Prima sezona

Prima sezona (The Swell Season) is a book by Josef Skvorecky. It features the city of Kostelec and the protagonist Danny Smiricky - both featured in other Skvorecky's novels as well. The time of the WW2 is described in the background and while it plays its role sometimes, it's mostly irrelevant to the protagonist's life.
We had to read the book for our Literature course and it's once after a while when I've read a fiction book. Some time ago I told Ondra that, regarding art and culture, I was not really fond of films (with some exceptions and exceptional opportunities) and told him I prefer books. He replied how was it that I was reading books that scarcely. And it was a good remark - seems I'm quite a barbarian, when considered by my stance towards art...I'll have to think about it...
The book is short and features dating as the main theme, probably two reasons why Ms. Duskova requires us to read this book.
In our Literature textbook, it's written Skvorecky considered this his best work. Weird, I'd say a lot of people would even designate it as stupid and mindless, some kind of telenovela. On the other hand, it's easy to read and I loved some language use of the author.
I read it in one week during commuting to and from the Institute of Physics.
The book describes the protagonist's attempts to date girls. Nonetheless he is scorned because of his attraction to too many girls (among other stuff) - and therefore he never succeeds (poor boy, had he lived today, in a city, his attitude would be much more acceptable and common...). What I didn't like about the protagonist was his apparent distaste for "thoughtful" talking, so girls are described mostly physically and there's little about their life - but I don't doubt this the author meant it this way. However, while the protagonist may be considered as "a bad person", one can't help kind of pitying him (even though his own "stupidity" is one of his severe problems ;-)
Apart from the use of language, I liked the protagonist's dilemma of his faith (he's quite a devout Christian) and his attraction by girls.
The book is overall fun and easy to read, though one may consider it superficial (which may have been the author's goal).