Ruth Cooper
0:02 My name Ruth Cooper.

Zenny Sadlon
0:03 How often do you read?

Ruth Cooper
0:04 Every day. I generally read at least a book every other day. Feel real lost if I don't have a book to read.

Zenny Sadlon
0:13 What type of books do you read?

Ruth Cooper
0:14 Anything.
My theory is if it has prints, I have to read it. So I read everything, novels, mysteries, anything.

Zenny Sadlon
0:21 What has been your experience with foreign books translated into English? Have you had any such experience?

Ruth Cooper
0:28 I have, especially when I was in school. And the ones I like most are the Russian novels. Aside from Russian novels, I could not get into them very well, I think, because I just couldn't relate to them.

Zenny Sadlon
0:41 You have just read the new translation of the first book of the Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk during the World War by the Czech author Jaroslav Hašek. When you were given the opportunity to read the book and you saw the title, what came to your mind?

Ruth Cooper
0:58 The first thing I thought was, right, you want me to read this book that was translated from Czech?Right. It's going to be real interesting. Okay, I'll give it a try.

Zenny Sadlon
1:08 What happened next?

Ruth Cooper
1:09 I gave it a try and I loved it and I wanted to keep reading it.

Zenny Sadlon
1:13 How many pages into the book did you know you're going to actually finish the book?

Ruth Cooper
1:16 Probably about ten. Because I kept thinking, nobody can be this smart or this stupid. I've got to decide which way this man is going.

Zenny Sadlon
1:25 Did you find it readable?

Ruth Cooper
1:27 It was very easy to read because it went from one adventure to the next. So you're always waiting to see what is Švejk going to get into next.

Zenny Sadlon
1:35 What else did strike your fancy about the book?

Ruth Cooper
1:38 It made me laugh and think and it made me kind of wonder about human beings. Like how can they be this silly?

Zenny Sadlon
1:45 On the serious side, do you have any recollection of some of the more serious passages?

Ruth Cooper
1:50 When you started talking about the Secret Service and how they were picking up people just because they disagreed with what the government thought should be. I think that's the main thing that struck me. Just the overwhelming thought that you've got to agree with the government, otherwise you're definitely going to be an outcast.

Zenny Sadlon
2:09
You happen to be a black American. Is there anything special about the book that grabbed you as being something that could interest other black Americans?

Ruth Cooper
2:17 Sure. How easily people can be certified as an imbecile because this man was a government certified imbecile. And although he was an imbecile, the government could still grab him to go off and fight their war. And that's exactly what happens to blacks. Your IQ is 49. Oh, well, the cutoff is 50, so we'll give you one point and let you go fight the war.

Zenny Sadlon
2:40 How strange is it for a modern 1990s American to get into the book?

Ruth Cooper
2:46 I think it is really strange because I had all those thoughts when I first heard, I want you to read this book. I was like, oh, Lord. It's not Jackie Collins. It's not Patricia Cornwell. I don't know about this. Okay, I'm going to give it a try. But once you start, it's very easy to just keep reading.

Zenny Sadlon
3:06 Can I tell people, well, Ruth says, look, you check it out. We got three free chapters on the Internet. They can download three chapters. And basically, you told me that after ten pages, you were into it. Would you be willing to bet that most people, after three chapters won't be able to put it down?

Ruth Cooper
3:21 I would, because I think if people start thinking, not that Švejk was around World War I, just remember Švejk is actually just a European Forrest Gump. Because, you know, Forrest was the same thing. He just kept getting into trouble and managing to come out okay. And it's the same thing Švejk did. I mean, he got into some situations that I thought, okay, that's it.The book's gonna end soon now. And somehow he just came out smelling like a rose.

Zenny Sadlon
3:50 And that's just the first 200 pages.We got about 600 more coming out, so…

Ruth Cooper
3:54 Yeah, and I want to read the next 600.

Zenny Sadlon
3:57 Have you told anybody about this book?

Ruth Cooper
3:59 I told my brother, and he wants to read it, and I told my girlfriend, and I'm gonna give her a copy that I have and let her read it. So I think it's about to be spread around the south side of Chicago.

Zenny Sadlon
4:10 And you would give the book in Black America a chance?

Ruth Cooper
4:13 Yeah, I would. Because this man was not supposed to make it. And he saw people dying in the hospital, and he was begging for the treatment that they were dying from. And he managed to survive that. Not only survive it, but get out of it. And everything that happened to him, he just managed to overcome it. But you're rooting for him because you really want to make sure that he gets out okay.

Editorial Note: Ruth Cooper’s spontaneous describing Švejk as “a European Forrest Gump” is revealing not because the two works are equivalent, but because it demonstrates the kind of cultural bridge through which an American reader without prior Central European context could nevertheless enter Hašek’s world. Her comparison identifies a recognitional structure: a protagonist socially classified as “simple,” drifting through large historical machinery, repeatedly underestimated, surviving through a peculiar relation to institutions, and moving episodically from situation to situation while exposing the absurdity around him.

Particularly striking is that Cooper independently identified several structural dimensions of Hašek’s world that later became central to the Analytical Companion Essays accompanying the Centennial Edition: procedural absurdity, diagnostic labeling, institutional coercion, and survival through navigation rather than mastery.