- Paperback: 156 pages
- Publisher: Ecco Pr (July 1997)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0880015071
- ISBN-13: 978-0880015073
- Product Dimensions: 20.8 x 13.7 x 1.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 181 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,050,542 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
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.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
In this brief volume, noted Czech novelist Skvorecky looks back at a youth spent under Communist rule, but don't expect anything so dull as a straightforward recounting of facts. Instead, Skvorecky offers terse, impressionistic snatches of fact told in an inimitably slangy and witty style. Free-associating wildly, with events bouncing about like light glancing off a plate of glass, he records memories of the war, its aftermath, and the sense of growing repression in a land where fizls (informers) abound and all the rules have been changed. Yet the personal enters too: there's young love (or lust) and Skvorecky's growing passion for jazz, which has defined his life and his writing. Political and literary allusions that will go right past American readers pepper the text, but fortunately a fine section of notes is included at the end of the book. Skrorecky has written a little gem of a memoir that flows wonderfully, and though the language requires a little concentration, anyone who perseveres will be amply rewarded. For all literary collections.?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A strange and exquisite trip, Dec 30 1999
By ashbrooke1@prodigy.com - Published on Amazon.com
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, Feb 1 2010
By Stephen O. Murray "Stephen O. Murray" - Published on Amazon.com
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, Oct 7 2004
By JMack - Published on Amazon.com
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.
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