A Progressive on the Prairie » world literature

Book Review: The Devil in the Flesh by Raymond Radiguet

Tim — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 12:51:25 +0000

Those who study literary theory view World War I as a key element in the development of modernist literature. And while French author Raymond Radiguet published only one novel before his death at age 20, that work, The Devil in the Flesh, is a prime piece of evidence for this viewpoint.

It’s not surprising that Radiguet’s book caused a stir when it was published in 1923. Set in the Paris suburbs during the last year of World War I, The Devil in the Flesh tells the story of a 16-year-old boy, the narrator, who has an affair with and impregnates the 18-year-old wife of a French soldier while the soldier is at the front. Although the age of consent in France at the time was 13, the thought of a teen’s betrayal of a fighting man would still chafe. What perhaps bolstered the distress of readers is the knowledge there were more than a few wives who cheated on their soldier husbands and gave birth to illegitimate children. In fact, the book is semi-autobiographical. Radiguet supposedly started writing it between the ages of 16 and 18 after having had an affair with the wife of an soldier at age 14.

Yet the sordid touch added by the narrator’s age and the betrayal of a soldier are not the only elements that can disturb. The narrator (unnamed in many translations but called Francois here in Christopher Moncrieff’s translation) observes in the first paragraph, “People who reproach me should try and imagine what the War was for so many young boys — a four-year-long holiday.” Certainly, those who experienced the War — capital W — or its ramifications didn’t see something that took the lives of nearly 1.4 million French soldiers as a holiday. Add to this that Francois comes off as little more than an amoral narcissist and there’s plenty to outrage.

At the outset of The Devil in the Flesh, Francois is what readers today would essentially classify as a teenager with the attitude of that age. His sexual desires and drives, although not specifically denominated as such early in the book, have become far more common among literary characters over the decades. When he first meets 18-year-old Marthe Lascombe, the daughter of a family friend, her fiancé is on the front lines. Francois fosters his relationship with her by helping her pick out items for her future household. It is only after her marriage, though, that he eventually manipulates her into a sexual relationship. Yet Francois eventually falls deeply in love with Marthe, at least insofar as he can conceive of the emotion

Throughout the book, the dialog and perspective are internal. Francois is focused on his feelings and his emotions. Only occasionally does he show care or concern for Marthe and even then it tends to be short-lived. Yet there is no doubt he has some internal conflicts and Francois often seems a blend of naiveté and hedonism. He wants to flaunt society’s rules but often oscillates between the effort to shock and an effort to hide the relationship. He repeatedly praises love yet even then does so in a tone mental heals professionals would call affectless. He is not unaware of a certain inherent level of immaturity while engaging in an adult game. “We were like children standing on a chair, proud of being taller than the grown-ups,” he says. “Circumstances put us in this lofty position, but we were unable to live up to it.”

As Radiguet’s sparse, direct prose leads the work to its tragic conclusion, it is easy to see why The Devil in the Flesh is considered emblematic of early 20th Century modernism. The book does not carry the same shock value as it did on its initial release. Yet that does not prevent it from being a precursor to several themes that would be explored in coming decades or change the fact many of those same themes and issues remain relevant today.

Happiness thinks only of itself.

Raymond Radiguet, The Devil in the Flesh

Book Review: The Druggist of Auschwitz by Dieter Schlesak

Tim — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:06:28 +0000

“A human being, like a dog, can get used to anything!”

So says Adam Salmen, a fictional narrator in Dieter Schlesak’s The Druggist of Auschwitz: A Documentary Novel. But what Salmen and others imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II got “used to” is staggering, so much so that it continues to shock the world decades later. Children grabbed by their legs and smashed into walls. Infants catapulted alive into trenches in which dozens of corpses have been set afire. Mussulmen, inmates so emaciated and starved they are a sort of an “undead creature, … a human being past tense.”

Sadly, that is not the imagination of fiction. Schlesak takes a unique approach to literary nonfiction. The vast majority of the book consists of excerpts from actual trial transcripts and interviews. Salmen, “the last Jew of Schäßburg,” Romania, serves as a somewhat ubiquitous witness, personifying various details. As in the original German edition, his and other fictional narration appear in italic while roman type is used for material taken from the second Auschwitz trials in Frankfurt from 1963 to 1965 and interviews.

Adam is a member of the Sonderkommando, prisoners forced to dispose of the mountains of corpses, as well as an inmate resistance group. But Adam is not the real focus of The Druggist of Auschwitz. Instead, the book is built upon the 1944 deportations of thousands upon thousands of Romanian and Hungarian Jews to Auschitz and Capesius, a drug salesman from Transylvania before the war. Once Romania joined the Axis, ethnic Germans in the Romanian army like Capesius were transferred to the Waffen-SS. Capesius eventually became the camp pharmacist at Auschwitz and was present when his fellow countrymen arrived at the camp. These focal points allow Schlesak to provide the perspective of both the persecutors and the persecuted.

Many of the details of what occurred at the camp are, as would be expected, appalling. In addition to storing drugs and some of the Zyklon B used in the gas chambers, Capesius’ workplace contained trunks with thousands of gold teeth pulled from victims, many with bits of flesh still attached. There was widespread belief that his post-war wealth stemmed from his access to these teeth. Yet what is perhaps most shocking is the capacity Capesius and others have to feel no guilt or blame for what transpired. Dozens of witnesses testified that during the Hungarian transports, Capesius was among the SS officers involved in the “selection process” on the loading ramps, directing people either toward the labor camp or the gas chambers. Both at trial and later, Capesius vehemently denies this, just as he denies having any role in handling the Zyklon B. For him, the trials are simply about saving his own life. The suffering, the victims, the inhumanity are lost, secondary details in a miasma of dates, data and denial.

Capesius is far from alone in possessing that inability to feel guilt or be bothered by his conscience. And this goes far beyond the claim that “I was just following orders.” Thus, some involved in the selection process would claim they actually “saved” the Jews they pointed toward the labor camp instead of the crematoria. Auschwitz also was where Dr. Josef Mengele and others performed experiments on prisoners. Yet within weeks of the end of the war, the chief of the Auschwitz doctors wrote that “we can stand before God and man with the clearest consciences. … What crime have I committed? I really do not know.”

Translated by John Hargraves, The Druggist of Auschwitz was first published in German in 2006. It made its initial U.S. appearance this year and is now out in a paperback edition. It can feel a bit choppy, jumping in time and location and occasionally more meandering than linear. This is magnified by at times almost abrupt transitions from trial transcripts to Schlesak’s interviews to his own observations. Although initially a bit distracting, the reader will adapt to the use of italic and roman text in the narration. In fact, there are a couple literary nonfiction books over the last year or so where I wish the author had been required to distinguish between fact and invention.

Ultimately, these flaws are inconsequential in the context of the work and what it reveals about the human ability to absolve one’s conscience or oneself. In fact, Adam observes, that may be almost as bad as the crimes themselves — “it was precisely this ability that made Auschwitz possible in the first place!”

How can you talk about things that are impossible, which absolutely SHOULD NOT exist, which are not to be understood and not to be believed? Nightmares that were LIVED.

Dieter Schlesak, The Druggist of Auschwitz: A Documentary Novel

Book Review: My Friend Jesus Christ by Lars Husum

Tim — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:53:19 +0000

Seeking redemption, let alone finding it, can be a long and tortuous path. But what happens if Jesus Christ — or at least a man claiming to be Jesus Christ — is making suggestions here and there? That’s the road on which Nikolaj Jensen is set in Danish writer Lars Husum’s first novel, My Friend Jesus Christ.

When we meet Niko, as he’s known to friends and family, he is struggling with a never-ending and always growing pit and ache in his stomach. Although Niko’s mother became a Danish national treasure as a pop singer, she and Niko’s father die in a car accident when Niko is 13. He was cared for by his older sister, who also manages and invests the earnings from their mother’s songs. But Niko’s fear of losing her increases as she begins living her own life, gets married and has a family. Niko increases his carousing and fighting, gaining the reputation of “an up-and-coming young psychopath.” His path of self-destruction includes suicide attempts, trying to erase that knotting pain in his stomach.

Niko believes things may finally be changing for the better when he meets Silje, who turns out to be the singer in a tribute band to Niko’s mother. Niko falls deeply in love with her but can’t control the demons inside. During a minor argument he ends up savagely beating Silje and then attempts suicide in his sister’s home. His actions eventually drive his sister to suicide herself, an event that crushes him.

The knot is tearing down everything to make room for itself. Walls, rooftops, floors, everything is being smashed to pieces in the loudest possible way. Suddenly the noise and pain stop, because what’s the point of giving me a stomach ache when I no longer function? All is silent, the demolition is over, the knot is everywhere and I am no longer me. I am the knot.

It’s at this point that Jesus Christ steps in. Actually, he breaks in. Niko wakes up early one morning to the sounds of a prowler in his apartment. Niko sees a man who’s “tough, long-haired, bearded and big and strong, and [who] oozes confidence” entering his bathroom. When the man comes out, Niko clocks him in the head with an ashtray. Niko meet Jesus, or at least someone who claims to be Jesus and there to make Niko “a better man.”

This encounter reflects part of the tone of My Friend Jesus Christ. Husum takes a light, at times humorous, touch to the issues Niko faces. At the same time, the sparse language of the work, translated from the Danish by Mette Petersen, retains a balance of seriousness and sincerity. That quality may reflect Husum’s time as a screenwriter prior to the book, first published in Denmark in 2008 as “My Friendship with Jesus Christ” and now in its first English translation.

Although Niko is relatively convinced that Jesus is a “nutter,” when Jesus touches him the knot disappears. Jesus advises Niko to move from Copenhagen to Tarm, the village in Jutland where his parents grew up. Niko’s mother never returned to the town and refused offers to perform there after running away with Niko’s father to escape her own abusive father. Figuring he has little or nothing left to lose, Niko moves there.

Once in Tarm, Niko quickly comes to treasure the area and makes a handful of friends and acquaintances, including a friend from his childhood who shows up in town, a promiscuous hairdresser, and an attractive Jehovah’s Witness who comes to Niko’s door. Acting again on the advice of Jesus (or the “nutter”), Niko convinces his friends, a group he calls “NATO,” to return with him to Copenhagen to help him try and right the wrongs he’s done. With a variety of twists, turns and complications, the group devotes itself to that mission with Niko getting occasional advice — and even some assistance in a fight — from Jesus.

My Friend Jesus Christ is about a search for individual redemption, not Christian fiction or even markedly religious. In fact, some Christians might even object to the book’s portrayal of Jesus. Like Niko, the reader gets hints that the evidence supports the man’s claims that he is Jesus but we are never actually sure.

Husum seems at his best in describing Niko before he meets Jesus, doing a first-rate job of portraying a soul in agony. That effort, though, makes some of the balance of the book seem a bit of a misfire. Niko’s easy acceptance of the idea of moving to Tarm and his mollification there and later don’t quite fit the self-destructive and tormented Niko of the first third of the book. Likewise, at times events in Copenhagen seem a bit too much like a blithe excursion than the struggle of an anguished soul. Additionally, although the ending is certainly appropriate for a story about a search for redemption, it is a bit confusing.

Despite those flaws, My Friend Jesus Christ entertains in its own idiosyncratic way.

I go along with pretending to be happy, because the forces willing me to pretend are too powerful to refuse.

Lars Husum, My Friend Jesus Christ

Book Review: Cain by José Saramago

Tim — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 13:09:19 +0000

In an Oxford lecture earlier this year, literary critic James Wood suggested that the “New Atheists” might be well served by looking to the modern novel. He says atheists — and some Christian fundamentalists — insist too much on polemic literalism. Novels, he said, are a vehicle to explore theological arguments and make real the often inherent contradictions of belief. And although Wood mentions 1998 Nobel Literature laureate José Saramago, a reader can’t help but wonder just where Saramago’s final novel, Cain, fits in that picture.

Cain is an assiduous indictment of the God of the Old Testament by re-imagining the brief tale the Bible tells of the title character. Saramago, who died last year, made his position clear on the book’s release in Europe in 2009. He said the Bible depicts a “cruel, spiteful, vengeful, jealous and unbearable God” and recommending people not trust that God. The book is Saramago’s extended literary argument on that point, frequently from Cain’s mouth.

Saramago’s story of Cain killing his brother Abel is just the starting point. God’s judgment after Abel’s death is for Cain to be “a restless wanderer.” In Saramago’s hands, he wanders the Book of Genesis, aided by the fact he can go back and forth in time. Cain visits the Tower of Babel, is present as Abraham prepares to sacrifice Isaac and joins Noah on the ark, but not in the chronological order in which these events appear in the Bible.

Throughout, it is clear that Cain is increasingly angered by what he perceives as God’s capriciousness and antipathy toward his creation, that he is an entity “who devours his own children.” In Saramago’s version of events, the devil and other fallen angels rebelled because God is evil. God “is not a person to be trusted” and the ease with which he orders Abraham to sacrifice Isaac indicates such acts are “a deep-seated habit.” If anything, if God has a conscience, it is “so flexible” that it agrees with whatever God does, regardless of effect or ramifications. Cain even lays Abel’s murder at God’s feet, saying, “[Y]ou were the one who pronounced sentence, whereas I merely carried out the execution.” He believes “god should not go wasting his energies on creating an atmosphere of constant terror and fear,” particularly when he turns his back on the poor, unfortunate and wretched.

Cain is unquestionably tendentious. It is also a more blunt approach to a subject Saramago addressed in The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, an irreverent re-imagination of Christ’s life in which Saramago also displayed some anger. Yet Saramago’s style keeps the book from straying completely into the category of screed. Although it sounds the same notes several times, Cain‘s indictment often reflects a touch of humor. For example, when Abraham suggests Isaac forget that he was willing to kill his son, Isaac responds, “I’m not sure that I can.” Likewise, as Cain ponders Abraham was about to do, he wonders if God would order his own son to be killed if he had one.

The book, being released in the U.S. in a translation by Margaret Jull Costa, who has been translating Saramago’s works for more than a decade, continues some of Saramago’s prior style idiosyncrasies. None of the proper names in the book are capitalized unless they begin a sentence or line of dialogue. This is not so much a tool of disrespect toward “god” as a necessity of style. Like many of his works, the novel contains long passages built not of sentences but long clauses separated only by commas. Especially since conversations are not delineated by quotation marks, it is only the capitalization of a word amidst one of these clauses that indicates the speaker has changed. What might appear as run-on sentences comes off almost as stream-of-consciousness conversation, although in Saramago’s and Costa’s hands the conversations have an almost colloquial feel. It does, though, take a bit of getting use to, especially for those who haven’t previously read much Saramago.

Cain isn’t plowing any new ground. Critics have long pointed out the God of the Old Testament and Torah seems cruel and unjust. And some Christians classify some of the harshest positions in the Old Testament as metaphorical, not literal, although 3 in 10 Americans view the Bible as the literal word of God. Saramago fans may enjoy the book but it does not rank with works like Blindness, All The Names or Death with Interruptions. Whether relative newcomers to the Saramago oeuvre appreciate it may hinge as much on their religious viewpoints as anything.

The history of mankind is the history of our misunderstandings with god, for he doesn’t understand us, and we don’t understand him.

José Saramago, Cain

Book Review: After Midnight by Irmgard Keun

Tim — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 13:29:07 +0000

It is difficult to conceive of coming of age in a society where politics permeates and controls all aspects of life, from relationships to what you say or do. Even firsthand accounts of life in places like Nazi Germany are limited because they can largely reflect only the perspective of the author. As a result, novels by contemporary German writers often seem to carry as much or more impact on understanding the times. Irmgard Keun’s After Midnight is a notable part of that canon.

Susanne “Sanna” Moder, the narrator of the slim novel, uses almost naive political impressions, the views of others and her memories in casting cast an indelible portrait of “ordinary” life at the time. In part a love story set in Frankfurt, Germany, in the 1930s, even Senna’s simple, ingenue-like life is affected almost daily by Nazism and politics.

Keun’s book, written and first published in 1937 after she fled Germany, portrays Sanna as somewhat vacuous or at least generally ignorant of political details. To her, dresses, parties and love are the most important things in her life. When she hears speeches warning that those who impede the Nazi program will be smashed, her “heart stands still … because how do I know I’m not one of the sort who are going to be smashed?” But she is clever. Despite admitting she admits she doesn’t understand the nuances, she does know there are simply certain things you shouldn’t talk about or do. Yet her observations, often unintentionally sardonic, help reveal life and society under Nazism. For example, when someone says Hitler united the whole German nation, Sanna thinks that’s fine but “it’s just that the people making up the whole German nation don’t get on with each other.”

Personal relationships certainly aren’t exempt. Sanna and her girlfriend, Gerti, are interested in their love lives and the story’s ultimate resolution revolves in large part around Sanna and the man she loves. But Gerti is in love with the son of a Jewish man and a non-Jewish woman. As a result, Sanna observes, he “is a person of mixed race, first class or maybe third class — I can never get the hang of these labels.” Regardless of the label, Nazi race laws make the relationship illegal and the two risk their freedom by seeing each other.

Likewise, when Sanna recalls being summoned to a Gestapo office, it appears a “place of pilgrimage. Mothers are informing on their daughters-in-law, daughters on their fathers-in-law, brothers on their sisters, sisters on their brothers, friends on their friends, drinking companions on their drinking companions, neighbours on their neighbours.” There is also a less consistent stream of people looking for those who have “disappeared” but they “are not so well and kindly treated as the informers.”

Then there’s Sanna’s older stepbrother, Algin, a highly successful novelist — until his books were banned by the Nazis. Facing the fact that he will remain “undesirable” unless he writes a Nazi novel and even then be viewed with suspicion, he contemplates writing a long poem about Hitler. Yet as a journalist friend observes, the Nazis have made Germany “a perfect country, and a perfect country doesn’t need writers.”

With its descriptive yet sparse prose, After Midnight reveals the pervasive effect politics had on normal life in Nazi Germany. Sanna’s narration adds touches of innocence, satire and normalcy to a tale of people who, one way or another, have become outsiders in their own country. With the mix of people Sanna knows, her thoughts and their comments, the book provides a perspective on day to day life in pre-war Germany a work of nonfiction would find it difficult to capture.

Algin’s story seems to have a basis in Keun’s own life. She wrote bestselling novels but once the Nazis took power the books were withdrawn from circulation. Keun, in fact, even dared to seek damages from the Gestapo for lost profits after it seized unsold copies of the novels. While she fled the country in 1936, she published several novels in Amsterdam, including After Midnight. She then returned to Germany in 1940 under an assumed name and lived there until the end of the war.

After Midnight made its first U.S. appearance in 1938. This translation, by Althea Bell, was published in the U.K. in 1985 but is now the first release in Melville House’s Neversink Library, a series of “books from around the world that have been overlooked, underappreciated, looked askance at, or foolishly ignored.” In addition to being an excellent work, After Midnight is a superb start to that series.

We are living in the time of the greatest German denunciation movement ever, you see. Everyone has to keep an eye on everyone else.

Imgard Keun, After Midnight