READING AND LAUGHING IN TRANSIT

A collection of stories by the late Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek kept me company while I was in transit between two continents. The Man Without A Transit Pass is smart, funny and so relevant today.

he Man Without a Transit Pass: And Other Tales by Jaroslav Hašek was first published in English on May 1, 2023 by Paradise Editions.

Between jet lag, preparing and my todos in India, I’m back to my scheduled programming of weekly reading. Reading continues to make airplane travel a supreme joy because it is the only time when reading itself does not feel like a guilty pleasure.

LETTERS FROM EVERYWHERE has been a personal project to expand my world. Since February 2022 I’ve read some 150 books over about 45 languages and barreled on despite several challenging weeks. When I’m juggling several writing projects, I feel that my weekly reading commitment is inconvenient and comes at the cost of several other deadlines. I persist, however, because I believe that something done incrementally and consistently for my own growth is a valuable investment even though I don’t have an external editor who’s scrutinizing my weekly work. Despite my misgivings during some weeks, it’s when I’m flying, suspended tenuously between one clime and another that this weekly reading feels like such a boon. Cocooned in a pressurized cabin between heaven and earth, I slough off all my fear of flying when I burrow myself in another world.

Short story collections and essays are tailor-made for flights; I think. Between snoozing and sneaking in a film or two, reading is reassuring. It’s an act that constantly reaffirms our universality. On this long flight to India, Jaroslav Hašek’s short stories felt whimsical and yet so current for the state of anarchy in the world one hundred years after they were written. I begin with lines from one of his very strange stories about a circus that’s utterly resonant in what has been a chaotic election year in America.

“If one is patient and enterprising, he will triumph over the stupidity of mankind. One need only go about things in a clever manner. It doesn’t matter if one paints a duck; what matters is convincing the spectator that it’s not a duck but rather a jaguar. Should that business prove unsuccessful, a second or a third such business will undoubtedly succeed.”

“Human beings are jackasses,” he said, elaborating on his philosophy. “The greater the nonsense, the more people will dig into their pockets ot witness it. The people are in need of new astonishments. What do you think?”

Hašek demonstrates again and again through his stories that most people end up "drinking the Kool-Aid," meaning, that they will accept a “deadly, deranged, or foolish ideology or concept based only upon the overpowering coaxing of another.” Originally written in Czech and translated from the German by Dustin Stalnaker, the stories in The Man Without a Transit Pass were published between 1902 and 1921 in the magazines at which Hašek eked out a living.

With each story, Jaroslav Hašek ferries us on rides through human stupidity and societal foibles. Born in Prague in 1883, Hašek led a Bohemian life looking askance “at state, religion, respectability, and general good decision making.” I learned that he was perpetually drunk and died before he turned forty years of age.

In the eponymous short story of this collection, a man boards a tram, but cannot buy his ticket in time because he suddenly feels “a human stirring in his bowels.” This story is a classic. It drives home the pointlessness of the paper chase in a bureaucratic state which fritters away a ton of money simply to make humans pay for their intransigence without ever weighing the impact of its laws on the state’s coffers. In this story as in real life, sticking to the letter of the law ends up costing many thousands more for the government. The foolhardiness of the government seems to be an underlying theme of these stories. The closing line of the title story is precious indeed for it points out how much money has been sunk in this hopeless exercise: “A new fare hike therefore seems inevitable.” Go, figure.

The title of the second story may be “I Make Soft-boiled Eggs” but this uproarious tale is all about how the harebrained narrator cannot boil water, cook eggs or think straight. By the time the story ends, our man has not happened upon any literature on how to boil eggs. It’s a sad scene, to watch his deep despair over his inability to make soft-boiled eggs.

This time I boiled them for an hour. Still they remained dreadfully hard. And so I boiled them until morning. Despite my best efforts, they did not become soft.

In the morning, I was found sprawled over the basket of eggs. I had collapsed there in a state of despondency, having not managed to produce even a single soft-boiled egg. The eggs were as hard as ever.

One of the most enjoyable stories in this collection was published in 1910 and it has a rather brilliant title: “Saved.” No person is saved. The government and its vassal save their rear end, that’s about all. Saved is a story about a man named Patál who is about to be sent to the gallows one morning. In the meanwhile, the day before the fateful morning, the authorities are happy to feed Patál just about anything he wants . We watch our glutton of a prisoner gorge away like there’s going to be no tomorrow.

Thus did he philosophize over the roast veal, and as the rolls and cucumber salad were brought to him, he sighed and expressed his desire for a pipe and tobacco. And, so he could enjoy a pleasant smoke, a pipe and Three King’s Tobacco—a melange of normal tobacco and mild leaf—were purchased for him. The warden even gave him a light, thus reminding him of God’s endless mercy. Even if all was lost here on earth, it was certainly not yet so in heaven. The condemned Patál asked for a portion of ham and a liter of wine.

“You shall receive what you desire,” said the warden. “One must fulfill every wish of a man in your situation.”

“Bring me two liverwurst as well, and a portion of aspic. I would also like a liter of dark beer.”

What happens after this day of gluttony makes for a terrific deathly funny narrative. Patál takes seriously ill after wolfing down liverwurst that had not been placed on ice. We watch how the prisoner narrowly misses death by poisoned liverwurst until, a few days upon his complete recovery, he’s slayed by the state’s guillotine. Let it be noted that this is a conscientious government that acknowledges exemplary work by its employees: “The doctor who had saved Patál’s life received a commendation from the court.”

Just imagine all the other stories in The Man Without A Transit Pass and Other Tales. They’re worth reading, chuckling and pondering over for they remind us that almost everything that happens to human beings as we coast from life unto death is often as strangely sad as it’s inexplicably funny.