Hrabal
Czech authors are magic. Each one I’ve ever come across has charmed me senseless. Here is the first page or so of Bohumil Hrabal’s “Too Loud a Solitude“:

For thirty-five years now I’ve been in wastepaper, and it’s my love story.  For thirty-five years I’ve been compacting wastepaper and  books, smearing myself with letters until I’ve come to look like my encyclopedias — and a good three tons of them I’ve compacted over the years.  I am a jug filled with water both magic and plain; I have only to lean over and a stream of beautiful thoughts flows out of me.  My education has been so unwitting I can’t quite tell which of  my thoughts come from me and which from my books, but that’s how I’ve stayed attuned to myself and the world around me for the past thirty-five years.  Because when I read, I don’t really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liquor until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to the root of each blood vessel.

 This  book is an exploration of the mind of a… nutcase… or… a genius.  It’s poetry and brilliance and soulful sentiment.  Read it.