I Served the King of England

Rating:
Summary: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of a Little Man
Review: Bohumil Hrabal's I Served the King of England is a beautiful, sparse, simply told story about a little man named Ditie. Ditie is a little man in the sense that he is small in stature. He is also little in the sense that he is merely a waiter, a little man who wanders blithely through the critical historical events that buffeted Czechoslovakia between 1935 and 1950 or so.

As the novel opens Ditie is a busboy at the Golden Prague Hotel. On his first day the hotel manager pulls him by the left ear to advise him to "remember, you don't see anything and you don't hear anything." The manager then pulls him by the right ear and tells him that he has "to see everything and hear everything." Ditie manages to learn how to accomplish this seemingly irreconcilable task.

Ditie is an ambitious man whose ambitions focus on acquiring two things: money and 'sensuous' experiences. His life is otherwise void of conscious thought or awareness. In many respects Hrabal portrays him vividly as something less than a complete human being. He earns money on the side selling frankfurters at the local train station. He gains extra tips from passengers ordering frankfurters from the train by fumbling for change long enough for the train to pull out. He decides to become a millionaire after walking into a room to see a portly Czech salesman rolling around on a floor covered with money. Ditie's hunger for sensual experiences is fueled after his first visit to the local brothel, the aptly named Paradise. After his first visit Ditie vows to make so much money that he can continue to explore the delights found there. Hrabal's description of Ditie's introduction to the lure of money and flesh is both comic and delightful.

Ditie leaves the Golden Prague Hotel and makes his way to the Hotel Tichota and then the Hotel Paris where he is promoted to waiter. It is there that he is taken under the wing of the headwaiter Mr. Skøivánek, who knows everything there is to know about being a top waiter. Whenever Ditie asks Skøivánek how he knows a particular fact Skøivánek replies - "because I served the King of England" at a banquet many years ago. Ditie later reaches one of his life's highpoints when he gets to serve the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie. He then gets to answer "I served the Emperor of Ethiopia" whenever a younger waiter asks him for advice. The description of the banquet is another wonderful example of Hrabal's story telling ability.

It is while at the Hotel Paris that Ditie meets and falls in love with a young Sudeten German named Lise. As noted, Ditie is unaware or unfazed by the political events that are in the front of everyone else's mind. He is shocked that his fellow waiters ostracize him because of his relationship with Lise merely because of the troubles in the Sudetenland and the pending German invasion of Czechoslovakia. Ditie merely wants to become a millionaire and make love to Lise. Ditie is fired shortly before the German invasion.

The story takes us through Ditie's life during the war and up through the Communist accession to power in Czechoslovakia. At every step of the way these events swirl around Ditie without seeming to touch him in any real way. He spends a six month term in jail after the war for his collaboration with the Germans but that does not interfere with his plans to open up a spectacular hotel and become a millionaire. Ditie accomplishes this goal just around the time of the Communist accession to power in Czechoslovakia. Again, this does not seem to have any real impact on Ditie at all. In fact, when it is announced that the new regime will impose a horrendous tax on all millionaires Ditie eagerly awaits the validation that paying this tax will accord him. Instead he is horrified when an old colleague, a member of the Czech resistance who later becomes a party leader, whose life Ditie inadvertently saved from the Gestapo manages to obtain a tax exemption for Ditie. Horrified, Ditie marches to the local police with his bankbook to prove he is a millionaire. Of course all his assets are taken and he is sent to a work camp in the mountains.

It is only after Ditie has lost everything that he achieves some sense of his own humanity. It is a redemption that Ditie probably never knew he needed. As the story ends, Ditie wants nothing more than to be buried on the very top of a particular hill so that part of his remains make their way into some streams in Bohemia and the other part make their way into the Danube.

Although it is certainly easy to set out the events in I Served the King of England it is hard to convey the beauty and the comedy of Hrabal's writing. Hrabal's writing style is something of an anecdotal, stream of consciousness storytelling. It reminds me of the times I would sit in a bar, pub, or café in some far away place and come across someone who simply knew how to tell great stories. They might be a tad drunk, they might have told those stories to anyone willing to buy them a pint or too. But they are fun to listen to and sometimes they tell you a little bit about the storyteller and a little about yourself. Hrabal's I Served the King of England is one of those stories.

It is a delightful book.

Rating:
Summary: The essential Czech novel
Review: I don't like words like 'masterpiece,' but there are books that I consider essential reading, books that allow you to connect to and unscramble the meaning of our troubled century. Bohumil Hrabal's I Served the King of England is one of those books and, in my humble opinion, it must be one of the great comic novels of the 20th century, along with The Good Soldier Schweik, The Tin Drum, The Master and Margarita and The Autumm of the Patriarch. It is like those comic novels, about the role of individuals in history, and like those novels, it sheds light on the meaning of life. Unlike those novels however, I Served the King of England has an almost minimalist plot, propelled by the ambition of the main character to become a millionaire. Hrabal does not uses modernist narrative techniques at all; instead his novel develops in a linear fashion as his main character moves from hotel to hotel as a waiter, furthering his ambition and learning from his bosses the art of running a hotel. In the process, the character even joins the nazis (and marries one), becomes a millionaire after the war and looses everything under communist rule. His adventures as a waiter in the hotels are told through a comic, highly visual style that reminded me of Chaplin's films, a feeling later confirmed by Hrabal himself when he compares the adventures of incarcerated millionaires during communism as the height of chaplinesque humor. Somewhere during the middle of the novel I became a little exasperated by the apparent lack of sophistication in the narrative, but the novel only 'appears' to be superficial. There is a big emotional and intellectual pay-off at the end, as the main character comes to terms with history and the value of his connection to humanity. As a reader, I felt privileged to have taken the journey this bawdy and wonderful novel put me through.

Rating:
Summary: One of the great books of the 20th century
Review: I feel this is one of the truly great books of the century; and Hrabal, one of its great authors. Hrabal is extremely difficult to translat, but the translator -- a few minor mistakes notwithstanding -- did an excellent job, both in terms of content and style. A powerful and moving novel with few equals.

Rating:
Summary: Another War, Another Picaresque Czech Novel
Review: I guess this falls in that category of picaresque comic novels that is somewhat interesting and sometimes amusing, but somewhat oblique in its tone. This ironic tone taken toward those who just tried to get along with their conquerors strikes me as somehow distinctly Czech (at least I've not run across it elsewhere). The book follows the exploits of a ambitious small busboy with modern Czech history as the setting, concentrated on WWII. His apparent naivete and good humor invites comparisons to The Good Soldier Svejk--especially in the section where he obtains a Nazi girlfriend during the occupation--but there's a fair amount of bawdiness and tragedy as well. It's a novel much more likely to appeal to students of Czech history or Eastern European literature than a general reader.

Rating:
Summary: WITTY, CHARMING AND INHERENTLY CZECH
Review: Sitting in a café in Prague with several Australians (who happened to be a part of a miserable bus tour of Europe I subjected myself to) and our Czech tour guide, who, out of the kindness of our heart, led us to an off-the-beaten path place where tourists were not as prevalent as in the rest of Prague, we discussed Czech literature, where he (I believe his name was Kaspar) definitively announced that Czech president Vaclav Havel is a miserably bad writer, Milan Kundera is brilliant but overrated nevertheless, and Americans are the most annoying people in the world because we call virtually complete strangers "friends" having only spoken with them for a matter of ten minutes, maybe about something as inane as weather. I asked him, "What is good to read then?" Which is when he told us about Bohumil Hrabal, and the most brilliant book he (Kaspar) had ever read, I Served the King of England. He tried to describe it, but found it impossible because it was too filled with highly nuanced and some very uniquely Czech things. He recommended it, although he qualified his recommendations with many disclaimers: I won't really understand its meaning and depth because I am American. No one but a Czech can understand the significance of this work. Also, while he was at it, he had to let me know that it is impossible as a foreigner to try to learn the Czech language because it is impossible. Expats try it all the time, he assured me, but it is impossible. No, Kaspar impatiently but proudly insists, it does not matter if you have a background in Slavic languages, Czech is unique and only Czechs will truly master it.

Be that as it may, I found a copy of I Served... in a bookshop in Iceland after the bus tour was over. There were not any English language copies to be found in Prague (then again, I only had a few days to check, and I was too busy having a whirlwind two-day affair with a man from Spain who spoke nary a word of English). Be sure, of course, that I would not be so presumptuous as to purchase a copy of this magnificent treasure of modern Czech literature in its native language because it is a language which would naturally only confound me. I am American, after all. I barely know English!

With this glowing recommendation and pile of books I procured for late night reading on a friend's floor (my makeshift bed) in Reykjavik, I read I Served the King of England in one night, and I loved it. It was, as Kaspar promised, a brilliant book. I loved the irreverent and direct style of Hrabal's writing. I suspect that you will too. It is not a book filled with intricacies nor plots and subplots and it is not clogged with millions of characters. It is a simple book, but in its simplicity transcends the need for a lot of extra "stuff". (There is that expected American eloquence again!) I can say that at the end of the book, the narrator is almost like a hermit, living with his dog. If I am not mistaken (it has been almost 2 years since I read the book) the dog actually goes out and gets supplies for the narrator. Eventually the townspeople miss the narrator so much that they go to extraordinary lengths to make him come out of hiding, even (sadly!) killing the narrator's beloved and necessary dog. Definitely read this book if you can find it.

Rating:
Summary: Mordantly funny tale of one Czech's surviving
Review: The diminutive narrator of _I Served the King of England_, a novel spanning prewar, wartime, and postwar Czechoslovakia has some of the insouciance of the good soldier Schweik. He has a lot of (relentlessly heterosexual) libido. But, unlike Private Schweik, he's so good at what he does that he is awarded a medal by Haile Selassie (the book should be entitled I Served the Lion of Judah; it is his mentor who served the kind of England). He also attains his goal of becoming rich and enjoys the money he accumulates (for a while; eventually he decides that he has blood money and escapes its curse to become a hermit road-keeper (Sisyphus?) in the forest, cured of what approaches worship of rank, not just enjoyment of the pleasures he learns very early on that money can buy). Like _The Tin Drum_, this richly comic novel provides a take on very difficult times and sinister compatriates. The unbitter sense of absurdity (unlike Gass's more withering retrospects and Hasek's scorchings) seems shared with Klíma, Kundera, Skvorecky, and even Kafka. The sense of irony seems distinctively Czech in accepting some existential guilt for collusion with tyrannys. It seems to me that all these Czech authors provide very concrete images of everyday life, even-or especially-when that life is being turned upside down.

Rating:
Summary: The return to innocence
Review: The story of the young apprentice, then waiter going from hotel to hotel, then owner of his own hotel and millionaire, then losing everything, explores with the typical Hrabal's humour, full of tenderness, the physical and psychological development of the boy, his memories through the first Republic of Czechoslovakia after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then through the occupation of Bohemia by the Third Reich and the II World War until the final Communist take over. The lad, who at the beginning is a sort of parvenu, lusting for money and social recognition, suffers a progressive transformation of his soul which leads him to complete maturity, as he finally understands that wisdom lies in the heart of the humble, and that everything else is meaningless.

Rating:
Summary: Magical and mysterious
Review: This is a strange little book. I bought it without knowing anything about the author or his work, and enjoyed it very much on a superficial level. But I also know that I missed out on a lot in the book- nuances and references which I will probably never understand given that I am not Czech. This is a book I want to re-read soon, and I will do so thoroughly.

The narrator is a fascinating creation. He breezes through a strange life without being unduly affected by whatever fortunes or misfortunes life tosses at him, playing the hand that he is dealt. His adventures make for a good read, and unlike some other Czech novels I have read the book is quite simple, not a hard slog from cover to cover.

Rating:
Summary: Magical and mysterious
Review: This is a strange little book. I bought it without knowing anything about the author or his work, and enjoyed it very much on a superficial level. But I also know that I missed out on a lot in the book- nuances and references which I will probably never understand given that I am not Czech. This is a book I want to re-read soon, and I will do so thoroughly.

The narrator is a fascinating creation. He breezes through a strange life without being unduly affected by whatever fortunes or misfortunes life tosses at him, playing the hand that he is dealt. His adventures make for a good read, and unlike some other Czech novels I have read the book is quite simple, not a hard slog from cover to cover.

Rating:
Summary: no titles please
Review: When saying anything about this book, I am hampered by the necessity of having to read it in translation. But since translation hardly ever does anything to improve a text, I can only assume that this book is even more splendid in the original Czech.

This is a rare example of literature that espouses Marxist ideas and values artfully and artistically -- with craft, in every sense of the word. If this book is flawed and unsatisfying in its denouement, perhaps it no more than reflects the basic flaw of Marxism, which has always been better as political satire than political and economic prescription.