German Literature Month - 'Der Engel Schwieg' Read-Along

It's funny how things work out.

I realise you're probably not quite with me yet, so let me explain.  Among my many plans for German Literature Month, several of which have fallen by the wayside, was an intention to spread my reading as widely as possible, and one reason for this was to avoid reading more than one book by any given author.  However, after enjoying Heinrich Böll's early novel Und sagte kein einziges Wort, I caved in (as I am wont to do) and bought a copy of his posthumously released work Der Engel schwieg (The Silent Angel) just in time for Caroline's read-along.

Don't worry - I am (albeit slowly) going somewhere with this...

*****
Der Engel schwieg is a novel Böll drafted at the request of his publishers; however, they (in their infinite wisdom) decided that the tone was not what they, or their readers required at the time.  It was not until 1992 that the book was published for the first time, in honour of what would have been Böll's 75th birthday.

The reason for the rejection was quite simply that the Germans were apparently sick of stories about the war, an idea which seems a little absurd now, but was probably fairly accurate at the time.  Böll's book then, dealing as it does with the experiences of a soldier gone AWOL right at the end of the Second World War, may have seemed a little unpalatable - which, of course, is not to say that it isn't a good book...

The main character of the novel is the aforementioned soldier, Hans Schnitzler, who returns to Cologne in search of three things: a new, safe identity; the wife of a man whose message he has promised to deliver; and, most importantly, a reason to actually carry on living.  After disposing of the first two of his tasks, Hans decides on a whim to return an overcoat he borrows from a Catholic hospital he visits, and (in a rather sentimental twist) goes some way towards succeeding in his third task.

The war may be over, but the hard work of actually living is only just beginning.  In the first third of the novel, the reader is repeatedly assaulted by the uncaring remarks of Böll's weary inventions.  The overall impression of the survivors of the war is that the dead are the lucky ones, as they will not have to deal with the pain and hardships to come.  As the story progresses though, and Hans and Regina (the owner of the overcoat!) become closer, the tone grows more optimistic, suggesting that there is always a way forward, even if it is currently hidden from sight.

This idea is one of Böll's central themes, and Der Engel schwieg is, as much as it is a novel, a repository for the ideas the writer was to develop over the rest of his career.  One of Böll's most successful, and certainly most substantial, works, Gruppenbild mit Dame (Group Portrait with Lady), is a more detailed, extended look at the time and issues covered here.  However (and this is where I have been going since the start of the post!), the work most influenced by Der Engel schwieg is, of course, none other than Und sagte kein einziges Wort...

On the very first page, as Hans is first startled, and then fascinated, by a dusty, grimy statue of an angel, I had an uncanny feeling of déjà vu (or perhaps déjà lu!), one which was quickly born out.  You see, once his novel had been rejected, the prosaic writer, with a family to provide for, cannibalised his story, sending parts off for publication in newspapers and recycling some of it in the later novel.  The angel scene is not the only one reused in Und sagte kein einziges Wort: both Hans and Fred have an impeccable memory for faces, while Regina's battle with dirt is very similar to Käte's experiences in her one-room apartment.  In addition, the sympathetic priest who helps Hans out has a more-than-passing resemblance to the clergyman Käte and Fred encounter.

But there is more of a similarity than just a few recycled passages.  In essence, the later book is a redrafting of Der Engel schwieg, with the action moved several years into the future.  Rather than concentrating on the difficulty of moving on at the end of the war, Und sagte kein einziges Wort focuses on the day-to-day struggles of the poor in a time when the Wirtschaftswunder had yet to take hold.  Obviously, the idea of a struggling working class couple was more acceptable than that of a couple living in sin in a bomb-damaged house...

Useful as it is to the Böll scholar though, Der Engel schwieg is a fascinating novel in its own right.  The descriptions of the constant search for food, a pleasure which has become a need, a drive, can be painful to read, reminding us of our fortune in being able to open the cupboards any time we feel peckish.  We are stunned by Hans' walks through the streets of Cologne, over piles of rubble, past houses with no roof (and walls with no house).  And, as is usually the case in Böll's fiction, there is a villain - a rich man, well-connected and influential in the church.  Part of Böll's magic here is in showing us how he too is actually a very unhappy person...

According to Caroline, Böll is considered to be a bit of a sentimental and romantic read by the Germans, perhaps not as heavyweight as certain other novellists, and I can definitely see where you could get that idea.  However, in his efforts to humanise the anonymous lives of ordinary Germans after the war, he also succeeds in creating real, flesh-and-blood heroes.  From depressing, hopeless beginnings, his creations do eventually see light at the end of the tunnel.  Hans and Regina, initially envious of the dead, later find happiness, a feeling they didn't think would ever return:

"Ich bin sehr glücklich", sagte sie langsam.

"Ich auch", sagte er, "ich weiß nicht, ob ich jemals so glücklich war."

"I'm very happy", she said slowly.
"Me too", he said, "I don't know if I was ever this happy." p.155 (2009, dtv)

Sometimes, it's nice to just have a happy ending...

A Couple Of (Metaphorical) Big Guns

The German language has produced thirteen Nobel prizes in literature so far, behind only English and French, and today's post celebrates two of those Teutonic laureates, in what could be described as skillful planning on my part, but which would be more accurately described as blind luck and quick thinking - enjoy ;)

*****
First up today is one of my favourite German authors, Heinrich Böll.  He received his prize in 1972, but today's offering, Und sagte kein einziges Wort (And Didn't Say A Word), is one of his earlier offerings.  Set in Cologne in 1950, the book relates two days in the lives of Fred and Käte, a married couple whose recent life together has actually been spent apart.  Unable to cope with living in a cramped single room with three noisy children, Fred has moved out, sending Käte his pay packet each month and occasionally meeting up with her for clandestine dates.  However, Käte has had enough of this demeaning existence, and the events of the weekend force the couple to face up to both their responsibilities and reality.

Post-war blues among the poor is Böll's speciality, and once again he portrays the plight of people going nowhere with a clear, sympathetic and, at times, ironic pen.  He also continues in his attacks on the Catholic church, an organisation which he sees as putting the horse before the cart in its insistence on adherence to doctrine above brotherly love.  By comparing the pomp and ceremony of the church with a procession of pharmacists in town for a convention (the neon signs imploring us to trust in our pharmacist are a particularly deft touch!), Böll pokes fun at an organisation that is perhaps taking itself a bit too seriously.

The book is divided into thirteen chapters written in the first person, alternating between Fred and Käte.  The couple tell us in their own voices about the struggles they face, and it is perhaps more what they tell us about the other than about themselves that gives the reader an insight into their exhausting existence.  With their contrasting ways of coping with the daily grind (Fred lives recklessly, unable to see the point of living; Käte takes each day as a battle, facing up to her enemies, whether they be landladies or dirt...), the question has to be asked: are they actually right for each other?

You'll have to read the book to find out...

*****
Gerhart Hauptmann was honoured sixty years before Böll, but ninety-nine years later I still hadn't got around to reading any of his works (now that's laziness for you!).  That has now changed, mainly thanks to the miracle of free e-texts, as I was able to download a well-known novella - plus an unexpected bonus...

Bahnwärter Thiel is a short novella featuring the aforementioned railway attendant, a gentle giant of a man who loses his first wife while gaining a son.  Unable to continue his work and take care of his child, he marries again, this time for practical purposes rather than love.  As it soon becomes clear that his new wife is less than fond of his son, Thiel is forced to choose between domestic harmony and standing up for his child.  The wrong decision could prove deadly for all involved...

The story, written in the late 1880s, is a beautiful piece of naturalism, its lengthy, elegant descriptions of the woods around Thiel's work hut reminiscent of one of my favourite writers, Thomas Hardy.  The tragic outcome of the tale only strengthens that connection, and in fact Hauptmann was greatly influenced by Hardy's writing.  Thiel could be a Hardy hero, tormented by someone whose presence should make his life more bearable, doomed to an unhappy life despite his able faculties and propensity for hard work.

However, one could argue that it is all his own fault.  The crushing blow he receives is directly related to his failure to face up to his moral dilemma.  In shying away from his duties, he fails himself and his son...  A sad story, but beautiful writing.

*****
The Kindle file showed that Bahnwärter Thiel was 818 sections long, but it actually finished a while before that, leaving a further story to fill the remaining space.  Der Apostel is a short story about a man who walks through the Swiss countryside believing he is an apostle, or even the son of God himself.  Our hero considers himself to be chosen to spread the word of peace, abstaining from conflict and from eating the flesh of animals.  He attracts amazed stares wherever he goes, crowds of children following him through the streets as he walks ever onward...

...at least that's what he tells us.  You see, I'm not entirely convinced that Hauptmann intends the apostle's ramblings to be taken completely at face value.  We never see what is actually happening around our egotistical friend, and I'm tempted to believe that the writer may just be poking fun at his creation.  Of course, I may be very, very wrong (one of the two!).  Whatever the truth is, Der Apostel is an unexpected tale in more ways than one :)

Review Post 43 - All Pointless on the Eastern Front

Another short book by one of my favourite German authors and yet another tale of the pointlessness of armed conflict.  I am afraid that if you read any amount of twentieth-century German literature, you'll see that Basil Fawlty's classic advice is (understandably) rarely heeded.  Sorry - I will be mentioning the war...

*****
Wo warst du, Adam? is an early work by Nobel-Prize-Winning author Heinrich Böll and is a cross between a novel and a loosely-connected collection of short stories, held together by the figure of Feinhals, a German soldier on the eastern European front in the Second World War.  Although Feinhals is the central point for all the tales, the reader occasionally loses sight of him and follows other characters, usually tangentially connected to the main protagonist.  Throughout the book, the viewpoint shifts, sometime several times within a single story as one character encounters another, who then becomes the focal point.

This apparent whimsical nature of the book fits in nicely with the subject matter.  The people here are subject to the vagaries of war, living life on an hourly basis (whether they are soldiers, civilians or prisoners) and rarely having control of their own destinties.  At times, it seems as if Feinhals is a sort of Angel of Death, with his presence closely followed by destruction and slaughter.  Of course, in war, you can only cheat death so many times...

The beauty of this book is the way Böll describes the futility of war without needing to run the risk of glamourising the conflict by portraying the actual fighting.  The stories circle skilfully around the main theatre of conflict, instead concentrating on the peripheral, but still tragic events.  From a wounded officer who may or may not be feigning madness, to a misguided tank attack on a defenceless (and almost completely deserted) hospital barracks; from an aborted offensive where the major casualties are laid low by exploding wine bottles and chronic stomach trouble, to a blossoming love story cut short by a sudden order to move on to the frontline: war affects many more people than those forced to participate in the actual fighting.

However, two of the stories particularly bring home the horror and pointlessness of it all.  In the first, a lorryload of Jews are brought to what they are told is a 'transition camp'; in reality, a concentration camp in the end stages of the war, where the officers are beginning to wind up proceedings.  In the hands of a racist, mentally unstable commandant, the prisoners have only one chance to escape from their fate.  You see, the one weakness of the commanding officer is music...

The second, the penultimate and, perhaps, central chapter of the book, is set on the Slovak-Polish border, where a bridge central to German troop movements (and blown up by partisans earlier in the war) is to be reconstructed.  The story is told partly through the eyes of Feinhals and partly through those of a Slovakian innkeeper, a woman who finds it hard to believe that the men loafing around in her establishment are being paid so much for doing so little.  Just as the bridge has been rebuilt, news suddenly comes of a Soviet advance not far to the East.  Suddenly, the decision to put the bridge back up doesn't seem to be such a good one.

*****
This is my sixth Böll book in the last two years, and I'm sure there'll be many more.  His style is subtle and understated, and while there is a preoccupation with certain twentieth-century occurrences, this is understandable.  Even in his later books, where there is less of a focus on the (now distant) wars, echoes of the time remain in the presence in public life of people who managed to overcome their wartime behaviour to make it back into the political ranks of German society.  War, as horrifying and pointless as it is, does seem to be good for one thing - outstanding literature.

Review Post 9 - You don't have to be Irish

You may remember recently, dear reader, that I took you on a journey through space (well, the Kansai region of Japan anyway). Well, today's post is more of a journey through time instead, as I guide you (with the help of three books) through Ireland's recent history, from the mid-fifties up to a few years ago. It's OK, you can thank me later...

*****

We start in the 1950s with Heinrich Böll's Irisches Tagebuch (Irish Diary), a delightful collection of reflections and sketches covering his time travelling and living in Ireland. Böll has quickly become my favourite German writer, and his usual humorous, non-judgemental style works even better here in an informal setting than it does in his weightier (fiction) works. From a land far away, where people smoke anywhere and everywhere, pounds still have shillings, and footwear is a luxury, rather than a necessity (even in a country of incessant pouring rain), the German novelist brings forth the true character of the Emerald Isle.

The work successfully evokes an image of an Ireland of the past, and while the writer touches on the down side of Irish life, the overall effect is one of a gentle, admirable way of life. In many ways this book reminds me of the way Luciano de Crescenzo (in Thus Spake Bellavista) lifted the life of Naple's poor out of the gutter and gave it a sort of nobility in its (involuntary?) rejection of modern business norms. The anecdotes of the 'bona-fide travellers' who cycle from their village to another at least three miles away (passing each other in the process), in order to circumvent the Sunday drinking laws; the traffic policeman who, after a long meandering conversation, asks for a driver's licence and is not at all bothered that the driver hasn't got it; travelling from Dublin to the West of Ireland on the promise of paying at some later date: all these tales are told with a wry humour which emphasises the affection the writer has for the country, and people, he is describing.

The darker side is, as mentioned, touched upon, but this too is done in an almost poetic manner. Böll and his family, out for a weekend walk, stumble upon a ghost village, deserted and left to decay in the countryside. This collection of houses, roads and even a church, left behind by those who fled for pastures more fertile during the potato blight epidemic and the ensuing famine, leaves the family spellbound and dumbfounded. The locals hadn't even found the spectacle worth mentioning; after all, it was just one of thousands dotted all over Erin's fair land...

*****

Let's move on to the 70s and 80s now, as we take a look at life through the eyes of one of Roddy Doyle's most impressive inventions, Paula Spencer. In my post on The Van, I mentioned that the slightly misogynistic view marred my enjoyment of the book: well, perhaps Roddy realised this himself. In the wonderful The Woman who Walked into Doors, Doyle creates a Dublin housewife, a prisoner of the soul-crushing suburban poverty of a poor country - and a victim of brutal abuse.

Against a background of boom and bust, and the faded dreams of the Irish in a post-decimal, IRA-present, heavy-drinking (and smoking) era, Paula tells us how she met Charlo Spencer, how she fell in love (violently) and how she was knocked off her feet (metaphorically and then literally). Still in love with her husband, despite the frequent beatings, she drowns herself in drink, denying the abuse and making it through her days as best she can, trying (and failing) to bring up her four children properly. From the very start, we know that Charlo is dead, shot by the police at the scene of a violent crime - and we know that Paula is well rid of him.

The first three-quarters of the book are absorbing and thought provoking: Paula is brutally candid about what she is, what she was and what she is unlikely to become. And then... And then Doyle lets loose. Where in the first part of the book the abuse is mainly hinted at, reported, suggested, all at once the reader is confronted with a sickening train of events, a constant barrage of attacks which leave us feeling almost as shell-shocked as Paula herself. The assaults pass by, one after the other, no end in sight... It is brilliant writing. It is horrible writing.

At the end of it all, Paula is free, but shattered. Her life is in tatters, but she has the support of her family. Her children are scarred but (mostly) still functional. We are left wondering what has become of Paula and her family...

*****

For about six hours anyway! I've had a copy of Paula Spencer, the sequel to The Woman who Walked into Doors, for a fair while now, and this seemed like the perfect time to read it. We rejoin Paula about a decade later: the Celtic Tiger has roared, and panic-stricken emigration has now turned into mass European and African immigration; the Pound, whether decimal or not, has disappeared over the Irish Sea, replaced by the Euro; and cigarettes have finally become a social stigma with smoking banned in pubs and restaurants.

Paula has been sober for around a year when we meet her again, and she is slowly getting herself back into a 'normal' way of life. Her four children are now grown up: baby Jack is sixteen and working hard at school; Nicola, the eldest child, is a mother herself (and just as much to Paula as to her own kids); Jon Paul has returned from his drug-induced absence, a calm example of how to survive life after addiction. And Leanne? Well, it was too much to expect four well-adjusted children to emerge from the wreckage of Paula and Charlo's marriage...

Paula Spencer is actually less about Paula herself and more about the effect her marriage and her alcoholism have had on the people around her, especially her children. Emerging from decades of drunken numbness, she is trying to mend the ties strained by her neglect, mostly succeeding but, in Leanne's case especially, occasionally unable to make things right. In Jon Paul, she has a picture of what you need to do to avoid temptation, but it is hard: very hard.

Although it's a good read, the sequel does not have the kick of the original. There's no defining purpose to the novel, no scenes of physical abuse (or even the eventual disintegration of a family as described in Paddy Clarke... ). I kept thinking that there was a twist around the corner, that Jack could not be as well adjusted as he appeared, that Paula's various ailments were concealing something more serious. It never appeared.

Still, a third installment of Paula's life would not come amiss. Perhaps a post-GFC story chronicling Ireland's downturn and the wave of emigration back to Eastern Europe of the workers drawn by the Irish success story. Roddy Doyle has already written The Barrytown Trilogy and the Henry Smart trilogy, so you never know. I wonder what Ireland's future will bring... Sorry, my trip through time isn't going any further today; you'll just have to imagine it for yourselves.

75 - 'Gruppenbild mit Dame' by Heinrich Böll

I'm feeling a little washed out at the moment; reading in a foreign language does that to you. Although my German is fairly good, reading German books in the original version is always a more difficult task than reading anything in English, so getting through this 374-page novel of wartime Cologne was a big task (and I'm very happy, and relieved, to have managed it in just under a week - although my continued absence from work may have had something to do with that...). I apologise, however, dear reader, if I have led you to believe that I didn't enjoy the week; this book is definitely worth the time spent on it.

Just as with my previous Böll novel, 'Die Verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum', 'Gruppenbild mit Dame' (translated, rather clumsily, as 'Group Portrait with Lady' - sometimes translation can be an inexact science) concentrates on a female central character, whose life is laid out for the reader through interviews and documents. However, the treatment of Leni Pfeiffer, the heroine of this novel, differs in several important ways from that of the charming (and deadly) Katharina B. Where the reason for the interest in Ms. Blum's life is clear from the start, the reader is mainly left in the dark as to why Leni's life is important enough to be reconstructed. In addition, while 'Gruppenbild mit Dame' is at least three times as long as 'Die Verlorene Ehre...', the enigmatic Leni is seldom to be seen or heard.

Of course, this is part of Böll's plan (and a very good one it is too). Through interviews with a couple of dozen friends, colleagues and family members, not only Leni's life is described; Böll also paints a picture of life in Cologne as lived by ordinary people before, during and shortly after World War II. The supposed objectivity, which gives the story a semi-historical feel, is enhanced by the use of an intermediary to gather the facts and conduct interviews. This man, known only as Der Verf. (the 'Verf.', presumably short for Verfasser, or editor) acts as a guide through the tangled web of relationships which need to be uncovered in order to find the truth about Leni's life.

At first, the book appears to drag a little. The constant interviews, the lengthy monologues (some of which go on for dozens of pages with relatively few paragraph breaks), the constant referral to sources; for the reader who is looking for an answer as to why this research is being carried out, frustration slowly sets in. However, it soon becomes clear that this research is being done to tell us about everyone - not just Leni, but all the people in her life - and how they made it through this awful time in history (and what became of them afterwards).

The main thread of the book, Leni's story, is a simple one, and we know most of it right from the start. A young German girl loses a lover at the start of the war, marries (and then loses) another soldier and then falls hopelessly in love with Boris, a Russian POW working with her in her wartime job making wreaths for funerals. It sound a little far-fetched, but Böll sets the situation up meticulously so that there is not the slightest bit of doubt as to the authenticity of the situation. Of course, this relationship would have cost both of them their lives if it had been discovered (especially with some Nazi co-workers on the lookout for any seditious activity), so it progresses slowly and in great secrecy until normal life starts to unravel in 1945.

The story makes it quite clear that the war was lost by 1945, and the fearsome air attack on Cologne on the 2nd of March (described near the end of the book in several accounts) was followed closely by the Americans' entry into the city. However, the line between war and peace was not as defined as we may expect; there was a long period where defeat was certain, but there was no telling how long the war would drag on for, and this is perhaps the most fascinating part of the book. Each of the characters interviewed had to think about both how to get through their day alive and how they would avoid punishment once the Allies had taken over. For women and children, this wasn't such a great concern, but anyone who had been heavily involved in the war effort had to make contingency plans and gather proof of their relative 'cleanliness' to use in peace time - all the while hiding this from the military who would have shot them for defeatism...

What happens after the war is even more interesting. Some of the characters come out of their ducking and diving smelling of roses while others, generally the quieter and more honest ones, struggle to make ends meet. Those who have profited from their war-time experiences stress, in their interviews with Verf., the efforts they took to help other people and the work they put in (and the risks they took) to build their fortunes. However, thanks to the multitude of sources available to the reader, we are able to hear the other side of the story, and the way the less fortunate describe events does not always tally with the description the winners give.

One of the central themes running through this book is the success of capitalism and survival of the fittest; by 1970, when Verf. is carrying out his research, the political pendulum seemed to be swinging back to the conservative side of the spectrum (if not quite to the Nazi side...). Two scenes towards the end of the novel illustrate this. In the first, two businessmen (who have known Leni since they were babies) explain why they are going to throw her out on the street, using debts she has run up as an excuse to cancel her lease (frozen at a price well below the market rate). In their eyes, Leni is failing the market system by refusing to work, even though she is only in her forties, and sub-letting rooms at the same price to foreign workers, thus perverting the market and ensuring that the workers send their money home rather than spending it in Germany!

The second involves a psychological report on Leni's son, Lev, who is in prison for deliberate falsification of documents. The report, while generally positive and well meant, criticises Lev for what it describes as his 'Leistungsverweigerung' (a refusal to perform to his full potential). That may seem a little harsh, but you need the full background to understand how harsh. Lev has always done his job well, but in his refusal to make an effort at school and his disinclination to use his talents to the full at work and move up to a managerial position, he is deemed to be offending against his employers - and his society. Capitalism gone mad...

In all this madness, we, like the characters in the book, are forced to make decisions and take a stand. It is very clear where Böll's sympathies lie, and this is shown in the way Verf.'s attitude changes as the novel nears its close, from a fully detached objective chronicler, to a more involved relater of tales until he finally (like the reader) becomes emotionally involved in the story, to the extent that he begins to be a part of the events he is supposed to be recording.

This is a very good book (as you would expect from a work which gave the Nobel Prize committee a final gentle nudge), but it's also very different. It requires a lot of patience, a fair amount of interest in the history behind it and an ability to critically engage with the text. Coming from a country on the other side of the front line, I found many of the details in this book new and surprising. Obviously, I don't know quite as much about the war as I'd thought... As the Second World War recedes into history, it's important to look back, as Böll does, to ensure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated in the future.

59 - 'Die Verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum' by Heinrich Böll

A question, dear reader: what do you think it would take for you to blow someone away?

Now that I've got your attention... 

Die Verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum) is a short work (the author himself calls it a "pamphlet") by the Nobel-Prize-winning German author Heinrich Böll, which relates an incredible few days in the life of a young German woman, the Katharina Blum of the title, in which she meets and sleeps with a criminal before helping him to escape from her apartment despite the vigilance of the police surveillance surrounding it. What follows this out-of character sexual liaison (and the crime that arises from it) is written down faithfully in the form of a report, taking information from the police transcripts of interviews and from conversations with the people involved in the events of those hectic few days.

Right from the start of the book, we know (or, at least, we think we know) was has happened; on the third page, we are told how Katharina rings at a policeman's door to confess to having shot and killed a journalist. While the description on the cover, and the initial events of the book, lead us to believe that there is some sort of conspiracy, the truth is that the book has very little to do with Katharina's private life and a lot more to do with the lengths to which people will go to uncover it.

You see, the main idea of this work concerns newspapers, particularly of the tabloid variety, and the sacrifices that a civilised society makes in order to preserve the freedom of the press which is one of the hallmarks of democracy. Poor Katharina is mercilessly tortured by the ZEITUNG (a barely-disguised nod towards Germany's major tabloid newspaper, 'Die BILD Zeitung'), and so-called reporters roam the land, interviewing (and then manipulating the words of) anyone they can find who has ever had any connection to Fräulein Blum.

Katharina's supporters and friends are, in turn, subject to accusations about their private lives, whereas a high-profile figure who had become involved in the case due to his (unsuccessful) overtures towards our heroine, somehow, probably through his connections, comes off as a victim of Katharina's wiles. When a reporter goes so far as to publish a (probably fictitious) interview with poor Katharina's mother, who dies soon after, in which it is strongly hinted that the blame for the death lies squarely at Katharina's feet... well, going back to our question, what more would you need to push you over the edge?

This book only goes for around 130 pages, yet the author is able, in such a short space of time, to outline a web of connections and misunderstandings surrounding what is effectively an open-and-shut case. Katharina is revealed as incredibly hard-working, overly shy and prudish, unwilling to open herself up, extremely sensitive and, at times, pedantic; however, Die ZEITUNG manages to twist the facts to fit the circumstances which they believe best suit their readers opinions, making the poor woman out to be a sex-crazed terrorist helping enemies of the state to escape justice. The style of writing Böll chose for this work lends itself to making the reader understand the frustration Katharina (and her friends) feels as the report style gives a certain detachment which allows us to view events more objectively than if they had been seen through the eyes of one of the main characters.

The setting is also vital for understanding the atmosphere of tension and the ferocity of the press at the time. The action takes place over the week of Karneval, which, in the Rheinland, is celebrated just as wildly as Mardi-Gras is enjoyed in Rio. For those who have never lived in Germany, this may be a little difficult to reconcile with the stereotypical image of Germans as practical and sensible, but during Karneval, anything goes. There is a strong feeling of freedom from everyday constraints, and the chance of sexual encounters, like Katharina's uncharacteristic liaison, is greatly increased. In fact, I've even heard opinions saying that infidelities during Karneval don't count as no-one is in their right mind...

Even more important is the fact that the action is set in 1974, in the middle of the Cold War and the era of terrorist attacks by the Rote Armee Fraktion and the Baader-Meinhof group. In a time of great uncertainty (as seen, unfortunately, throughout the world over the past ten years), we are always ready to jump at ghosts and pounce on the smallest sign of (imagined) betrayal. When even Katharina's friends are being excoriated in the media for their imagined communist past, it is no wonder that the papers, and the reading public, are so keen to believe her a foreign spy, or, at the very least, a fifth columnist.

So, I ask you once again: if a newspaper reporter accused you of treason, hounded your mother to death and blamed you for it, dug up dirt on all your friends, rang you up and harassed you sexually; in short, did everything possible to deprive you of the one thing you held dear in life, your honour, before turning up to an interview and suggesting that you might as well screw him... would you, if in possession of a gun, be able to resist the temptation of shooting him down?

Well, would you?

23 - 'Billard um Halbzehn' by Heinrich Böll

The German department at Monash University, my (indirect) employer for the past six years, must have had a liking for Herr Böll as his works seem to make up a disproportionate part of the foreign language selection at the second-hand bookshop. Of course, that means that the students weren't so keen on him... Whatever the opinions, the fact is that there were several books available for me to buy, and after reading (and liking) 'Ansichten eines Clowns' (see previous post), I thought I'd risk another $8 on 'Billard um Halbzehn' (Billiards at half-past nine; Germans do time strangely).

The story takes place over one day in September, 1958, on David Fähmel's eightieth birthday. We are told the story through the eyes of several of his family members and friends, and we are thrown backwards and forwards in time from 1907, when Fähmel senior arrived in the big city to make his mark as an architect, through both World Wars and into the society of post-war Germany. The narrative is held together by the central thread of the time bringing the tale towards its conclusion on the evening of the birthday, where the family comes together in slightly unexpected circumstances. So, money well spent?

Well, yes, but I had a harder time with this book than the last one. On top of the usual issues of reading in a second language (and you should try that when you've got the flu; like solving a Rubik's cube in a very dark room while wearing really effective sunglasses), the structure of the book was a little unbalanced for my liking. The book runs over 240 pages, divided into 14 chapters; however, the core chapter, describing David's arrival in Cologne and his success in being awarded the contract to build the abbey of Sankt-Anton, is spread over almost fifty of them. Half-way through this part of the book, I was very tempted to skip on to the next chapter (especially as the outcome was already known).

The spreading out of the narrative point of view to include most of the main characters was another dificulty I found with the text. At times, it was difficult to follow the writing and determine who was meant, especially as Böll often deliberately introduces new information at the start of a section, which only makes sense a few pages later. I also thought that some of the sections were a little weak; Joseph, David Fähmel's grandson, gets his turn late in the book and doesn't really add a lot to the story whereas more could have been said about his father, Robert.

However, on the whole, the same qualities which led me to enjoy 'Ansichten eines Clowns' shone through in this work too. The device of using a single day to describe the culmination of events going back decades and having the characters paint in the details of these events, selectively at first, keeps the reader thinking and guessing, and while the multiple viewpoints, as discussed above, don't always work, the ability to show several sides of the same situation enhances the reality of what is portrayed.

Another common stylistic device is the way the characters, especially the main character of each chapter, speak and think. Often, the scenes are more of a monologue than a dialogue; events are described in great detail without the need for a response or signs of interest from the listener. It's also common for the speaker to make a short statement but then think about the same material in great detail as if the information is meant more for the reader than the other characters present. In some ways, there is a little of the stream-of-conciousness type writing of Lawrence or Woolf, but the focus here is more on description rather than feelings; the narrative is much more structured than Woolf's chaotic streams of thought.

There are multiple themes packed into this relatively short book, but the main one is the temptation to conform to society's norms (which, in a German book, has obvious, sinister undertones). The Fähmel's are one of the few who do not swallow the ideology whole (although this does not mean that they stand up against their country and ther leaders; they merely refuse to accept the unpalatable parts of the package); however, many of their contemporaries do seize hold of these ideals, and as in 'Ansichten eines Clowns', many of these are able to use their connections to succeed in the post-war period.

Böll also looks at the idea of family and what that actually means: is a family constructed by blood ties, or is there something more? Several examples are given of family members who aren't connected by blood, and we are shown at least two examples of blood relatives who reject, or are rejected by, their family. At the end of the book, David does not have the celebration he had wished for, with seven children and seven times seven grandchildren, but he is surrounded by a group of his nearest and dearest, even if some of them are not 'real' family.

I have one more novel of Böll's to read, his Nobel-Prize-winning work 'Gruppenbild mit Dame', but I think I'll leave it for a little while. Much as I enjoy his novels, I need to take a bit of a time out from forcing my brain to decipher strange foreign words; I have work to do, a toddler to help look after and a Master's degree to work at (and the footy season has just started...). Nevertheless, I will get around to reading it at some point, and next time I visit the campus bookshop, I'll have a look and see what else they have available. For now, it's time to take off the glasses, put down the cube, and go and give my daughter a big hug!

6 - 'Ansichten eines Clowns' by Heinrich Böll

Reading in a foreign language is difficult for a number of reasons. Firstly, you rarely understand every word, and even the ones you do understand may have different connotations and embedded cultural references which you don't get. It's also easy to drift off and, while concentrating on the meaning of the words in front of you, forget how that ties in with the book in general. A further issue is the fact that it's bloody tiring and gives you a headache...

I did encounter these problems while reading Böll's novel (simply 'The Clown' in English), but the biggest hurdle I faced was reading a book with virtually no frame of reference. When reading novels in English, my cultural background usually gives me some kind of insight into the topic and setting, and I often have a good idea of the writer and their background. Without this knowledge, reading can be a little unsettling; it can be difficult to understand why the characters act as they do, and you're not always sure that you understand what the writer is getting at.

Despite all this, I enjoyed the book greatly. The clown of the title, Hans Schnier, has been abandoned by his long-term partner after their marriage discussions broke down because of her Catholic insistence on promises regarding the education of their (future) children. From then on, he descends into an alcohol-fuelled decline, and one night (the length of the book), after returning to Bonn from his latest disastrous performance, he phones family and friends, ostensibly to ask for money, but really to clear the air with people who he (mostly) dislikes.

Many people see the book as an attack on the Catholic church (which Böll denied): it is certainly very critical of both Catholicism and the 'chattering classes' of Bonn's closed-in political world. It is also fiercely against the hypocrisy of those who went with the flow during the Second World War and claimed to be reformed democrats after it. Like the Nazi writer who was briefly censored and then used this to his credit after the end of the war, many of the successful characters in the book have used their positions to their advantage while the honest, generous clown ends up broke and broken begging in front of Bonn station, waiting for his former partner to return from her honeymoon with her new husband.

Much as I love practicing my German, it'll be a relief to return to English for a while (when you start thinking in a second language at night, it's a guarantee of a bad night's sleep!). I'll definitely read another of his books; however, next time I'll have a dictionary and a bottle of paracetomol handy.