For me, it's Josef Švejk- Intelligent, nihilistic, and with a wicked sense of humour.
>>25266355Checked. Also, been ages since I last remembered this meme. How old is it?
>unfinished Great. There goes my interest.
>>25266355In my opinion, he is an idiot. Švejk is a symbol of unsinkable idiocy, of the degeneration of the 20th century. He is Sancho Panza, not Don Quixote.
>>25266365Apparently started on /v/ in 2014, I always thought it was a /lit/ meme
>>25266376All of Kafka's novels are
>>25266376You're wrong. The fact that the work is unfinished doesn't hurt it a bit. It's a picaresque novel.
>>25266376>unfinishedBLOCKS YOUR PATH
>>25266355I thought it started out great, but somewhere along the line it lost something. Clearly a great idea that was flogged to death without an ending in mind.
>>25268414>It's a picaresque novelWhy does it seem like the chances of a picaresque novel being unfinished are higher than any other type of novel?
>>25270613The unfinished book is more and more unfinished as you read through it, and as you go through it it's visible the later parts received less and less editing.When people talk about this they usually mean the parts in the train to Hungary where it's all just insane dialogue between Svejk and Marek. In those parts the book basically stops having any coherent structure and plot and becomes two insane retards talking to and over each other. any editor would just cut them out to make the book more readable...Well those parts are the BEST parts and the most influential parts. I bet that's where later Hrabal took inspiration in creating his iconic style. And I would bet that even Joseph Heller took inspiration here for structure of Catch-22.
>>25270769Unserious novels = unserious authors
>>25270769they start and stop just as easily as they go
>>25268177Sancho Panza is smarter than Don Quixote
>>25270929In what sense is he smarter? Physically, he always takes more blows than Don Quixote. He is only smarter than him in terms of his pragmatism; in that regard, he is similar to Švejk
>>25266355Saw this thread a few days ago having never heard of The Good Soldier Švejk. My interest was piqued, and having read the author's Wikipedia page I decided it was worth a read. I then searched for the "best" English translation. Seeing Cecil Parrott lauded as the one I added it to my mental "books to buy" list. Today in my weekly visit to Oxfam books to see what has arrived since my last visit I found a Penguin Classics copy translated by Cecil Parrott for £2.99, what a find!
>>25273253The movies are also great. The first one is more book-accurate, the second is better movie but less book accurate. But idk why all the clips with english subtitles are in shitty quality.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8T6urTz3S0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwWexJ72MbI
