The Gospel under normalization: the ''new'' Hrabal supersedes the ''old'' HrabalThe Gospel under normalization: the ''new'' Hrabal supersedes the ''old'' Hrabal
Abstract
This study focuses on the Československý spisovatel publishers' reading procedures for Hrabal's output in the latter half of the 1970s. As these procedures took place against a backdrop of dispersed censorship supervision (with socially 'unreliable' authors, such as Hrabal, being read by 'superreaders', who were representatives of focused ideological supervision) I compare their structure with that of reading procedures in the 1960s.
Whereas censorship in the 1960s was an external supervision institution (i.e. the Central Press Supervision Authority), the proofreaders and editors intuitively anticipated its possible objections and reflected them to some extent in their standpoints, during the 1970s the supervision institution in the form of superreaders moved right into the editorial office. However, one should not assume there was a conflict between the editors and the superreaders purely from the definition of their roles.
In the three cases under review, two superreaders were assigned to one title (only one in the case of Postřižiny), but their opinions differ - what would have got past one of them is pulled up by the other one (this is particularly the case for the short story collection Každý den zázrak - Every Day a Miracle). Hence not even the superreaders can be considered a priori to be critics of Hrabal's apolitical style, and in the given case it is Vítězslav Rzounek who surprisingly becomes an apologist for Hrabal's 1960s short story work.
Hence this study follows the readers' assessments in detail: their argument structure, apparent and hidden apologetics (necessarily ambivalent due to the very nature of the reading procedure) and their thematic synopsis; of course, it also focuses on the overall reading procedure mechanism.