Headed for the Blues: A Memoir [Paperback]

Josef Skvorecky (Author), Kaca Polackova Henley (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1997

With the mordant humor and sardonic irony that marks his novels, Skvorecky, one of the preeminent Czech writers of the post-World War II generation, looks back on a life of writing amidst the political repression of his native Czechoslovakia. This is a masterfully written memoir by the celebrated author of The Bass Saxophone and The Republic of Whores.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Is there a dissident or writer who lived under Communist rule in Czechoslovakia who wasn't a music aficionado? The blues are in the title of novelist Skvorecky's memoir, but it's jazz that gives the book its improvisatory form and its subtext: jazz as a form of inarticulate protest against the overwhelming power of the state. Skvorecky was born in Kostelec in the 1920s, an idyllic time and place from the vantage point of Czechoslovakia's turbulent subsequent history. Skvorecky skips over the map and across the decades to provide this headlong history of his life and times, a history as jumbled and feverish as a sax player's after-midnight solo. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

This short, hallucinatory memoir by Czech novelist Svorecky (The Bride of Texas), who emigrated to Canada in 1968, is a nonstop, free-associative outpouring, as daring and experimental as his novels. He reminisces on his political and sexual awakening, his youth in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, the arbitrary arrests of friends and fellow activists after the Communists grabbed totalitarian power in 1949 and his artistic revolt against "wall-to-wall Czech socialist realism." The tone is feverish, bitterly sardonic, in a narrative peppered with anecdotes, asides, witticisms, memory shards and topical allusions (many skillfully explicated in the translator's notes). Writing nostalgically of his love of jazz and of resistance to the Soviet invasion in the 1968 Prague Spring, Svorecky also offers random, often irreverent comments on Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Kundera, Hemingway, Karel Capek.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 156 pages
• Publisher: Ecco Pr (July 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0880015071
• ISBN-13: 978-0880015073
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,629,763 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A strange and exquisite trip, December 30, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Michigan, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Headed for the Blues: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Svorecky's book Headed for the Blues is an excellent, mainly stream-of-conciousness narrative dealing with his experiences as a young boy and man in his homeland. Woven in with this story of a Communist land is a philosophy on life and writing. An excellent book. One of my favorites. And believe me this review does NOT do it justice. I just figured a book as good as this ought to at least have one review here.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A slight collection of slight riffs about coming of age in communist Czechoslovakia, February 1, 2010

By 

Stephen O. Murray "Stephen O. Murray" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Headed for the Blues: A Memoir (Paperback)

I was disappointed by Josef Skvorecky's Headed for the Blues. It is a very spotty and elliptical memoir, and presupposes familiarity with his first two novels (a familiarity I lack). The pained statement about failure (only dishonesty is culpable, not trying and falling short) are moving, but the book does little to explain how this writer came to be the writer he is. The angle of jazz as social protest that lacking words of dissidence is interesting, but there's not much more to say than stating it.

There's sex, another pastime for thwarted youth, and impotent outrage arbitrary exercises of state power in the set of related stories (stream-of-consciousness riffs) that don't IMHO add up to a novel. The author and his fictional alter ego are going somewhere (Canada, starging a Czech publishing company there, writing the formidable The Engineer of Human Souls), but the book and its protagonist mostly spin wheels.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Train Wreck, October 7, 2004

By 

JMack (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Headed for the Blues: A Memoir (Hardcover)

While the synopsis of the book seems interesting, I am not sure what the book is about. The author uses a "stream of conscious" method of stroy telling which few authors could use successfully. Additionally, the story is not divided into chapters, so the stream of thought seems to speed to nowhere.

The book is allegedly a memoir of a Czech writer who moved to Canada to start a publishing company. The story is a reflection of his childhood and early life in communist Czechoslavakia. The few entertaining points are concentrated in the dark humor scattered throughout the book. The humor addresses such topics as prostitution and communism.

What was it like to live in communism? The answers to these questions are sparse and redundant. Aside from the humor, it is hard to decipher the author's objective. It is a memoir, but even memoir need a story that is going somewhere.