Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light

by Ivan Klíma

Book Overview

A New York Times Notable Book and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light is the story of Pavel, once a promising, award-winning documentary filmmaker, forced to survive under communism by working as a cameraman for the state-run television station. Now middle-aged, he dreams of one day making a film - a searing portrait of his times that the authorities would never allow. When the communist regime collapses,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802115748
• ISBN13: 9780802115744
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
• Length: 234 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

When Freedom Comes, Can It be Grasped?

Transitions are difficult, equally so for individuals and societies. Pavel F. is a man who was born at just the right time or just the wrong time for a major transition; his fate is in the balance and there is no clear external weight or prop (neither faith nor hope nor charity) that he can use to swing that balance in the desired direction. His age is almost identical to that of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic which enmeshes him like a spider's web. He is a professional film-maker, producing documentaries and news snippets in a system of censorship that is losing its own guidelines and signposts, sending him equivocal signals about what is permissible, since everyone is positioning him- or herself for the coming changes while they still fear the residual power of the old rulers. Clearly he has technical skill, and possibly he has enough talent to realize artistic ambitions which he has "kept on the shelf" in order to be poised to do something ambitious and meaningful once society changes. The peculiar transition in which he is adrift is the last months of the old Communist regime in Czechoslovakia and the first months of the "new system" which will replace it, a system this is gilded by hopeful rhetoric but whose nature may be as hostile to him as an individual as its predecessor was. This novel is a portrait of a very ambiguous time and place. Collectively and politically, it is the moment of the "return of the repressed" (people and ideas that have been deliberately kept at the margins of society, including periods of imprisonment), some of whom will counsel forgiveness and others who will seek revenge -- or, more demoralizing, mediocre and self-centered people who will merely practice the age-old opportunism of replacing the former bosses. Pavel thinks he knows the dimensions of his own compromises in the past; he cannot condemn himself for these (as his old friend Peter does), since they were undertaken in order to save his talent (but does it exist?) for some future significant artistic venture. His personal life has been equally compromised, consisting of a series of failed relationships with women in which he appears to be the more defective partner in each case, through his inconstancy, his lack of ideals, his inability to commit himself to an individual, a gesture which he always perceives as a trap (reflecting the way he was trapped when, as a young man, he attempted to flee his nation and was captured by border-guards.) He is also witnessing the slow death of his mother (a decay from within, since her mind is vanishing while her body lingers on). He is unsure of the correct way to deal with this situation -- how to avoid the guilt of an inadequate response -- as he is of everything else in his life. This is a brief synopsis of Pavel's story. But "Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light " has another story which unwinds itself as Pavel moves through this critical year (1989-1990) in a state of increasi

Like Jackie Mason says: "Gorgeous!...Simply gorgeous!" Read this and prepare to be entertained!

You know a book's *that* good when it manages to survive the rigourous process of translation--in Mr. Klima's case, from Czech--into English, yet still retain elements of what made it so goshdarned ab-fab in the vernacular. Ivan Klima--drum roll, please, and preferrably at the Rudolfinum venue in Prague--is rapidly becoming my all-time kick-posterior novelist in this "golden" city. His WAITING FOR THE DARK, WAITING FOR THE LIGHT (WFTD,WFTL) is a fine example of just why he's one of the Czech so-called "Republic's" ( But I digress... This novel isn't what I'd consider an easy read, by any stretch, mesdames et messieurs (or as we say in the vernacular, "dame a panove"). Even for those of you super swift readers who think you're "all that," one occasionally needs to glance over these various pages a second (and often, third) time because the Klima-ster's thoughts are chewy like a chocolate-y granola bar--but triply as fortifying. Mr. Ivan Klima isn't at all interested in delivering pithy lines of pulpy drek to a mass audience of daft dolts, even though it's painfully clear to this here 'zon Reviewer (note the capitalized "R," toots!) that the masses would best be served by the prosaic dishings-out of a one, Mr. Klima. Klima goes for the top shelf booze bottles, babies. He aims to stay there. I've long contemplated over hot cups of espresso served up in cafes nestled in comfortable but dark Prague Inner District alleyways (atop those saintly cobbles) at how Mr. Klima goes about his writerly day. How DOES he manage to build up his scenes or construct his looping and oftentimes intertwining narratives?! Where does the Bohemian phenomenon get his inspiration for some of his more introspective passages? Surely, his experience as a child survivor of the one and only true Holocaust plays a part. The horrors he witnessed during his hellish soujourn in the Nazi Terezin/Teresienstadt are certainly more than enough trauma to last a human a lifetime, but I've long felt that there's something more at play here, ladies and germs. Mr. Klima's brain works a little differently than the mere mortal, and this perhaps explains away in large part why his many stories are so blimmin' convincing. Pain, in Mr. Klima's case, is the hummus which keeps his lines together. You realize that I'm not gracing WFTD,WFTL with any particular favouritism (and please add the "u" in this word, you Across the Pond ignoramouses!). I admit that I generally go for all of Mr. Klima's works without any set plan. All of his stuff totally rocks the socks off of what passes for literature in the marketplace, and I challenge any Average Joe (or posterior wipes like B. Andrews) to select any TWO of Klima's works and then come back with some negative feedback. If you do, you need to go back to school. Or Vancouver. Klima's stuff is just that good. Pay special attention, kids, to the gleanings from the immediate pre-1989 period, and note the publication years for some of these books. They're

The Unbearable Emptiness of Being

Ivan Klima's Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light is set in Czechoslovakia in 1989. The old Communist regime, in place since 1948, hangs by a thread as the Velvet Revolution, led by students and dissident writers, such as Vaclav Havel (who went on to become President of the Czech Republic) and Ludvik Vaculik among others grows stronger daily. The novel's protagonist is Pavel Fukova. The story on its surface centers on Pavel's relationship with his old friend Peter, and Alice the girl they both loved. The inner story involves Pavel's apprehension about his own life and future as the long hoped for struggle for freedom races towards the finish line. Pavel is a news cameraman for the government-run Czech television station, an institution loathed by most Czechs as an instrument of oppression, boring news reports, and propoganda. Pavel took on this job after he and his friend Peter were released from prison after they attempted to flee the country in 1968 after Soviet tanks crushed the Prague spring. (In real life Klima was in the U.S. in August 1968 but choose to return and found his work banned by the Soviet-controlled regime. In fact, Klima repeatedly refused `offers' from the old regime to emigrate. When asked why, he explained that "to be a writer means also to stick up for people whose fate is not a matter of indifference to me"). Pavel realizes that taking on this job may be seen as an implicit acceptance of an oppressive regime but he takes it on while explaining to himself that it will allow him to write screenplays that can be produced once the regime ends. Scenes from his screenplays, almost all autobiographical to a degree are woven into the novel. Peter, upon his release from prison, decided to withdraw from society altogether and winds up as the caretaker of a remote old castle far removed from the political storms that best life in Prague. The core of the novel focuses on the impact those choices have had on Pavel's outward and inward life. It is hard to explain the impact the novel had on this reader. I was reminded of two things I had learned in my life. As a child taking religious instruction I was taught that a "sacrament was an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." In Waiting for the Dark I saw how Pavel's outward and visible compromise with an oppressive regime inexorably led to the diminution if not total elimination of whatever inward and spiritual (not necessarily to be taken in a religious context) grace he possessed in his heady younger days when he loved Alice and made a mad, hopelessly futile dash for freedom with Peter. Peter is scarred inwardly as well, due in part to his insistence on removing himself as far as he could from any outward and visible influences. Peter acknowledges this late in the novel when he turns to Pavel and says, "we are both scarred in our own way." I was also reminded of the words of the Russian/Soviet writer, Nadezhda Mandelstam, widow of the

Powerful and insightful

This novel explores the events before and after the Velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia through the experiences of a photographer. Under Communist rule, he was forced to take artless phtotgraphs for news agencies but had always dreamed of being able to pursue his art and make great films. After the revolution, he may have his chance.The novel works both as the story of a single man's life and in exploring more generally how Czech society after Communism did and did not live of to the dreams of freedom that its citizens had. There is a safety in unattainable dreams that is no longer there once they are realizable. (Think _The Iceman Cometh_.)

A fascinating exploration of Czech freedom

Klima tells an interesting tale of a TV news cameraman, who must adjust to the Velvet revolution. I'm interested that his son says the author wasn't a great father, because the main character wishes he was a father. But he wishes many things.