Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: where is the light?
Review: A slow murky nerrative that builds to a anti-climax for the anti-hero. The atmosphere is like prague on qualudes. Raises questions on responsibilities and embracing social change. After reading Bohemial Hrable, Klima is like being coverd in crude oil.

Rating:
Summary: The Unearable Emptiness of Being
Review: Ivan Klima's Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light is set in Czechoslovakia in 1989. The old Communist regime, in place since 1948, hangs by a thread as the Velvet Revolution, led by students and dissident writers, such as Vaclav Havel (who went on to become President of the Czech Republic) and Ludvik Vaculik among others grows stronger daily. The novel's protagonist is Pavel Fukova. The story on its surface centers on Pavel's relationship with his old friend Peter, and Alice the girl they both loved. The inner story involves Pavel's apprehension about his own life and future as the long hoped for struggle for freedom races towards the finish line.

Pavel is a news cameraman for the government-run Czech television station, an institution loathed by most Czechs as an instrument of oppression, boring news reports, and propoganda. Pavel took on this job after he and his friend Peter were released from prison after they attempted to flee the country in 1968 after Soviet tanks crushed the Prague spring. (In real life Klima was in the U.S. in August 1968 but choose to return and found his work banned by the Soviet-controlled regime. In fact, Klima repeatedly refused `offers' from the old regime to emigrate. When asked why, he explained that "to be a writer means also to stick up for people whose fate is not a matter of indifference to me"). Pavel realizes that taking on this job may be seen as an implicit acceptance of an oppressive regime but he takes it on while explaining to himself that it will allow him to write screenplays that can be produced once the regime ends. Scenes from his screenplays, almost all autobiographical to a degree are woven into the novel. Peter, upon his release from prison, decided to withdraw from society altogether and winds up as the caretaker of a remote old castle far removed from the political storms that best life in Prague. The core of the novel focuses on the impact those choices have had on Pavel's outward and inward life.

It is hard to explain the impact the novel had on this reader. I was reminded of two things I had learned in my life. As a child taking religious instruction I was taught that a "sacrament was an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." In Waiting for the Dark I saw how Pavel's outward and visible compromise with an oppressive regime inexorably led to the diminution if not total elimination of whatever inward and spiritual (not necessarily to be taken in a religious context) grace he possessed in his heady younger days when he loved Alice and made a mad, hopelessly futile dash for freedom with Peter. Peter is scarred inwardly as well, due in part to his insistence on removing himself as far as he could from any outward and visible influences. Peter acknowledges this late in the novel when he turns to Pavel and says, "we are both scarred in our own way."

I was also reminded of the words of the Russian/Soviet writer, Nadezhda Mandelstam, widow of the poet Oisp Mandelstam. She once said that "a person with inner freedom, memory, and fear is that reed, that twig that changes the direction of a rushing river." What Klima has done here I think is to deal with people, in the form of Pavel, who have made outward compromises with a repressive regime in order supposedly to maintain their inner freedom only to find that those compromises lead to the opposite result. Pavel knows on some conscious level that he is neither a reed or twig that has contributed to the rushing river of freedom. The realization leads to despair, ennui, and ultimately a life not worth living. It is Pavel's awareness of the inner emptiness that gives the novel meaning and poignancy.

The book is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I am a careful reader and despite that fact it sometimes left me confused as Klima jumps from the story to Pavel's screenplay in a manner that often left me scratching my head. I was compelled to re-read a few passages (try) to make sure I understood where Klima was going.

Ultimately, this is a book well worth reading. It caused me to engage in no small amount of self-reflection and for me that alone was worth the `price of admission.

Rating:
Summary: The Unearable Emptiness of Being
Review: Ivan Klima's Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light is set in Czechoslovakia in 1989. The old Communist regime, in place since 1948, hangs by a thread as the Velvet Revolution, led by students and dissident writers, such as Vaclav Havel (who went on to become President of the Czech Republic) and Ludvik Vaculik among others grows stronger daily. The novel's protagonist is Pavel Fukova. The story on its surface centers on Pavel's relationship with his old friend Peter, and Alice the girl they both loved. The inner story involves Pavel's apprehension about his own life and future as the long hoped for struggle for freedom races towards the finish line.

Pavel is a news cameraman for the government-run Czech television station, an institution loathed by most Czechs as an instrument of oppression, boring news reports, and propoganda. Pavel took on this job after he and his friend Peter were released from prison after they attempted to flee the country in 1968 after Soviet tanks crushed the Prague spring. (In real life Klima was in the U.S. in August 1968 but choose to return and found his work banned by the Soviet-controlled regime. In fact, Klima repeatedly refused 'offers' from the old regime to emigrate. When asked why, he explained that "to be a writer means also to stick up for people whose fate is not a matter of indifference to me"). Pavel realizes that taking on this job may be seen as an implicit acceptance of an oppressive regime but he takes it on while explaining to himself that it will allow him to write screenplays that can be produced once the regime ends. Scenes from his screenplays, almost all autobiographical to a degree are woven into the novel. Peter, upon his release from prison, decided to withdraw from society altogether and winds up as the caretaker of a remote old castle far removed from the political storms that best life in Prague. The core of the novel focuses on the impact those choices have had on Pavel's outward and inward life.

It is hard to explain the impact the novel had on this reader. I was reminded of two things I had learned in my life. As a child taking religious instruction I was taught that a "sacrament was an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." In Waiting for the Dark I saw how Pavel's outward and visible compromise with an oppressive regime inexorably led to the diminution if not total elimination of whatever inward and spiritual (not necessarily to be taken in a religious context) grace he possessed in his heady younger days when he loved Alice and made a mad, hopelessly futile dash for freedom with Peter. Peter is scarred inwardly as well, due in part to his insistence on removing himself as far as he could from any outward and visible influences. Peter acknowledges this late in the novel when he turns to Pavel and says, "we are both scarred in our own way."

I was also reminded of the words of the Russian/Soviet writer, Nadezhda Mandelstam, widow of the poet Oisp Mandelstam. She once said that "a person with inner freedom, memory, and fear is that reed, that twig that changes the direction of a rushing river." What Klima has done here I think is to deal with people, in the form of Pavel, who have made outward compromises with a repressive regime in order supposedly to maintain their inner freedom only to find that those compromises lead to the opposite result. Pavel knows on some conscious level that he is neither a reed or twig that has contributed to the rushing river of freedom. The realization leads to despair, ennui, and ultimately a life not worth living. It is Pavel's awareness of the inner emptiness that gives the novel meaning and poignancy.

The book is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I am a careful reader and despite that fact it sometimes left me confused as Klima jumps from the story to Pavel's screenplay in a manner that often left me scratching my head. I was compelled to re-read a few passages (try) to make sure I understood where Klima was going.

Ultimately, this is a book well worth reading. It caused me to engage in no small amount of self-reflection and for me that alone was worth the 'price of admission.

Rating:
Summary: Autumn of a would-be patriarch
Review: The allusion to Gabriel Garcia Marquez' "The Autumn of the Patriarch" is intentional; the most intriguing character for me was not the protagonist--with his endless ruminating and grumbling--but the figure of the President governing rather tenuously a place very like Czechoslovakia under communist tyranny. Klima could have written a novel about a figure like him rather than a dissident disillusioned for a change. Like his other novels, here Klima carefully constructs a story in which the plot alone will not carry you along. The film that the narrator imagines out of his everyday reality makes for an intriguing contrast between art and real life, but this sort of story within a story by an artist by now has lost its originality. Where Klima best succeeds is in examining how people compromise themselves to survive an otherwise intolerable situation, and his works deserve attention for their honesty.

Not a lot happens--the soporific tone may mirror the grey nature of the state of which Klima writes; little of it comes alive save a few glimpses of nature. I suppose that's the point, but it makes for slow going. I like the epigrams tossed about the text, but this feature of Klima's style jars you a bit, since his tales constantly shift between meditations on powerlessness and resistance to totalitarianism and a conventional story in which not much happens to a dithering narrator, recognizably human to be sure but never particularly loveable. I'd start with his shorter stories before tackling this rambling novel.

Rating:
Summary: Autumn of a would-be patriarch
Review: The allusion to Gabriel Garcia Marquez' "The Autumn of the Patriarch" is intentional; the most intriguing character for me was not the protagonist--with his endless ruminating and grumbling--but the figure of the President governing rather tenuously a place very like Czechoslovakia under communist tyranny. Klima could have written a novel about a figure like him rather than a dissident disillusioned for a change. Like his other novels, here Klima carefully constructs a story in which the plot alone will not carry you along. The film that the narrator imagines out of his everyday reality makes for an intriguing contrast between art and real life, but this sort of story within a story by an artist by now has lost its originality. Where Klima best succeeds is in examining how people compromise themselves to survive an otherwise intolerable situation, and his works deserve attention for their honesty.

Not a lot happens--the soporific tone may mirror the grey nature of the state of which Klima writes; little of it comes alive save a few glimpses of nature. I suppose that's the point, but it makes for slow going. I like the epigrams tossed about the text, but this feature of Klima's style jars you a bit, since his tales constantly shift between meditations on powerlessness and resistance to totalitarianism and a conventional story in which not much happens to a dithering narrator, recognizably human to be sure but never particularly loveable. I'd start with his shorter stories before tackling this rambling novel.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful and insightful
Review: This novel explores the events before and after the Velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia through the experiences of a photographer. Under Communist rule, he was forced to take artless phtotgraphs for news agencies but had always dreamed of being able to pursue his art and make great films. After the revolution, he may have his chance.

The novel works both as the story of a single man's life and in exploring more generally how Czech society after Communism did and did not live of to the dreams of freedom that its citizens had. There is a safety in unattainable dreams that is no longer there once they are realizable. (Think _The Iceman Cometh_.)