markk

I have had this book on the TBR stack for nearly forever, yet its size was a little off-putting and it was never enough of a priority to overcome that. Then a friend mentioned that he wanted to read it and so I decided to use the opportunity to read it at last.

And perhaps it's because of all of the hype surrounding it, but while I'm enjoying it the novel isn't as good as I thought it would be. Švejk is definitely a great character, but the satirical edge of his adventures isn't as sharp as I thought it would be given all of the comparisons of this book with Catch-22. Now that Švejk is on his way to the front perhaps that will change, or maybe satire is like medicine in that we just saw so many improvements in it over the 20th century to make the leading practitioners back then seem quaint by comparison today.