Customer Reviews

Love and Garbage

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Many compare Ivan Klima's 'Love and Garbage' to Milan Kundera's 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being'. Although there are many comparable elements between these two excellent novels, it must be said that 'Love and Garbage' has much more of a real human soul to it. Where Kundera's characters tend to be shallow and cold, Klima's have a warmth and realism that will draw in readers.

Even though the narrator is having an affair with a sculptress named Daria, we never see him as a calous womaniser, or anything of the sort. He is merely, like any human being, trying to find the person that will make him whole and keep him form the void.

Escaping the aforementioned central void is soemthing that obsesses Klima's narrator. To him the various relationships that he has are likely safety nets that keep him from the abyss that lurks beneath human existence. His wife and lover are dual nets that keep him hanging on above it, perhaps this is one place in which the characters approach Kundera like cynicism.

However 'Love and Garbage' does not restrict itself to matters of love and runs ts reader throught the gauntlet that is the human experience. Life is viewed from many different ages and viewpoints through the narrator, his wife, his children, his lover and his aging and unwell father. This is all set against the background of the loathsome, totalitarian regime of the time, as well as its "jerkish" traditions and language. The result is a fascinating examination of the human condition.

Klima writes beautifully, but I found the book to convoluted to give it a higher rating. I think he tried to squeeze too many themes and sub-plots into one book, and also that the narrator takes too long to resolve his inner turmoil about his extra-marital relationship. But the book is nonetheless worth reading for the prose, which is exemplary. This is not a book to read in small chunks on trains and planes, and should be tackled under perfect reading conditions.

Suppose you spent a lot of your childhood in a Nazi concentration camp, then got out only to find your country taken over by a lot of idiots with party cards who proceeded to Orwellize everything. Idiocy became excellence and excellence just suspicious lack of patriotism. The less you knew, the more qualified you became. And you wanted to write. What would you do ? Would you run away ? But what if your language was spoken by only ten million people in the whole world ? If you left, you'd be read only in translation--through that glass darkly. Well, you opt to stay. But the idiots--shall we call them `jerkists' ?---don't want to give you any recognition. So, you can collect garbage off the streets with a team of oddball companions and you can assuage your circumscribed little life, your frustrations in literature by having a steamy affair with a rather mysterious woman. Ah, but you're married too, with two kids. So, trapped you are. Isn't almost everyone, everywhere, ultimately trapped in a life they didn't imagine ? At least they are in our world, where choice is a possibility.

In a nutshell, this is Klima's autobiography and the dilemma of this strange but beautiful novel. I couldn't help but recall Milan Kundera here, even if Klima is probably sick and tired of the comparison. Philosophy plays a big role, plot takes a back seat. Adultery figures large in both writers' work, as it does in Skvorecky's as well. I think it is because in 20th century Czechoslovakia, living meant being in bed with somebody else; you could never be true to one thing. "Sleeping with the enemy" became a common metaphor. The enemy could be yourself. Klima writes that "the most important things in life are non-communicable, not compressible into words...even though he himself tries to do so." Yes, the whole book reverberates with the battle between being true to yourself and being true to the duties you have by being alive, being part of a social fabric, especially one that is odious to you. I'm not sure the battle is won by the end. Nor is it lost. It just goes on. Kafka has to appear, Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge, the philosophy of garbage, and the idea that we are tied to life by countless threads which form a net for us, but we break them, others break them, and they slowly rot away, leaving us, at last, alone. Love must be paramount---it is a strong thread, while garbage is dangerous, a rotting agent, especially discarded ideas that still hang around (like Communism in the old Czechoslovakia.) If you read this novel, you must be interested in such thoughts, Klima's many epigrams, and his musings on many subjects. You will find a very clear presentation of the dilemmas of adultery. There are some humorous passages. But it's most of all the tracing of one man's very human struggle with the givens of life--marriage, government, authority of any kind, nature, and love---that will keep you reading to the end. It is not a pop literature novel chockfull of extremes; it is quiet, but it is brilliant.

If you have ever loved before or maybe you are not quite sure what it is to love I would suggest reading this book. It will not answer all of your questions though it will provoke you to view love differently which might help you understand love. This book is philosophical in nature and the reader has to read between the lines to fully grasp what Klima is trying to say, but do not concentrate so much on reading between the lines or the magic will disappear. Klima's story is very easy to relate too and at times becomes very emotional because of this. After reading this book you might be confused tyring to figure out what each part of the story means, but your other thoughts on life or love will be greatly clarified.

Granted, this book won't be for everybody. For me, it has quite a few excellent scenes and narrative images that stick.

Although I enjoyed this book, I found it strikingly unoriginal. Klima covers many of the themes found in other Czech literature written during the rule of the communist regime: love, hate, body, soul, oppression, and freedom. If one is interested in exploring such themes, Milan Kundera's 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' is a much better choice than this particular work. Given that 'Love and Garbage' is Klima's response to Kundera's 'Unbearable Lightness...' I find it difficult to see how one could fully understand this book without first having read Kundera's novel. When one reads both books, one immediately notices the marked difference between the two authors: simply put, Kundera is better.

This was chosen as a book for my book club. If it hadn't been, I would not have stuggled through the entire thing. It reminded me of times in school when I kept checking how many pages I had left to go to finish an assignment. The book is very depressing and I could find very little value in it. Of the three people in my book club who finished it (out of 17), no one liked it. (This is a fairly sophisticated and educated group.) I realize that the author is well-recognized and that this is supposed to be "art" but that did not help my overall impression.