Adventures: pre-Hemingway/Fitzgerald/Faulkner AvantGarde Hit

<body bgcolor="#FFC1C1" leftmargin="0" link="#FFC1C1" vlink="#FFC1C1" alink="#FFC1C1" style="font-family: Times New Roman"> <p align="center"><b>Adventures: pre-Hemingway/Fitzgerald/Faulkner Avant-Garde Hit</b></p> <p align="center"><font face="Times New Roman" size="5" color="#008080"><strong>What do authoritative references say about this book:</strong></font></p> <div align="center"><center> <table border="0" cellpadding="12" cellspacing="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#C0C0C0" height="276"> <tbody> <tr> <td width="100%" height="40"><b><font color="#FF0000">ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA: "... </font>considered one of the greatest masterpieces of satirical writing." </b></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" height="78"><b><font color="#FF0000">CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS: </font>"... has been hailed as a masterwork, ... has been compared to the satires of British writer Jonathan Swift. ... Jaroslav Hasek has been compared to French satirist Francois Rabelais ... the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus ... to American writer Joseph Heller ..."</b></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" height="59"><b><font color="#FF0000">CRITICAL SURVEY OF LONG FICTION - Foreign Language Series: </font>"His great...masterpiece...book does not have a rival in its genre in this century ..."</b></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" height="59"><b><font color="#FF0000">BERTOLT BRECHT: </font>"If anyone asks me to pick three literary works of this century which in my opinion will become part of world literature, then I would say that one of them is Hasek's 'The Good Soldier Svejk'..."</b></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" height="40"><b><font color="#FF0000">LESLIE A. FIEDLER: </font>"...'terribly funny', we say putting down the book, and not taking the adverb seriously enough."</b></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </center></div> <p align="center"><br> </p> <div align="center"><center> <table border="0" cellpadding="25" cellspacing="0" width="555"> <tr> <td width="203" valign="top"> <div align="center"> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="111%"> <tr> <td width="100%" align="left" valign="top"><font face="Times New Roman"><strong>It seems unconscionable that Hašek's Good Soldier <font color="#FF0000"><big><big>Švejk</big></big> <big><big>has been inaccessible to English readers</big></big></font> for so long. What if Victor Hugo or Leo Tolstoy had been kept from us? It's hard to imagine literature without them.</strong></font></td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> <td valign="top" width="252"> <p align="right"><br> </p> <p align="right"><img src="images/AG00088_.gif" alt="Great book, published in 54 languages: original Czech, and in translation in Abkhazian, Albanian, Armenian, Azerian, Bakshirian, Bielorussian,, Bulgarian, Chinese, Chuvash, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Estonian, English, Finish, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Mari, Moldavian, Mongolian, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Rumanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Swedish, Tadzhik, Tartar, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Vietnamese and Yiddish." align="left" width="32" height="35"><a href="6V3.html" target="_top"><img border="0" src="images/published.gif" align="absbottom" width="135" height="33" alt="Great book, published in 54 languages: original Czech, and in translation in Abkhazian, Albanian, Armenian, Azerian, Bakshirian, Bielorussian,, Bulgarian, Chinese, Chuvash, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Estonian, English, Finish, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Mari, Moldavian, Mongolian, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Rumanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Swedish, Tadzhik, Tartar, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Vietnamese and Yiddish."><img border="0" src="images/in%2054%20languages.gif" width="219" height="37" alt="It seems unconscionable that Hasek's work has been inaccessible to English readers for so long. What if Victor Hugo or Leo Tolstoy had been kept from us? It's hard to imagine literature without them. Let's reverse the situation. What if you suddenly became aware that, because of some problem with translation or some other oversight, Mark Twain's work had been virtually hidden from Europeans for 75 years? Most Americans would consider that a lamentable travesty. Well, that is what has happened to the Czech people in the case of Jaroslav Hasek. He and his work are practically non-existent in the English-reading world, an influential audience of at least 500 million people."></a> </p> </center> <div align="center"> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="109%"> <tr> <td width="100%" valign="top"> <p align="right"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>read by</b> tens-, and most probably<br> hundreds-of-<b>millions</b> <b>people</b><font color="#008080"> worldwide</font><br> <b>filmed and dramatized </b>several times</font></p> <center> <p align="left">  </center> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> </tr> </table> <div align="center"><center> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="80%"> <tbody> <tr> <td valign="top" align="center" rowspan="2" width="40%"> <p align="center"><a href="5V3.html" target="_top"><img border="0" src="images/Crime_against_the_State.gif" alt="Hasek knew that a momentous, fundamental change in human history was occurring. For Central and Eastern Europe, it was the end of the old order. It was the demise of a social structure that had evolved from prehistoric times and affected every human life. Tribal and clan chieftains had evolved into Dukes, Counts and Lords, and then into Monarchs and Emperors. These despots caused and lost World War One and suddenly vanished. The decrepit empires were replaced by democratic republics, except in Russia where the bolsheviks instituted their own fatally flawed dictatorship and empire. However, as most historians agree, enough perverse elements and limbic memory of the old order remained in Central Europe to foment and fuel the biggest meatgrinder of them all, World War Two." width="167" height="47"></a> </p> </td> <td align="center" valign="top" width="47"> <p align="center"><img src="images/AG00088_.gif" alt="A host of literary critics acknowledge that Jaroslav Hasek was one of the earliest writers of what we have come to know as modern literature. He experimented with verbal collage, Dadaism and the surreal. Hasek was writing modern fiction before exalted post-World-War-One writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner, to name just a few. A literary analyst has pointed out that Hasek is one of the few writers of all time to combine political with misanthropic satire. In fact, The Good Soldier Svejk, he says, is the only example of this genre in the 20th century." align="left" width="32" height="35"></td> </center> <td valign="bottom" align="center" width="50%"> <p align="center"><font color="#0000FF"><b><strong><a href="BookOneChapter1.html"><img border="0" src="images/3%20FREE%20preview%20chapters.gif" width="277" height="30" alt="aroslav Hasek wrote the grandaddy of anti-war novels. According to one critic, only the first two-thirds of The Red Badge of Courage precedes it. The Good Soldier Svejk even predated that quintessential First World War novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. More familiar to today's readers, perhaps, is Joseph Heller's Catch 22, set in World War Two. Hasek's biting satire and humor is its direct ancestor also, as well as that of many others. It might be hard to imagine, but "anti-war" was not "in" before The Good Soldier Svejk. And, it should be noted that Hasek's Svejk preceded Joseph Heller's Yosarrian by almost 50 years."></a> </strong></b></font>  </p> <center> <p>  </center></td> <td valign="top" align="left" width="5%"> <p align="left"> <img src="images/AG00108_.gif" alt="Download this! Adventures Modern Literature Satire Fiction Masterpiece Czech Polish Russian Hungarian Croatian Serbian War World War One WWI Soldier Svejk Schweik Shveik Shveyk Schveyk Working-class Heroes Novel Austrian Empire German Language Military Authority Resistance Avant Garde Cultural Revolutionary Censorship Dadaism Surrealism Modern Times Fiction Literature Hemingway Fitzgerald Faulkner Satire Anti-War Humor Prague Kafka Hasek Political Social Moral Philosophical Problems Ordinary People Dissent Imperial Powers Propaganda Repression Rulers Slavic Central Eastern Europe Bosnia Hercegovina Sarajevo Humans History Despots Culture Masterpiece Good Book Best Book Good Read Y2k Anti-Establishment Antiestablishment Police State Modern Literature Funny Book Oppression Change Politically Incorrect Hemp Zenny.com Zenny Sadlon Zdenek Sadlon Emmet Mike Joyce Jaroslav Hasek" align="texttop" width="44" height="23"></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </div> <div align="center"><center> <br> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td width="25%" align="center" valign="top"> <p align="center"><a href="5V3.html" target="_top"><img border="0" src="images/cop_running_right.gif" align="top" alt="By the turn of the century Prague had become a boomtown. Large numbers of people had come to the city from the countryside to participate in the industrial revolution. The rise of a large working class spawned a cultural revolution. The empires of Central Europe ignored these intrinsic changes and became more and more decrepit and anachronistic. As the system decayed, it became absurd and irrelevant to ordinary people. When forced to respond to dissent, the imperial powers did so, more often than not, with hollow propaganda and repression." width="93" height="100"></a> <div align="right"><br> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="67%" bgcolor="#008080"> <tbody> <tr> <td width="100%"><img border="0" src="images/A_literary_analyst.gif" alt="By the turn of the century Prague had become a boomtown. Large numbers of people had come to the city from the countryside to participate in the industrial revolution. The rise of a large working class spawned a cultural revolution. The empires of Central Europe ignored these intrinsic changes and became more and more decrepit and anachronistic. As the system decayed, it became absurd and irrelevant to ordinary people. When forced to respond to dissent, the imperial powers did so, more often than not, with hollow propaganda and repression." width="203" height="202"></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> <div align="center"><br> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td width="100%" valign="bottom" align="center">  <p><b><a href="1V3.html" target="_top"><img border="0" src="images/Read%20the%20INTRODUCTION.gif" alt="Hasek's most important work was centered around a Czech soldier's experiences in World War One. It's actual title is The Fateful Adventures of The Good Soldier Svejk During the World War, but it is known by tens of millions of Central Europeans as simply, The Good Soldier Svejk. This monumental, humorous work is acknowledged as "...one of the greatest masterpieces of satirical writing" by no less a standard and exalted reference than the Encyclopedia Britannica." align="absbottom" width="237" height="24"></a> </b></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" valign="top" align="center"><b> <a href="1V3.html" target="_top"><img border="0" src="images/to%20the%20new%20English%20edition.gif" alt="This new translation and rendition of The Good Soldier Svejk is our attempt to make this Central European masterwork accessible to the modern reader of English. There have been two other attempts and both are, in our opinion, failures in both practice and spirit. The only attempt at a complete English translation has often been criticized, by those who have read the novel in another language, as a clumsy rendition that left The Good Soldier Svejk reading like a hackneyed novel about the British army in the 19th century. We consider this both an injustice to Jaroslav Hasek and a tragedy for those denied the insight and enjoyment of a hilarious and rollicking modern classic." align="top" width="218" height="24"></a> </b></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> <p align="center"><a href="1V3.html" target="_top"><img border="0" src="images/AG00017_.gif" align="right" alt="Some writers so capture the soul and spirit of a people that they are identified with them forever after. In England, it was Charles Dickens, in the United States, it was Mark Twain. For the Slavic nations, and to some extent for all Central Europeans, it is the Czech writer, Jaroslav Hasek." width="134" height="150"></a> </td> </center> <td width="50%" valign="top"> <div align="right"> <center> <table border="0" cellpadding="24" cellspacing="0" width="260" bgcolor="#FFFF00"> <tbody> <tr> <td width="180" align="left" valign="middle"><font face="Times New Roman"><strong>A host of literary critics acknowledge that Jaroslav Hašek was one of the earliest writers of what we have come to know as modern literature.<br> He experimented with verbal collage, Dadaism and the surreal.<br> <big><big><font color="#0000FF">Hašek was writing modern fiction before</font></big></big><br> exalted post-World-War-One writers like<br> <big><big><font color="#0000FF">Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner</font></big>,</big><br> to name just a few.</strong></font></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </center></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> <div align="center"> <center> <div align="center"> <table border="0" cellpadding="12" cellspacing="0" width="75%"> <tbody> <tr> <td width="45%" bgcolor="#FFFF00" style="margin-left: 12; margin-right: 12; padding: 12px"> <p align="justify"><br> <p align="center"><strong><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Now that you have heard of, or might have even served in Sarajevo and Bosnia Herzegovina</font><br> <font face="Times New Roman" color="#FF00FF" size="6">why not </font><font face="Times New Roman" color="#0000FF"><big><big><big><a href="10V3.html" target="_top"><img border="0" src="images/buy.gif" align="absbottom" alt="The book's central character is a quintessential, working-class citizen-soldier, often abused by the fates and the forces of the Austrian empire. In both civilian and military life, Svejk lives by his wits. His chief ploy is to appear witless to those in authority. In fact, he is fond of pointing out that he has been certified to be an imbecile by an official military medical commission. Consequently, he reasons, he cannot be held responsible for his sometimes questionable actions because he's a certified nitwit!" width="58" height="29"></a> </big></big></big> <br> </font><font face="Times New Roman" size="5">the Primer on World War<br>          Madness Survival:</font></strong><br> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="45%" bgcolor="#FFFF00" style="padding: 12px"> <div align="center"> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="67%" bgcolor="#008000"> <tbody> <tr> <td width="100%"><img border="0" src="images/The%20Fateful%20Adventures%20of.gif" alt="The Good Soldier Svejk is as entertaining as any book of the 20th century. And, though it is set in World War One and written shortly thereafter, most readers will find it thoroughly modern. There is good reason for that. Jaroslav Hasek was more than avant garde. He was an iconoclastic revolutionary, both in his life and as an artist. The First World War liberated the Czech Lands and Jaroslav Hasek simultaneously. For the first time, he was free to write and create without censorship or fear of imperial reprisal." width="400" height="114"></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="45%" bgcolor="#FFFF00" style="padding: 12px"> <p align="center" style="background-color: rgb(255,255,0); color: rgb(255,255,255)"><font face="Times New Roman" color="#0000FF"><big><big><big><strong><a href="10V3.html" target="_top"><img border="0" src="images/Book%20One%20buy.gif" align="absbottom" alt="By reading The Good Soldier Svejk, you will get a heavy dose of culture and a glimpse at modern social history in the making. You will have read an important book. And, best of all you'll laugh and have a really good time doing it. How often does a situation like this come along? Rarely. What better way to "close the books" on the twentieth century, than by looking back at where it all began? So, kick off your shoes, make yourself comfortable, and enjoy." width="168" height="30"></a> </strong></big></big></big></font> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </center></div> <p style="background-color: rgb(0,0,0); color: rgb(255,0,0); border-top: medium none" align="center"> <a href="indexV3.html" target="_top"><img border="0" src="images/buttons/home.gif" alt="Jaroslav Hasek was born in 1883 in Prague and was writing satirical articles for Czech newspapers by the time he was 17. He also published poetry and numerous short stories. The writing job that paid him the best was at Animal World magazine, where he worked quietly at his desk writing articles until irate letters started coming in from zoology professors. He was fired when his employers learned that rather than doing any research, he'd written descriptions of hybrid monkey dogs and other fantastical creatures" width="54" height="21"></a> <a href="3V3.html" target="_top"><img border="0" src="images/buttons/It's%20a%20Masterpiece.gif" alt="Yet the book is nearly unknown in America. Mike Joyce and Zenny Sadlon think that's because none of the book's virtues, beyond its satire, are evident in the only English translation currently available. That translation was done by Cecil Parrott, a British ambassador to Czechoslovakia in the 1960s. "Have you ever seen a diplomat, British or American, who actually spoke the language?" asks Joyce. Sadlon, a professional translator and interpreter whose native language is Czech, suspects that Parrott had a secretary or someone with a passing knowledge of both languages translate the original into English before he polished it up. "There were just too many mistakes," he says disgustedly, "and too many liberties taken."" width="150" height="21"></a> <a href="4V3.html" target="_top"><img border="0" src="images/buttons/Why%20you%20don't%20know%20it.gif" alt="Sadlon had known since he was a student in Czechoslovakia that The Good Soldier Svejk was a classic, but he reread it in English and doubted his memory of it. He thought Parrott's translation was a different book and wanted a second opinion. He knew Joyce was a voracious reader. "It took me three years until I gave Mike the book," he says. "I was afraid to give it to him because- see, my wife is an insomniac, and when I started reading Svejk to her several different times, guaranteed, within 20 minutes she'd be dead to the world. This is a testimony to how bad the book is. Finally I said, 'Mike, just go through it and let me know what you think." width="180" height="21"></a> <a href="10V3.html" target="_top"><img border="0" src="images/buttons/Buy%20Svejk,%20Book%20One.gif" alt="If anyone asks me to pick three literary works of this century which in my opinion will become part of world literature," Bertolt Brecht once said, "then I would have to say one of them is [Jaroslav] Hasek's The Good Soldier Svejk." Hasek's book, written shortly after World War I, may be the first satirical absurdist antiwar novel. It's considered a classic in central European countries and has been translated into 53 languages, including Vietnamese." width="195" height="21"></a> </p> <p> </p> </body>