IGOR HÄJEK

Hrabal has his own particular way of looking at or reading the world, of exposing aspects of character or reality one hadn't thought of. It is a quasi-surrealist method, in which everything depends on an extraordinary angle of perception. It has its dangers: it consumes an inordinate amount of personal experience; its disjointed nature makes the development of a synthetic outlook or philosophy difficult (but it helps to avoid ideology); it generates an intoxication with words and images; and the inflexible originality it imposes, similar to that of a Sunday painter, may become too familiar for the reader and a self-perpetuating mould for the author.

A conventional strait-jacket does not suit Hrabal, however. Even A Close Watch on the Trains, his most conventional book, is really a series of picturesque episodes arranged in the shape of a novel….

In Postriziny, too, he seems to have set himself a task not quite germane to his talent. The book, to which he refers only as "a text", is written in memory and celebration of his late mother, father and uncle: its eleven chapters describe the things they got up to while living in a brewery where his father was manager. The anecdotes dating from the 1920s and obviously handed down by family tradition rather than remembered were not quite zany enough by Hrabal's standards and needed embellishment. At the same time, respect for his parents has prevented the author from giving full rein to his prating. The result of the compromise is that the tone is tenderly evocative, as befits the occasion, although from time to time the strange juxtapositions seem to do no more than stretch a slight and static tale.

Perhaps we have been spoilt by Hrabal and it may be unfair to expect him to go on providing new sensations at a prodigious rate. The very fact that the book provokes argument and criticism places it high above the boring mediocrity of most contemporary Czech writing….

The most authentic Hrabal available in English is contained in The Death of Mr Baltisberger, a book of short stories…. In this early collection … the weaknesses of Hrabal's method are avoided with bravura and its untamed originality is displayed to full advantage. Everyday drabness lights up into exceptional situations, beer talk is endowed with profound wisdom, and literature miraculously reintegrates neglected little eccentrics and outcasts into the mainstream of life. The concise form precludes spillage or thinning of content. In these stories Hrabal is as strong, sparkling and invigorating as Pilsner Urquell. Postřižiny is just a very good local brew.