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Comment by mooreds | Hacker News Reader

How does it compare to Catch-22?

>How does it compare to Catch-22?

It's the Catch-22 of WW1.

A bit more gruesome and obscene, both less serious and much darker than Catch-22, and highlighting a wider scope of social (and military) issues.

I thought Švejk to be much funnier.

Rather I thought Catch-22 to be a so-so imitation of Švejk.

Then again I've been re-reading Švejk since childhood.

Similarly, how you can tell when Hasek dies before finishing Švejk and his friend takes over with the ending, the jokes just fall off a bit.

Catch-22 is funny during the read but after the end, and in reflection, is pretty dark.

Svejk is generally funnier, IMO

Švejk is too much slanted by the expectations of “just funny” and by (absolutely awesome, but too nice) illustrations by Josef Lada. When listening to the audio version of the book, I was shocked how actually horrific story it is. I have mentioned elsewhere in this thread a Czech literary historian (M. C. Putna) who called “The Good Solider Švejk” as “Kafka’s ‘Trial’ by other means”. I think he is quite correct.

As a child, I understood Svejk as pure comedy and didn't get any of the darkness.

Joseph Heller claimed he would have never written it had he never read The Good Soldier Švejk.

Hmm. A quick Google didn't find that.

From https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/17/theater/newsandfeatures/t...

"Heller, who died in 1999, told various interviewers that Céline and Kafka were his most powerful influences and that "Svejk" was "just a funny book.""

Found a quote, had to use the anglicized spelling though.

https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2011/08/heller-201108

"The Czech writer Arnošt Lustig claimed that Heller had told him at a New York party for Milos Forman in the late 1960s that he couldn’t have written Catch-22 without first reading Jaroslav Hašek’s unfinished World War I satire, The Good Soldier Schweik. "

Germanized, really.

there are some references in catch-22 and its follow up Closing time.

I was really surprised by Closing Time. I forget all the details of it, but I remember finding it just relentlessly depressing. The only degree to which I thought it worked was, it really emphasized the extent to which we really don’t need to know what happens to characters after the story is done, it is better if we just imagine they go on to have their lives.

Same. It was so heavy compared to catch-22. But I am not sure the aging perspective could have been written any different.

I found Catch-22 much more hilarious than Švejk.

I thought Svejk was more available to a younger reader. However, like someone already mentioned, it has enough layers for a reader of almost any age to enjoy. I'd read them both.

I think if you like one, you like the other. I think the Svejk book have a more innocent tone and is less cynical. But I was way to young when I read them to have a "deep" understanding of the contexts.

I'd say it's more cynical.

There's a place for hope in Catch-22.

In Svejk, the gruesome absurdity of the war prevails in all situations.

It makes sense unlike Catch-22 that does not make sense.

it only makes sense once you've already read it once.

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