{"id":78,"date":"2024-05-12T04:31:14","date_gmt":"2024-05-12T04:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aerowalsh.com\/mountaindevil\/?p=78"},"modified":"2024-12-28T21:58:05","modified_gmt":"2024-12-28T21:58:05","slug":"too-loud-a-solitude-bohumil-hrabal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/?p=78","title":{"rendered":"Too Loud a Solitude \u2013 Bohumil Hrabal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Origin:<\/span> Too Loud a Solitude was featured on a Novella\u2019s edition of the Bookshelf podcast (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/listen\/programs\/the-bookshelf\/novellas-+-behemoths-tokarczuk-patchett-lohrey-presser\/13628292\">https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/listen\/programs\/the-bookshelf\/novellas-+-behemoths-tokarczuk-patchett-lohrey-presser\/13628292<\/a>). This podcast edition came at a very influential time in my reading evolution: the depths of Covid and a few months after being paid a sign on bonus for moving investment banks. A new plethora of books opened up to me, inviting me into their slim depths: novellas. $30 for a book of less than 200 pages was no longer a barrier. The day where this financial fortress erects itself again is inevitable and I am sure it will be built with a furious speed. &nbsp;But for now, purchasing a novella remains a pure joy. &nbsp;The true definition of a novella alludes me, and I work with the vibe of \u201cif it feels expensive for its weight, it must be a novella\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Recommend:<\/span> Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cAnd when there was no room for even a single addition, I pushed my twin beds together and rigged a kind of canopy of planks over them, ceiling high, for the two additional tons of books I\u2019ve carried home over the years, and when I fall asleep I\u2019ve got all those books weighing down on me like a two-ton nightmare.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Too Loud a Solitude was published in the 1970s and books of this decade are emerging as the more memorable portion of what I have read in the last six months. Others:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The Lover by Magritte Duras<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>High Rise by J G Ballard<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Last Summer in the City by Gianfranco Calligraph<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>And then there two classics that have stayed with me over the last few years and will float above all modern novels for the rest of my reading life:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>If on a Winter\u2019s Night a Traveller by Italio Calvino<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Tirra Lirra by the River by Jessica Anderson<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>What is it that I have taken so fondly to in the 1970s? It\u2019s the cleanness of writing that is poetic and inventive without being convoluted and artsy. These novels allow for an interesting plot <em>and <\/em>interesting characters. They feel like pieces of art. This decade and the form of the novella are so compelling to me, if I find a book less than 200 pages and published in the 1970s, the chance of me purchasing is one of nature&#8217;s reliable but unproven laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Too Loud a Solitude follows Hanta and his reflections over the last 35 years he has spent compacting wastepaper. He idolises the written word and the physical form of the book. He rummages through the waste in his repugnant underground cellar for the hope of a treasure. The delirium of finding a hidden gem in a second-hand bookshop can be matched to Hanta\u2019s joy when he discovers literature that he can gift to himself or others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cWhen I got home, I pushed a couple of hundred books away from the kitchen door and found the lines I used to draw on the frame with an indelible pencil to show how tall I\u2019d been on a given date, and I picked up a book, stepped back against the doorframe, and pressed the book flat on my head, and when I turned in place and drew another line there, I could tell with the naked eye that in eight years I had shrunk four inches, and I decided I must have shrunk under the weight of that two-ton canopy of books.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The text is scattered with philosophical, historical and architectural references that travelled swiftly downstream without me getting a second look after the initial glimmer caught my eye. But I let all that go and focused on the passion of collecting books and finding homes for them \u2013 above the bed, in the hands of an acquaintance or squarely in the middle of a trash heap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I initially picked up Melissa Broder\u2019s Death Valley to read this weekend (published 2023) but it was based somewhere hot in America. The relentless cloud of a Blackheath Winter (which mythically lasts longer than the traditional three months) made this choice feel anachronistic. I recall regret when I read Sarah Moss\u2019 cold, damp Summerwater in a scorching Canberra Summer, feeling extremely disorientated. I am pleased to have pivoted, reading from the 1970s in the middle of an endless Blackheath fog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Dek Addendum 27-Dec-2024<\/em><\/strong>: I just finished this book and also enjoyed it. It had an unusual tone and at times the descriptions were verbose and didn&#8217;t flow, but the length was perfect and meant I didn&#8217;t feel weary. I also felt there was more of a focus on how the character exists that Caitlin didn&#8217;t touch on (remembering his former gypsy lover being taken off to the concentration camps and being fired due to the advent of larger machines staffed by hordes of youth who are not aware and not caring of the books they destroy). The main character is intrinsically an outsider, but we discover there are outsiders all throughout the world just like him. None of them really fitting together, but sort of just existing around the edges of society in a lightly Kafka or Camus-esque way. This made the book feel even more quintessentially Eastern European than the Czech setting. I concur with the Recommend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Most of all I enjoy central-heating control rooms, where men with higher education, chained to their jobs like dogs to their kennels, write the history of their times.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,11,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews_books","category-cait-and-dek-reviews","category-recommended_cait"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":715,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/80"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}