Love and Garbage [Paperback]

Ivan Klima (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 31, 1993

From an internationally acclaimed Czech writer comes a shrewd, humane, and poignant novel, set in Prague before the Velvet Revolution, whose perceptions about love, conscience, and betrayal cut to the bone of life in both totalitarian and democratic societies. "A chilling story from the underground."--The New York Times.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Klima wrote this sensuously romantic novel on the timeless theme of the clandestine love affair in response to the misogyny and cynicism he perceived in his countryman Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Donning an orange vest, the narrator--a banned Czech writer--sweeps the Prague streets with a group of the society's other outcasts--an old sailor given to drink, a sickly teenager, a foul-mouthed former beauty, a failed inventor, and an ex-pilot. As they go about their mindless job, the narrator learns of the dreams and sorrows of his coworkers and meditates on the life and work of Franz Kafka, the power of literature, and his relationship with his dying father. He agonizes over his passionate, tempestuous love affair with a talented sculptor, Daria, but in the end chooses his wife of many years for whom he feels great tenderness. A meditation on death, the nature of love and freedom, commitment and guilt, this poetic and gently sad autobiographical novel by a major Czech writer belongs in all libraries collecting modern European literature.
-Marie Bednar, Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage international ed edition (March 31, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679737553
• ISBN-13: 978-0679737551
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,205,811 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Klima's masterpiece, March 23, 2000

By 

"scottish_lawyer" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love and Garbage (Paperback)

Throughout much of the last thirty years some of the finest literary fiction has emerged from Eastern Europe. Much of this was due to Philip Roth's championing of the work of Kundera and other Czech writers. Klima is less well known than his former compatriot, but is a more interesting writer.

This novel is charming, a discourse on life, love, censorship, totalitarianism, and Kafka. The tale of an academic forced to give up his academic career to turn to street sweeping, the central character walks through Prague cleaning, and we find ourselves accompanying him. An engaging humane character wins over the reader, and although this novel is slow to start the conversational style slowly engrossed this reader at least.

Klima's work will not satisfy those looking for an easy read. But if you are prepared to be challenged then persevere. I, and many friends, have grown to love it.

But if you enjoyed this novel try one of his early books of short stories, My First Loves, or an overlooked masterpiece of Polish fiction, Tadeusz Konwicki's A Minor Apocalypse.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tough to start, but worth the effort..., September 20, 1999

By 

Adam Rakunas (Santa Monica, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Love and Garbage (Paperback)

This book was optional reading in college (for a class called The Philosophy of Love and Sex), and I'm glad I took the option. It was difficult to start; L&G is a very sweeping book whose narrative runs from the protagonist's childhood up through his adulthood and bounces around in between. It's supposed to be the story about his affair with an artist and his attempt at making a meaningful life in Communist Prauge, but it covers so much more: censorship, marriage, familial relationships, work. I've read it again since college and appreciated it all the more. How do we make our lives new? How do we make love work? This book still has me asking those questions.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Klima's typical blend of musings and The Muse, September 12, 2003

By 

John L Murphy "Fionnchú" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Love and Garbage (Paperback)

As with his other writing--essays, short stories, other novels--Klima mixes lots of pondering with a slow-moving, at times suspended, plot. He favors thinking about Kafka, Kampuchea, the Bomb, garbage, and corrosion of the moral and physical type. It takes a very slow accretion of these reflections, alternating with the narrator's work on a sanitation crew, the decline of his father's health, his marriage and his mistress, and his own impotence as--you guessed it, a writer..to emerge into what manages to be an appropriate ending to this reflective, meditative narrative.

I like Klima's refusal to give into the cliche, the accepted role, and his determination to peer over into the abyss: the quality he fears and admires in his predecessor Kafka. As with most of his work, you find out less about the streets of Prague than his inner labyrinthine intellect. I do wish, however, that Klima could break out of his familiar narratorial role: his protagonist always seems like himself, despite at the novel's start a disclaimer. Which is wise, considering Klima's faithful rendition of a love triangle that motivates what plot that exists to thread the multiple digressions and sub-plots along. His account of infidelity certainly carries the whole theme of lies and decay forward and grounds the novel in its elaborations.

Actually, the garbage crew proves the least interesting part of this novel, and the relationship between him and his wife and his mistress the most engrossing--I expected to be excited by just the opposite motif! Klima comments elsewhere that he took on the garbageman job as "research" for a novel. On the other hand, under the communist regime, he may not have had many alternatives. See "My Golden Trades" for some of his other tasks.

More admirable than Kundera, in my opinion, is Klima's moral stance; you can read his interview with Philip Roth in Klima's essay collection "Spirit of Prague" to understand more about how the two Czechs differ in their decisions. For readers willing to be moved more by insight than titillation, this is a fine place to begin your introduction to Klima's world.