[In the following review, Czerwinski comments on the barely disguised autobiographical elements of Total Fears and declares Hrabal “genius.”]

Even during his most serious moments, there is an air of flirtation in Bohumil Hrabal's attitude toward his subject matter. Nowhere is it more apparent than in his comments on his wife Pipsi, “who was so long dying that in the end she became a saint.” Each mention of his wife is accompanied by a tender anecdote or an agonizingly complicated metaphor. As she lay dying, Pipsi was “wound up on to a long, long thread … as if that thread passed through my own heart.” Most surprising is that these protestations of love are directed to another woman: Dubenka (April Gifford), the muse in his later years.

Written during the period 1989-92, the letters were referred to as “lyrical reportage” by Hrabal, who held nothing back. They are both confessional and an apologia pro vita sua. Saturated with thoughts of suicide, old age, and past transgressions, they are nonetheless poetic excavations of the human heart. They may also be read as historical pieces, documenting Hrabal's psyche during the political upheaval when the essence of freedom was being defined by both former dissidents and liberated communists. Hrabal was barely involved in the debate, even when attacked by Ivan Klíma in an article published in Literary News, “The Two Hrabals.” Hrabal did his best to explain the circumstances leading to his political stance that made him a controversial figure, but in the end he conceded to his friend, “From his point of view he's quite right.”

Hrabal referred to various fortuitous events in his life as “totalitarian stroke[s] of fate.” It was fate that brought him together with Jiří Menzel, that produced the Oscar-winning movie Closely Watched Trains. Other events are also chronicled by Hrabal that explain the role of chance in his life. But Klíma's attack leaves an indelible imprint: “He's a man of character, whereas I … am rather a man of no character, because I'm afraid.” One almost sees Hrabal winking at his reader during this dramatic confession, for the wink is part and parcel of Hrabal's style. Few Czech writers can match his incandescent prose. The words ignite as one savors them. This is especially true of “The Magic Flute,” in which Hrabal's genius is most evident. His heartfelt words capture the reader's empathy: “I've reached the peak of emptiness and everything hurts.” (Every bone in my body succumbed to that suggestion.)

After his return from his tour to the “Delighted States,” Hrabal acknowledges that he has “aged so much now that I live and feed off childhood memories.” His thoughts dwell on his “unmarried mother,” “all those fine young men who emigrated,” and especially on his childhood memories. Even as he soberly determines “to sort [himself] out a bit,” the wink appears and the reader wonders if Hrabal is acting like Hrabal again. That irrepressible wink is solidified permanently when Hrabal becomes one with the country he has always loved and could never leave: “So this nation has in its genes what I have in mine … an inclination for booze and for Communism.” In his haste to berate himself, Hrabal fails to cite one other quality that binds this man to his country: genius.