Having to read let alone having to write an introduction to the fiction of Bohumil Hrabal is like being forced to listen to beer-tasting notes before drinking your draft. Now beer was too expensive, whores of every gender were too expensive, and smokers were being compelled to take their butts outside. Soon, with EU membership looming, even the yeast levels would be regulated, and the city would become Vienna Lite.
They had a pointโbut what would I have done with beer or whores at nine years old? To feel born too late for a true life whatever that is , and to feel that as a failure and that failure as ennobling, are very Czech emotions. All the olden stories must be written downโor formalized through recording and broadcastโbecause the technology demands it, and all the olden storytellers are dying.
Everything is outsize, aggrandizedโviolence is casual and caustically funny, even when the Nazis invade and occupy the brewery no mention is made of the invasion and occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia.
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