"The Guinea Pigs" by Ludvik Vaculik *****

• Open Letter Series
• Czech author
• Originally published in 1968
• Author was banished from the Communist Party during the Prague Spring of 1968, writing was censored, and he was persecuted for decades
• Characters: 
• Vasek, the father , bank employee
• Eva, the mother, a schoolteacher
• Vasek Jr, interested in underground networks
• Pavel, younger son,
• Mr. Maelstrom, lives under the train bridge, works at bank, shunned for his prediction of impending economic doom
• Mr. K, tells Vasek that guinea pigs have a purpose and Vasek tries to figure it out....they feed weasels (metaphor....workers feed Communist leaders aka weasels?)
• Three guinea pigs: Albinika (first, female), Red (second, male, red), Red the second (male, saved from weasels,most well behaved and submissive)
• Vocabulary:
• monophyletics:   consisting of organisms descended from a single taxon.
• Quotes:
• p.5...."Sometimes, though, man departs from some of his intentions, while he follows alternate routes in the interest of maintaining his standard of living.".....a touch of foreshadowing
• p.10......"He had become accustomed to a life of danger, he didn't want to live any other way.  If it cost him his life, nobody would hold an investigation or bear him any ill will, only a few cats will bear a few litters of young ones, more or less, for a while after he is gone."......Vasek's observations about their kitten......again, foreshadowing
• p.12......."The position of a poor sap like that, at the bottom stratum of the social structure, is typified by his absolute helplessness  The one at the bottom is unhappy because everybody, and there is no one to obey him.  But if he finds that he has at least one creature even one creature lower than himself, the world takes on an entirely different aspect.  Social structures expand, and the bottom stratum retreats by a horse's length, by the height of a crow, by the breadth of a dog."......Vasek's experience with the guinea pigs?
• p.14....."The hardest thing in the world, girls and boys, is to change your life by your own free will.  Even if you are absolutely convinced that you're the engineer on your own locomotive, someone else is always going to flip the switch that makes you change tracks, and it's usually somebody who knows much less than you do."
• p.47...."Nothing turns out as bad as it seems at the start:  every dish of  porridge ultimately cools off, according to an old Czech saying.  Most clouds don't bring rain, most rifles don't have any effect on the steamrolling of highways."
• p.57...."Fear of death prior to death is something that has been reserved for mankind."
• p64....."Speak up or shit letters!"
• p.70....".....the dying need to concentrate on their departure, and as long as they are not forcibly brought back to consciousness--which at best means an awareness of their pain or their concern--they no longer suffer."
• p.74......"there are excellent ideas that become unfeasible by the very fact of their having been proclaimed on the street.".....hence the need for an underground network
• p.146...."As long as he knew that the guinea pig was in the water, he couldn't think that he wasn't..  And also, he was the only person in the world that knew it.  From this fact the banker deduced that if there is a God,as He is guilty, even if no one, not even a mouse, in this whole world believes in Him."
• p.175....."When decay causes everything to give up its will and wishes like fine wisps of smoke, for whom is the sacrifice being burnt?  And what is being asked?"......and then he disappears.......at the time the guinea pigs are born......
• Ideas:
• God as the best type of observer, never intervenes  p.22
• economic depression as a whirlpool, or maelstrom......p.41
• music calmed the dying guinea pig, just as it did my dad
• can only pass a judgement about someone after having witnessed their first "deed"
• switched from first to third person narrative when ashamed of his actions...p.145
• Review:  The nearest I can figure is that this novel is about the process of decay and loss of will caused by the tight controls placed on human beings under Communist regimes.  The protagonist's experimentation seems to represent the playing with humanity by regimes and an uncaring God.  The guinea pigs are the example of how paralyzed and unthinking, how devoid of wishes and dreams, people become when socially, economically, culturally, or otherwise confined.  A powerful, thought provoking novel, by an author from the Czech Republic who himself was persecuted and ostracized for the expression of his independent thoughts.
• Link sent to me which has a good review:   http://www.theblacksheepdances.com/2011/06/guinea-pigs-by-ludvik-vaculik.html