Too Loud a Solitude

"I do not so much read as savour the words. I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck on it like a fruit drop." This quote from the protagonist of Bohuml Hrabal's Too Loud a Solitude is as good a description of the love of reading as any I've come across. I have reread this slim novel several times and can definitely count it amongst my favorites.

Hanta is a trash compactor, specializing in paper and books. Living in a repressive Czechoslovakia in the 1970s, there are plenty of books to crush. Books that have been banned or purloined from wealthy out of favor families are brought to Hanta and his compacting machine. But Hanta can't bring himself to destroy many of the books. He carefully smuggles some of them to academics, others he keeps for himself. He fashions huge piles of books in his home, some embedded in the compacted remains of other books, wrapped in beautiful art prints. Although he is a modest and simple man, his knowledge of the classics is excellent. When he retires, he buys his compactor and brings it home to continue his life's mission.

'Crushing' is the operative term for this novel. The books are crushed, the human spirit is crushed by repression, and Hanta's fate is not difficult to figure out. There is not a lot of straight plot to this novel, but something about it just stays with me. The writing is beautiful and at 98 pages, a quick and satisfying read.