Central European Fiction

[Herbert Ashe]

The thread about the Ducks, Longsentence book made me read a couple of things.

Had a bit of a László Krasznahorkai itch after seeing Satantango again, there's a chapter from Seiobo There Below I come back to a lot as it feels very distilled Krasz, 377 Private Passion, about 20 pages, 1 sentence, a retired architect gives a lecture on baroque music in a village hall to a handful of baffled OAPs, he's an absurd figure (although not exactly unsympathetic), like a single-subject message board poster sticking to his furrow whilst the rest of the world doesn't care, Krasz's doomy, apocalyptical figure thing in microcosm, funny as well.

Bohumil Hrabal, Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age has been sat on shelf for ages but I put it off as although it's short (~100 pages) it's also a single sentence and didn't want to spread it out too much, finally had a suitable long train trip  so I could read it in a day, here the single-sentence thing is lighter and more literal representation (the free flow raconteuring of the storyteller, a middle-aged or older man reminiscing about his life, his womanising, time in the army, etc) but also winds up being pretty much encapsulation of the author's thing, from what I've read of him anyway.

Got some Thomas Bernhard and Daniela Hodrova sitting around to read. So yeah, books from that part of the world, I like them, do some good posts if you want.