Regular marked price: $17.00Discount Price: $15.30
Cost Savings: $1.70 (10%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 891.8635
EAN num: 9780810112780
ISBN number: 0810112787
Label: Northwestern University Press
Manufacturer: Northwestern University Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 85
Printing Date: March 09, 1995
Publishing house: Northwestern University Press
Sale Popularity Level: 224244
Studio: Northwestern University Press
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Hrabal's postwar classic about a young man's coming of age in German-occupied Czechoslovakia is among his most beloved and accessible works. Closely Watched Trains is the subtle and poetic portrait of Milos Hrma, a timid young railroad apprentice who insulates himself with fantasy against a reality filled with cruelty and grief. Day after day as he watches trains fly by, he torments himself with the suspicion that he himself is being watched and with fears of impotency. Hrma finally affirms his manhood and, with a sense of peace and purpose he has never known before, heroically confronts a trainload of Nazis.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
American and English readers will, if they are of a certain age, remember the film adaptation of this novella in the mid-1960's. Perhaps they saw it at a student film festival or in a local "art-house" which specialized in showing foreign films (and it was a great era for films from France, Sweden, Mexico, Japan, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Italy, and Poland - I apologize if I have slighted the cinematic prominence of other nations in that heady time.) Hrabal wrote the screenplay for the film as well. This took place during the several years of liberalizing ferment within Czechoslovakia that culminated in the Prague Spring of 1968, a burst of optimism that was to be quickly squashed like an unwelcome insect.
So the novella is known through both its film version and several English-language editions which have been published intermittently during the past forty years. The story is one of youthful heroism blossoming in the local context of everyday activities, but also in the increasingly desperate overall political and military context of the last months of World War II, when it seemed that the Protectorate might be used by the Germans to throw up a suicidal, last-ditch defense against its converging enemies. With the exception of the narrator's recollection of meaningful events in his young life, the entire story takes place within the confines of a railway station where its major characters are employees of the state's railway service. (The station and its employees are a fictional re-creation of the train station at Kostomlaty - a small town near Nymburk, Hrabal's hometown -- where the author worked during the war. He reveals this and the genesis of two of the book's major scenes in "November Hurricane", one of nine autobiographical essays in the collection "Total Fears. Letters to Dubenka", published posthumously in an English translation in 1998.)
As well as a hero's tale the story is also a sexual comedy, with its farcical central episode of Dispatcher Hubicka's imprinting official railroad stamps on the charming buttocks of telegraphist Virginia Svata. This deed has hilarious implications and results - photographs of Virginia's decorated buttocks are circulating, and based on these there is a promise of a film career for the young woman. A ridiculous railroad administrative inquisition takes place in order to establish the legality of such an act. At the same time Stationmaster Lansky, who heartily disapproves of the behavior of his underlings, is being petitioned by the local aristocracy to introduce Hubicka to them socially - he is a man after their own hearts. (A minor point: While her last name is "Saint", J. Skvorecky points out in his Introduction that Virginia is not an apt translation of her very first name, Zdenicka. He may have missed a tricky bilingual etymological boat here, since the prototype of Zdenicka is probably Saint Denise, celebrated for the staunch defense of her own virginity; so the translator caught this irony with the suggestive English "Virginia". On the other hand I may be deluding myself on this point, but Skvorecky does mention the symbolic nature of several characters' Czech names - none of which, by the way, come across in any English translation!)
It's just the kind of bold and whimsical act that makes the narrator and hero-to-be, Assistant Dispatcher Milos Hrma, admire Hubicka all the more (and, by comparison, lose confidence in himself, for Milos has had a little problem with premature ejaculation, preventing the fulfillment of his love for fellow employee Masha; it's made him uncomfortable with himself to the point of attempting suicide). Events conspire to lead Milos into his heroic act (blowing up a German munitions train headed to the eastern front). His participation in this exploit comes almost as an afterthought to his successful sexual escapade with an older woman who arrives at the station on a Resistance mission, delivering the bomb to be used to Hubicka. In fact, Milos' tryst with Victoria Freie gives him the confidence to imagine that he can undertake great things. He does and, as a consequence, he dies.
Some readers will probably react to the book's ending with reserve or skepticism, finding it too heroic in the sentimental mold - as the fire-bombed Dresden boils up into the western night sky and the munitions train explodes a few miles to the east Milos lies dying in the snow, fatally wounded by a German train guard whom he has shot (and Milos finds a common bond of humanity with his victim even as he "mercy-kills" him). In spite of this rather cinematic ending, Hrabal closes the book with one of his typical coarse, comical observations that is very deflating: "Sie sollen am Arsche zu Hause setzen.", quoting the train engineer who has just dropped off a bedraggled collection of Dresden residents who escaped incineration.
If you are such a skeptical ... Read More
Rated by buyers 
-
Hrabal's short novella "Closely watched trains" is a delight. In English translation it has just about 90 pages, yet in these 90 pages a story is told, which could be extended to an Oscar-winning movie and is an absolute masterpiece.
Milos Hrma, the main protagonist and narrator, is a railway apprentice during World War II in the German-occupied Czechoslovakia. He is in love with Masha, the ticket controller and his whole life is centered at the provincial railway station with the supervisor Lansky, whose passion are pigeons and ambition - to became accepted into aristocracy, and the promiscuous dispatcher Hubicka, Milos' teacher and role model.
The book starts with some family history and moves back and forth in time, as Milos recalls the events that led to his suicide endeavor (from which he just recovered). As the story develops, we get to know the solution to his problem. We get from the light to the serious matters and back in the matter of a few pages. The prose is condensed and rich, evoking powerful imagery with few words.
The character of Milos is as complicated and full of contrasts as only the youth can be - he is innocent, insecure, romantic, silly, but incredibly brave at the same time.
The bittersweet Czech humour is here at its greatest, as well as the typical melancholy, which together with Hrabal's mastery of the language and his great observations and criticism of the national character, war circumstances from the perspective of the remote town, and the emotional turmoil of the protagonist, give the amazing mix, which will never get outdated and always be a pleasure to read - in other words, a perennial classic.
Rated by buyers -
Hrabal's short novella "Closely Observed Trains" (the title under which it is published in Britain)is set in a railway station in a small town in Czechoslovakia in the winter of 1945. Although the war is coming to an end, the country is still under German occupation, and the book's title refers to the special military trains which need to be kept under close guard as they travel to the front.
The central character, Milos Hrma, is a young apprentice traffic controller, and the opening scenes of the book tend towards the comic, as Milos describes the attempts of his colleagues to get on with their everyday lives, seemingly oblivious to the historic events taking place around them. Milos's boss, Station-Master Lansky, is a ridiculous figure, obsessed with promoting himself both in the social hierarchy (he lays claim to aristocratic lineage) and in the hierarchy of the Czech railway system. Despite his eagerness for promotion, however, he pays more attention to his hobby of pigeon breeding than he does to the requirements of his job. Lansky's subordinate, Dispatcher Hubicka, is equally neglectful of his duties, although his main obsession is pursuing women; he is facing disciplinary proceedings for the offence of misusing Government property by using the station's official stamps to decorate the backside of an attractive young female telegraphist.
As the story progresses, it takes on a darker tone. We learn that Milos has recently returned to work after three months in hospital following an unsuccessful endeavor at suicide. The cause of this endeavor was depression brought on by impotence and his inability to consummate his relationship with his girlfriend. The latter part of the book has two themes- his continuing obsession with losing his virginity and the plot he forms with Hubicka to help the Czech Resistance by destroying one of the Germans' special trains.
The expression "tragi-comedy" is perhaps over-used in literary criticism, being all too often a category to enable the lazy critic to pigeonhole works that resist neat pigeonholing- certain of Shakespeare's plays, for example. It seems to me, however, that the adjective "tragi-comic" is indeed an appropriate one to use about "Closely Observed Trains" because of the contrast between the tragic situation of the Czech people under the German occupation and the many comic incidents that take place, such as Hubicka's adventures with the telegraphist, or Lansky's habit of shouting his criticism of the morals of society down the ventilation shaft in the station kitchen. The same incident, indeed, may have both comic and serious overtones, as when Lansky, in protest against the German invasion of Poland, kills his German pigeons and replaces them with Polish ones- an act both cruel and ridiculous. The book is full of gruesome but absurd details, such as the three dead horses thrown from a train and left by the railway lines. This is a book of less than a hundred pages, but Hrabal is able to fill that space with a fantastic amount of detail, both trivial and serious.
The central theme of the book is the various strategies people use to survive in the tragic circumstances of war and occupation- courageous acts of resistance, petty acts of defiance (such as using the metal from a downed German plane to roof rabbit-hutches and chicken-coops) and continuing to pursue the trivia of existence. Sometimes they use a mixture of all three. One can easily see why the Communist authorities disliked Hrabal's work; they had no objection to tales of heroic deeds in the fight against fascism, but these had to be viewed through the simplistic ideology of Marxism-Leninsm and placed in the context of the class struggle. Hrabal's world was more complex and less ideological. There is a place for courage in that world, but also a place for compromise and for the apolitical details of everyday life. Seen in this context, Milos's bravery seems both more impressive and the book's ending more poignant. This is a fine piece of writing and, given that it was written under Communist rule, a brave one.
Rated by buyers -
Bohumil Hrabal's Closely Watched Train is a beautiful book whose lingering impact on the reader is greater than one would suspect from looking at its length - 85 pages. It is the story of a young man, Milos Hrma, an apprentice signalman in a Czech village railway station during WWII. The term closely "watched trains" refers to German military (soliers, prisoners, and munitions) trains that must be watched, tracked closely to ensure a smooth passage. Failure results in close (and often deadly) scrutiny by the Gestapo. As the story it unfolds that young Milos had recently attempted suicide after his very first sexual experience ends disastrously. The scars on his wrist reflect the internal scars and humiliation suffered as a result of his sexual failure. The rest of the book focuses on his desire to achieve manhood, by means of a succesful sexual conquest or through some "other" means. Milos' quest is ultimately succesful yet with tragic consequences. An act of simple heroism marks the story's climax. Along the way Milos has a near fatal encounter with a Gestapo officer after an incident involving a closely watched train. The understated description of this encounter is a brilliant piece of writing as the officer and Milos closely watch each other's scars before the officer decides to spare his life. The above summary does not do justice to the concise, sparse tone of Hrabal's prose that conveys great depths of meaning in the course of the story's simple narrative.
This is a beautiful story, beautifully told. I also recommend the movie (available on Amazon)after reading the book. It won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1966. The screenplay was written by Hrabal and altough not totally faithful to the book's narrative it is well acted and serves as a nice complement to the book.
I strongly recommend this book.
Rated by buyers -
This is a tale about heroism of ordinary people, not about epic feats. You won't find here but common people, and that's what makes the tale so touching and realistic. The book is beautiful and is beautifully written, with a sober yet elegant and poetic style. The trains are an essential part of all the characters'lives in their jobs and their personal memories, and are related to the fight of Czechs partisans at the end of the II World War, which is the time the novel is placed. The novel is both dramatic and comic, and Hrabal's sense of humour is one of his most remarkable features, following the best tradition of Czech's Literature, particularly Jaroslav Hasek. The mixture of drama and comedy, as well as the human touch and tenderness which envelops the characters makes this novel very moving to every reader. This work is a little and brilliant jewel, definitely worth the trouble reading.
Find other books like this one:
