale of Schweik".

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] Focke_Wulf 17 years ago

Any clues on the illustrator in some of the classic editions?

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] Focke_Wulf 17 years ago

Thanks! I'd be interested in seeing what Lada's "serious" work looked like. It's funny, but that sort of pattern of fame is not unusual. Bill Watterson of "Calvin and Hobbes" fame, got tired of the grind and the limitations of producing a daily comic strip, and supposedly took some time off for more serious art/illustration projects. But we'll all remember this strange imaginative little boy and his magical stuffed tiger. . .

"I'm not from here, I just live here. . ."

-James Mc Murtry

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] curly_mcdom 17 years ago

I read most of it when I was on holiday in Prague aptly enough and enjoyed a lot of it, particularly Svejk's "anabasis". I also had a habit of spotting Svejk-alikes everywhere, though these of course are based on Lada's illustrations.

Once he's on the train to the front however the story just breaks down into Svejk telling stories which I got extremely bored of. It opens with such brilliant, ironic scenes and descends into repetition for a very large chunk at the end- although the author died before he could actually finish it and before Svejk actually gets to the front line!

Incidentally someone should really make a biopic about Jaroslav Hašek the author cos he had a really really interesting life, one possibly more interesting than a film of the book in my opinion.

I used to be quite partisan, but you're all too stupid to keep it up