the beauty of compacting human heads. metaphors of writing and the history of book destruction in bohumil hrabal’s too loud a solitude // the beauty of compacting human heads metaphors of writing and the history of book destruction in bohumil hrabal’s too loud a solitude

The article offers an analysis of Bohumil Hrabal’s novel Příliš hlučná samota (Too Loud a Solitude) as a literary reflection of the history of censorship and book destruction in Bohemia. In terms of media theory, this history is a counterpart to the history of letter printing. Haňťa represents an anachronistic reader, resisting book destruction by insisting on a corporealistic, sensual notion of literature, which is inspired most notably by the work of François Rabelais. Thus, Hrabal offers a critique of the decline of reading culture in the Socialist era that is not just a political comment, but also an artistic vision of the beauty of destruction as well as a complex critique of writing and reading.