Review by Choice Review
Klima's appraisal of Capek is far superior to Bohuslava Bradbook's (Karel Capek: In Pursuit of Truth, Tolerance, and Trust, CH, Nov'98). Where Bradbook's book lacked critical focus and discrimination among sources, Klima's is a comprehensive, measured, fond reading of the Czech democratic relativist's entire oeuvre. Where Bradbook grouped chapters by genre, Klima follows chronology, viewing Capek's work through the rapid political shifts from WW I through the founding of the first Czech Republic to the rise of Hitler and the ominous Munich Pact that arguably killed the writer. Klima, himself a distinguished novelist, has been a Capek advocate since the 1960s, when to do so in Czechoslovakia involved personal risk. For him, Capek is neither the martyr of some liberals nor the sell-out of some leftists. Klima condenses tremendous learning and long reflection into brief chapters that render tight, cogent judgments. Better than other writers have, Klima explains the claim that Capek is a writer of ideas, a claim he convincingly supports. Comrada's translation perfectly captures Klima's gracious, breezy, unpretentious style. Anyone familiar with Capek's work should find pleasure in this book, which is recommended for all libraries. D. N. Mager Johnson C. Smith University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Contemporary Czech writer Klima fulfills his commission to introduce Karel Capek (1890^-1938) to American readers near-perfectly. He inserts enough Czech literary and political history into this biocritical study to reveal Capek as Czech literature's Hawthorne and Whitman: its first formal prose master and its outstanding democratic voice. Capek's forte was the short prose piece; he wrote hundreds of fables, mysteries (metaphysical as well as detective), travel letters, political commentaries, and the newspaper entertainment features called feuilletons. An excellent playwright and novelist, too, he also wrote the best book on Czech founding father T. G. Masaryk (1850^-1937). His lifetime was the heyday of Communism, fascism, and Nazism, but he despised all ideologies. American philosopher William James' pragmatism inspired him to prefer a political--not moral--relativism that looked to cultural heritage rather than programmatic thinking to solve problems. Chronically ill and romantically conflicted, he was gregarious, energetic, and optimistic anyway. His best work, though often as existentially mysterious as Samuel Beckett's, makes Beckett sound like Winnie the Pooh's Eeyore. --Ray Olson
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Internationally acclaimed Czech writer Karel Capek (1890-1938) may have played second fiddle to his Prague colleague and contemporary Franz Kafka, but he gets treated to a fond biography with Ivan Klima's (No Saints or Angels) Karel Capek: Life and Work. Primary sources and occasional literary exegesis add to the detailed, thoughtful account of a man whose plays, novels and journalism made him a "symbol of anti-ideological thought... of art that was free and unfettered by any doctrine." Norma Conrada translates from the Czech. For true Capek fans, Catbird Press will simultaneously publish Cross Roads, two Capek story collections in a single volume. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Capek (1890-1938) is among the greatest figures of modern Czech literature, along with contemporaries Franz Kafka and Jaroslav Hasek. A prolific journalist and writer, he is best known for the fictions War with the Newts and Tales from Two Pockets and the play R.U.R., which introduced the word robot (coined by his brother). Catbird Press, the leading publisher of Czech literature in English translation, commissioned this critical biography from noted novelist and scholar Klima, a survivor of the Prague Spring (1967); the translator is the leading American authority on Capek. Klima's study is organized chronologically, relating the details of Capek's life to the thematic concerns of his works. Himself a Czech, Klima appreciates Capek's struggle against both Marxism-Leninism and Nazism, capturing his despair and resolution after Munich, even as he was dying of pneumonia. He also brings a novelist's perspective to the proceedings, allowing readers to appreciate the depth and thematic complexity of Capek's writing. The result is a valuable introduction to one of the little-appreciated but significant figures of modern world literature. Recommended for both public and academic libraries. T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah, GA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An informative critical biography, commissioned by the publisher, of the great Czech writer (1890-1938), whose witty allegorical and satirical fiction and drama comprise a treasure trove largely unexplored by contemporary readers. Kl'ma, himself an estimable fiction writer (No Saints or Angels, 2001, etc.), expertly layers in revealing details about the introverted Capek's unstable health and frustrating romantic life (until his eventual marriage), friendship with Czech President Tomas G. Masaryk, and "efforts to educate the nation" as a consummate journalist and public intellectual. Kl'ma locates the sources of Capek's rejection of absolutism in all forms (including that of Nazism, whose worst excesses he essentially prophesied) in his admiration for the American pragmatist philosophers-while also emphasizing Capek's distrust of both America's "worship of technology" and the oversimplifications of communism. Kl'ma also offers precise readings of Capek's famous futurist plays R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots (it was Capek who invented the word "robot") and From the Life of the Insects (the inspiration for Russian writer Victor Pelevin's 1998 novel, The Life of Insects); the Swiftian novel War with the Newts (1937); and the brilliant, partially autobiographical trilogy, including Hordubal (1946), Meteor (1935), and An Ordinary Life (1936). He furthermore whets readers' appetites for new English versions of Capek's 1925 novel, Krakatit, a probing analysis of the Faustian experience of creating, then harnessing a powerful explosive, which is his most Dostoevskyan and Lawrencian work, and the eerie philosophical play The Makropoulos Secret (also 1925), praised as one of Capek's most successful fusions of idea and melodrama. Readers who have enjoyed recent translations of Capek's provocatively entertaining Apocryphal Tales and Tales from Two Pockets will finish this eager to sample these and other works of Capek's impressive (and, unfortunately, foreshortened) maturity. A fine introduction to the work of a writer who ought to have won a Nobel Prize, and who richly deserves future generations of readers.
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