Living Inside a Tunnel of Books
Oct 29th, 2009 by Donagh
Unlike Jim, of this parish, I think Too Loud a Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabal is a great little book:
“For thirty-five years now I’ve been in wastepaper, and it’s my love story” says Hanta in the opening line of the book. He goes on to describe his methods for work, and for using his job to “save” incredible numbers of books for reading and storage in his home. He tells about how he and his uncle will retire together and how he will buy the paper crusher from his workplace so that he can create beautiful bales of crushed paper for the rest of his life. Hanta constantly consumes large quantities of beer, not because he is an alcoholic, but so that he can “think better”, and muster the strength for his staggering intellectual ambitions.
So I really had to link to this AFP story about someone who seemed to doing pretty much the same thing as the hero in Hrabal’s book.
It all began in 1991, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when a newspaper published the picture of tens of thousands of books tossed onto an open-air dump in Leipzig, eastern Germany, because they were no longer wanted.
“With a few friends I got hold of a truck and we drove to the dump. We filled bags with books and brought them back, and then we did it over again,” said Weskott who lives near Goettingen, in central Germany.
“Literature has no place in a tip,” said Weskott as he showed off his trove of books stacked in a barn next to his Lutheran church.
Some 50,000 books, some in piles reaching up to the rafters, are crammed in the barn where parishioners and treasure-hunters are welcome to browse and shop after Sunday services. Token proceeds from the sales are given to a charity.
Photo at the top taken from a production still of the animated film of the book.
Great story, though not surprising, as these sort of things seem to proliferate throughout Mitteleuropa. I too am a fan of Hrabal’s great little book.
Ref. Auto-da-Fe by Elias Canetti (1935) a novel about a man who keeps a large home library and does chinese scholarship, surrounded by awful neighbours, some with proto-nazi sympathies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-da-F%C3%A9
also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_Canetti
Seanachie, I had always suspected that Hrabal story, of masses of books getting chucked in the rubbish had some literal truth to it. It’s a highly metaphorical story, but there must have been lots of instances of this going on.
Walter, I have had Auto-da-fe sitting on my bookshelf for years. I started to read it a couple of times, but never got beyond the first chapter. It’s annoying because I think I’ve read every book by W.G. Sebald, and I remember reading that he considered Auto-da-fe to be one of the most important novels of the 20th century. Ah well, I’ll get to it someday.
And then of course there is this, from Walter Benjamin’s Unpacking My Library:
Agree that Auto-da-Fe is a difficult novel to get into. I persisted many years ago and plodded with little enjoyment towards the awful end. Another novel about books, but I only saw the film, was Farenheit 451 by US sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury. A future dictatorship sends ‘firemen’ around to dwellings to seize and burn books. The paper bursts into flame at a temperature of 451 degrees F. I remember at the end of the film members of a group of underground dissidents undertake the laborious task of memorising great books before they are detected and burnt, so that they can secretly recite them to the upcoming generation that will never be able to read books.
Ah yes, the Truffaut film. I remember Cyril Cusack was in that, and wondered when I saw it why all the speaking and acting seemed speeded up. Mind you, its a long time since I’ve seen it. But it could be the french style of film making at the time, where humour was injected by simply speeding things up, like a little girl mitching around Paris on the metro.
Nice story there Donagh.
I guess it’s another book to put in my pile marked ‘Books To Read Again, As You Obviously Missed The Point The First Time Around.’ I think it must be the mitteleuropeans that cause me the problems. Thomas Mann, of my lord, how I wanted to beat my head against the wall, and don’t get me going on Gunter Grass…
I think my problem with Too Loud A Solitude was that I saw the end coming from the get-go and that the whole thing seemed to have ‘Warning: Allegorical Content Ahead!’ signs all over it. Like being beaten over the head with Depth and Meaning, Dammit!
How I remember the naive bliss of being young and reading Animal Farm before I ever heard of Communism, Uncle Joe, and all the rest of it. A heartbreaking children’s story about animals trying to run a farm.
Ah - Hrabal - that other great contribution of the Czechs to civilisation (along with Pilsener). I just thank Jaysus for that Auntie Beeb ‘Bookmark’ documentary that let me know that he existed… Whenever that was (early 90s??). The missus loves him and thanks Auntie Beeb too. We’ll have to keep beating Mr. K over the head with depth and meaning, I’m afraid…
And Queneau too - you’re bunging all my faves into the one post…
I think there’s a few 60s Czech film adaptations of Hrabal - definitely one of ‘Closely Observed Trains’ - by Milos Forman before he defected to Hollywood, I think.
As to the Luther lookalike and yer AFP article - I’d be a bit dubious on the merits of saving approved GDR publications from being used in foundations of houses or whatever - but whatever gets yer beard grey….
The Zazie adaptation reminds me quite a lot of Tati’s style
Did Cyril Cusack have some ongoing connection to the French New Wave? He’s (quite surreally I thought) also one of the voices on the English version of Grin Without A Cat by Chris Marker.
When the San Francisco public library closed for renovation and to embrace the digital era about 15 years ago, they tossed about 25% of their collection and it ended up as landfill. Middle of the night stuff too. There would not be the shelf space for them with all those computers was the argument.
Disgusting to hear that books end up as landfill when one realizes that millions of children in third world primary schools have no textbooks and rely on slates and chalk for learning basic literacy.