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Original Title:	Zbabělci
ISBN:	091294675X (ISBN13: 9780912946757)
Edition Language:	English
Series:	Danny Smiřický

The Cowards (Danny Smiřický)

Josef Škvorecký

Paperback | Pages: 416 pages

Rating: 3.92 | 951 Users | 64 Reviews

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Title	:	The Cowards (Danny Smiřický)
Author	:	Josef Škvorecký
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Special Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 416 pages
Published	:	September 1st 1980 by Ecco Press (first published 1958)
Categories	:	European Literature. Czech Literature. Fiction. Classics. War. Novels. Academic. School. Historical. Historical Fiction

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We got to the bridge. I looked up at Irena’s window and hoped she was watching, but she wasn’t. Naturally. She should see me now. But no such luck. I could already imagine fighting the Germans off in the woods and Irena hiding down in the cellar or somewhere. The whole thing lost all its charm if Irena couldn’t see me. Why in hell was I letting myself in for this?

This book could have a lot of titles, among them ‘The Confused’ or ‘Teenage Testosterone’ or ‘Life Goes On’. But ‘The Cowards’ is the subject at the heart of the chaos in this small Czech town at the very end of World War II.

Having just finished reading Ian Buruma’s Year Zero: A History of 1945 I was looking here for the themes that Buruma explored, and they were present in the town of Kostelec in spades. But murkier, all mixed up together, harder to define.

Because Kostelec is still in play. The Germans haven’t totally left, the Communists are sort of already here, there might be a Czech revolution. And while the city fathers who collaborated with the Nazis scurry to leave town, the local dignitaries who only ‘cooperated’ because they have always done what is necessary to maintain the civis talk revolution while keeping people from shooting so the Germans can leave quietly. Not so Kostelec’s subterranean Communists—just one black midnight scene makes it obvious that the local ‘democratic’ amateurs are clueless about what awaits them when the Soviet ‘liberators’ roll into town.

Only when some Germans decide they aren’t going to give up so quietly it becomes clear that the meager weapons the Kostelec civilians have secured are laughable compared to tanks and bombers. Events seesaw back and forth, with periodic comic scenes of citizens breaking out Czech then Russian flags, one after another, and then withdrawing them quickly as armies and rumors surge back and forth through town. Not at all funny is the gruesome revenge taken on captured SS men, meted out by citizens whose wartime chumminess with the Nazis wouldn’t stand up to much inspection.

And in between the shooting, Skvorecky illustrates more of Buruma’s themes. Vast numbers of prisoners of war and displaced gypsies and concentration camp victims, released from captivity, swarm through town needing food and beds. Danny appoints himself provisioner to a squad of Englishmen who have been POWs for five years, scattering them among the homes of lonely middle class women. People are so eager to celebrate peace that they repeatedly start fetes that are broken up by another battle.

But I think that much of Skvorecky’s interest lies in showing that war is so absurd and events so beyond the ability of civilians to learn or comprehend that they deal with it by either doing whatever it takes to keep life stable (as adults) or remaining immersed in their personal worlds (as children). The town leaders are cowards, talking revolution and pompously supervising the equivalent of boy scout patrols in the eye of the storm, then scurrying for cover the moment shooting starts—they don’t want to attack either Germans or Communists in case it might result in a local citizen getting killed. In a sense they are realistic, because amateurs haven’t a chance against real soldiers. Except that a few heroic acts show that an amateur can make a difference. The only effective resistance to either invader comes from renegades acting on their own. Skvorecky’s contempt for the burghers is moderated by his recognition that they are too foolish to expect better of. It’s just clear that the self-satisfied bourgeois accommodators are doomed with the immanent Russian ‘liberation’.

The story takes place over eight days, beginning and ending with teenage jazz band rehearsals. In between the young, saxaphonist narrator Danny has been enrolled in the local militia. He has seen incompetence, duplicity, death, chaos, evil, revenge, class conflict, and has participated in two battles. But as a teenager, sex and music are all that really matter to him at every moment in which his life is not in immediate danger.
And yet he is vaguely aware that his middle class life is about to end. That things will be different. He can’t anticipate how badly it will turn out, so he is just a little melancholy; he thinks music will be all he needs. Music and a girl, in Prague.

Skvorecky is absolutely real in Danny’s endless looping daydreams of obsession with one girl after another, but one in particular, with whom he hasn’t a chance of success. And his instantaneous flip-flops between cowardice and bravery, not for country but for sexual bravado. His contempt for the tactical bumbling of the pseudo militia leaders while missing their overall political naivety. Skvorecky masters the freedom and physical pleasure that playing jazz brought to these teenagers, akin to sexual pleasure but soulful. They can master their instruments, but not the women or the world around them.

I got up, gravely raised my sax to my lips and sobbed out a melody, an improvisation in honour of victory and the end of the war, in honour of this town and all its pretty girls, and in honour of a great, abysmal, eternal, foolish, lovely love. And I sobbed about everything, about my own life, about the SS men they’d executed and about poor Hrob, about Irena who didn’t understand…about our band which wouldn’t even get together like this again…and I raised my glittering saxophone to face it and sang and spoke to that life out of its gilded throat, telling it that I’d accept it, that I’d accept everything that came my way because that was all I could do…

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Ratings: 3.92 From 951 Users | 64 Reviews

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The first time I heard of Josef Škvorecký was in the Art of Fiction interview the Paris Review did with him. For me it was one of the most memorable interviews because Škvorecký has a strong understanding of the workings of ideology after witnessing one particular ideology - that being Communism - doing what it did in former Czechoslovakia. Though I was already becoming a fan of Czech literature this put the lesser known Škvorecký higher on my list. The first book I read by Škvorecký was this

A coming of age novel, with a male protagonist fixated on girls, music (especially - as in all of Skvorecky's novels - jazz), and untroubled dreams of the future. The action covers only a single week, from 4-11 May, but in Kostelec, Czechoslovakia in 1945, so our hero encounters refugees, British prisoners of war, SS soldiers, Red Army "liberators," and a large cast of his fellow townspeople. An absorbing portrait drawn from the point of view of a sympathetic and open-minded young narrator who

Interesting read about a Czech town at the end of WWII when the Germans are retreating and the Russians are approaching.

This book was given to me as a gift from the mother of my Intern/Student roommate from the Czech Republic. The author provided his very own Preface, or Forward, so I will not even begin to dissect this book on a formal or ontological level. I will only say that the characters, the dialogue, and the situations drove me to such deep care that I was dreading an horrific demise of the main character of Danny. His fascination with getting a sub-machine gun (this was the ending of WW2) drove me crazy;

Reviewing this book was not easy. Not that the prose is difficult. It is a simple narrative style and easy to follow. The genre of this book is not very clear. It could pass off as historical fiction, satire or comedy.A little background knowledge is required. This is a semi-autobiographical work of Josef Skvorecky. The town of Kostelec in the story is based on his home town of Nachod. It was written in 1948, a few months after the Communist coup détat, but it was not published till 1958 and

We got to the bridge. I looked up at Irenas window and hoped she was watching, but she wasnt. Naturally. She should see me now. But no such luck. I could already imagine fighting the Germans off in the woods and Irena hiding down in the cellar or somewhere. The whole thing lost all its charm if Irena couldnt see me. Why in hell was I letting myself in for this?This book could have a lot of titles, among them The Confused or Teenage Testosterone or Life Goes On. But The Cowards is the subject at

The end of World War II, its final days, is the most chaotic period in the whole 20th century in Europe. Armies, POWs, concentration-camp-escapees roam across the continent, headed for the Rhine, PRague, Berlin or just home. Skvorecky describes the chaos in a Czech provincial border town, whose inhabitants change sides as soon as they know which is the next army that passes through town. All the while, the main character conscribes to the local army, figths the nazis, plays jazz in a band and