Ödön von Horváth (1901–1938)

This short novel, written in 1937 and published in Amsterdam because Horváth's work was banned in Germany, is a kind of Lord of the flies for the Third Reich: a decent, liberal schoolteacher is disgusted with the amorality and political opportunism of the teenage boys he teaches in 1930s Germany. He is initially too fearful of consequences to do anything about it, but is ultimately pushed into taking a moral stand when a student is killed on a school trip and it looks as though there will be a miscarriage of justice.

Horváth's scorn for the Nazis (the "wealthy plebeians") and the capitalists who support them is unmistakable, but what is perhaps more surprising is the way the initially agnostic, liberal narrator starts to see the moral element that is missing from his world in terms of "God," with the help of a subversive priest. A short piece, with quite a powerful punch.… (altro)

Read in english (it's called "Child of Our Time"). Sort of wavered between 3 and 4 stars, as a story it's pretty basic but as a rebuke of fascism and the disregard of the individual by the state capitalists it works well and has some great quotes.

Story wise I don't really understand the role the captain's wife plays. The religious themes were a little confusing to me eg the symbols on the soup kitchen, the nurse - purely just as a counterpart to disregard of the individual of fascist society? I'll also say the ending is a bit of a cop out to avoid dealing with the moral issue of killing an individual for indirectly killing someone else - instead he just kills himself... kind of. it's a little weird

In general though it's a good examination of the fascist mentality eg the appeal of being a soldier and why you'd leave that and how awful both fascism and the dominant liberal capitalist order destroy the individual.

I'll just leave some good quotes to give you a feel for it

"I love my Fatherland since it has won back its honor. For now, I have my own back, too. I don’t have to beg any more. I needn’t steal. Everything’s different today – will always be different.
Next time there’s a war, we shall win it. Guaranteed!
All our leaders extol peace – but my comrades and I wink at one another. Our leaders are cunning and shrewd, they’ll get the better of the others, for they’ve mastered the art of lying like none of the rest.
Without lies, life is impossible.
And we’re getting readier every day."

"He’s another that looks away when he sees us on the march. He can’t stand us soldiers, because he hates the armament industry – as if it were the most anxious problem in the world whether an armament manufacturer should make profits or not!
If he supplies the right goods, let him. First-class cannon, munitions and the rest. For us today there’s no longer a problem there. For we have recognized that the highest thing in human life is the Fatherland. There is nothing of greater significance. All else is nonsense – or at best very near it.
When things are going well with the Fatherland, they’re going well with every one of its children. If they’re going badly, perhaps it doesn’t mean that everybody is in a bad plight, but the few exceptions can’t make money for long out of the suffering of the living body of the State.
And things only go well with the Fatherland if its name is feared, if it has its own sharp weapon.
We are its weapons. I too am part of them."

"For we no longer need a blessed eternity since we’ve learned that the individual doesn’t count. Only when he’s in line with the rest does he count for anything. For us, there is only one eternity – the life of our people. And only one divine duty – to die for the life of our people All the rest is out of date now."

"“Well, the individual doesn’t count.”
It was I who gaped now.
Doesn’t count?
Hadn’t I said that myself once? How senseless it sounded!
“We’ve got to make our business pay, and business competition is the same thing as war, my friend, and as you ought to know, you can’t win a war with gloves on!”"

"It should not be that the individual counts for nothing, even if she’s the humblest of the humble. Whoever believes that should be blotted out"… (altro)

Falls squarely into the "should have cut the first 50 pages" basket. The first few chapters contain some fine polemic ("someone should invent a weapon that nullifies other weapons"), but the book really gets going once our narrator stops looking outward, and starts looking at himself. Despite the fascism, the anomy, the picture of disgusting youth (still relevant), the murder, and the turpitude of the narrator, this is ultimately a kind of farcical comedy: the narrator confesses to his wrongdoing, and that confession itself leads, after some time, to a kind of justice. As befits a man who fled the Nazis to Paris but was killed by a falling tree limb in 1939, the justice is bloody and discomforting, but justice nonetheless. The narrator himself enters a life of penitence, which will make very many contemporary readers very uncomfortable, and not in the silly "art must make us uncomfortable" way--instead, in the "life makes me rather too uncomfortable" way.… (altro)

A brewery here in the U.S. advertizes its products as if they were deliberately offensive: "It's not too strong, you're too weak" and that kind of thing. That is how this book should advertize itself. Essentially, you are too soppy and pathetic to deal with Horvath's rage, and too conventional and boring to accept the bizarre structure he uses to convey said rage. Because, my friend, you are a philistine.

"The philistine," he tells us, is "an egoist who suffers from hypochondria, and this is why he seeks, like a coward, to fit in wherever he goes and to distort every new formulation of the idea by calling it his own." That's not the definition I would have made, but anyway, the important point is that "the old species of philistine no longer even deserves to be ridiculed, and whoever is still mocking him at present is at best a philistine of the future."

And we see how the philistine comports him or herself very clearly in this book, written around 1929--and somewhat chillingly showing how 'ordinary' people will do whatever the hell they (we) think will help them get ahead, not excluding, for instance, nazism. The old philistine believes in ideals like Art and the League of Nations and Universal Humanity, despite never having understood anything he's read. The new philistine believes only in his own wallet and penis, sees no need to justify his revolting actions, and never bothered to read anything at all.

That takes us through the first part of the novel, a train trip through a Europe turning fascist. In the second part, we get a female philistine; but while the gentlemen of the first part chose their philistinism, our Fraulein has it forced on her.

So, if you've ever wished that Evelyn Waugh had been a middle-european novelist, who was more sympathetic to the proletariat and more skeptical of the rich, you should probably read this book.

As a special bonus, Shalom Auslander's introduction is so perfect that I immediately went out to buy his novel. But my bookstore didn't have a copy. Hence making his introduction, about the speed with which funny books go out of print, even more perfect. No matter--they had plenty of Jonathan Franzen. Deep.… (altro)