Talkin' Škvorecký Blues

I'm about halfway through Josef Škvorecký's The Swell Season, and I decided that it made little sense to review this novel as part of the Canadian Challenge.  While Škvorecký escaped from Czechoslovakia in 1968 and lived in Canada for basically half his life, the vast majority of his work is still firmly based in Czechoslovakia, either because he was writing stories and novels about his youth and young adulthood (basically anything involving the character Danny Smiricky) or he was writing detective stories based in Prague (the Lieutenant Boruvka series).  In The Engineer of Human Souls, Škvorecký does bring Danny to Canada, where he becomes an instructor at the University of Toronto.  Though this is a fairly incredible story, it did all happen to Škvorecký himself.

While in Toronto, Škvorecký and his wife made a major contribution to supporting dissident Czech writers and artists.  Much of his own work was published in Czech first (and translated by others), even many years after he had been living in Canada.  Indeed, even his final novel, Ordinary Lives, was written and published first in Czech and then translated.  I do think the essays on politics and culture in Talkin' Moscow Blues were written in English or at least translated by Škvorecký, though I don't have a copy on hand to check.

Given that so little of his work involves Canada, it really is hard to see him as a Canadian writer.  I don't really want to put him into that basket, although of course I will go ahead and review his work if any of his later novels do spend at least as much time in Toronto as they do in Prague.  I will track below my progress through his work, as I own quite a bit of it, though I've only read a relatively small portion of the Danny Smiricky saga.

This list is shamelessly cribbed from his Wikipedia page: 

Zbabělci (The Cowards), 1958 - DS
O  Legenda Emöke (The Legend of Emöke), 1963
O  Smutek poručíka Borůvky (The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka), 1966
RO  Bassaxofon (The Bass Saxophone), 1967 - DS
O  Lvíče (Miss Silver's Past), 1969
Hořkej svět (The Bitter World), 1969
O  Tankový prapor (The Republic of Whores), 1969- DS (picked up autographed copy at BMV)
O  Mirákl (The Miracle Game), 1972 - DS
O  Hříchy pro pátera Knoxe (Sins for Father Knox), 1973
R  Prima sezóna (The Swell Season), 1975 - DS
O  Konec poručíka Borůvky (The End of Lieutenant Boruvka), 1975
R  Příběh inženýra lidských duší (The Engineer of Human Souls), 1977 - DS
O  Návrat poručíka Borůvky (The Return of Lieutenant Boruvka), 1980
O  Scherzo capriccioso (Dvorak in Love), 1984
Nevěsta z Texasu (The Bride from Texas), 1992
Povídky tenorsaxofonisty (The Tenor Saxophonist's Story), 1993
Povídky z Rajského údolí (Stories from the Valley of Paradise*), 1996
Headed for the Blues: a Memoir with Ten Stories, 1997
Nevysvětlitelný příběh aneb Vyprávění Questa Firma Sicula (An Inexplicable Story, or, The Narrative of Questus Firmus Siculus), 1998
O  Dvě vraždy v mém dvojím životě (Two Murders in My Double Life), 1999
Krátké setkání, s vraždou (Brief Encounter, with Murder), 1999
O  When Eve Was Naked, 2000
Setkání po letech, s vraždou (Encounter After Many Years, with Murder), 2001
Setkání na konci éry, s vraždou (Encounter at the End of an Era, with Murder), 2001
O  Obyčejné źivoty (Ordinary Lives), 2004

I've interspersed the short story collections and the novels.  As I become aware of them, I'll add DS if the work features Danny Smiricky prominently. While the Toronto Library has most of the ones I don't own, a handful don't circulate and I'll have to go to Robarts for the rest.  It turns out that the rare book collection at UT has quite a bit more by Škvorecký, and I'll have to decide just how deep I want to get into this author.

* These are also referred to as the Edenvale stories, and they appear to be 5 stories about Danny teaching at Edenvale College at UT, so more or less a continuation of The Engineer of Human Souls, but I can't tell if all of them ended up in Headed for the Blues, When Eve Was Naked or another collection, but they don't appear to be published as a stand-alone collection in English.