Customer Reviews

Billiards at Half-Past Nine (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This work, in my opinion Boll's greatest, takes place duirng a single day in the life of Robert Faemel. He is an architect and ex-soldier who since WWII has turned inward, relying on routine to get him through the days. As the story unfolds, the reaader learns of the difficult and tragic events in his life that have led Robert to seek escape from the world, and ultimately gives hope that even these darknesses can be overcome.

Through his memories and those of his family, the book paints a remarkable panoramic picture of German life from ~1920 through 1960. The book really presents 3 generations of a German family and their experiences through this harrowing period. It shows both the dark side of postwar Germany, where many ex-Nazis had risen to positions of power and influence, as well as the lonely lights of human goodness and decency that remained throughout the dark period of the Nazis rise to power and the second world war.

As always, Boll's character's are expertly drawn and powerfully human. The storytelling can be difficult, requiring attention to keep up with the flashbacks and change in narrators. But it is absolutely worth the effort, as reading it will be a powerful experience that will stay with you.

Through Robert Faehmel,the subject of Boell's stark description of life in post-war Germany, the modern reader can truly feel the same sense of unsettlement and social insight. Boell depicts a society where former Nazis, barely unfit to be tried at Nurenberg, now rule over Germany's biggest cities as mayors and serve in the modern beaureacracy. Faehmel is a man who can not survive here without his own rigid regime and almost stereotypic German precision in order to escape his fate in the present and his decisions and losses in the past. In "Billiards at Half-Past Nine," brought to the Engish reader by Pulitzer Prize winning translator, Leila Vennewitz, Heinrich Boell, Germany's conscience and master story teller, presents perhaps his greatest work.

Billiards at Half-Past Nine is an encompassing view of post-war Germany, both in the First World War and the Second. It chronicles the lives of the Faehmel family, and is quite challenging with its multitude of internal monologues. It only occurs in the span of one day, but this single day is enough.

We start with Robert Faehmel, a prosperous second-generation architect. We can already see in the beginning that he is not unlike a machine: his life is set like a clock. Every single day he works for only an hour, but there is little disparity, little uniqueness in his schedule. One could easily dismiss him as one who has an obsessive-compulsive disorder, but later on, one sees that this is only Robert's facade: he is trying to forgo of his guilt-laden and tragic past by offering himself no time to think about it.

This guilt-laden and tragic past comes from Nazism and Nazi Germany. Euphemized by Boll as 'the host of the Beast,' this is what mars the lives of the Faehmel family. The young ones who do not take this are battered and tortured, while those who do take it become strangers to even their own family. Robert did not take it, and he was whipped in the back with barbed wire, bloodied, and was to be executed if not for the help of friends. His brother took it, and such was the powerful psychological re-education of the Nazis that his brother was the one who told on his family - his brother was the one who wanted their family imprisoned. He became 'the husk of a child,' from the words of Robert's father, Heinrich.

The different lives of the Faehmel family are delved into with this book, and each one of them carries emotional and psychological scars from the past war. Some scars belong to Robert, who could never accept his country turning his back on him, some on his relatives, some on his friends, and in the end Boll reveals that no one got out of the wars unscathed. Not Germany. Especially not Germany.

I first read BILLIARDS AT HALF PAST NINE over thirty years ago while in college. It made a strong impression on me then. Now, it does not strike me as one of the classics of twentieth-century literature, but still it is a remarkable novel which should not be forgotten in the passage of time.

In some ways, BILLIARDS AT HALF PAST NINE is a poorer (less rich), shorter, German version of Joyce's ULYSSES. In both, all the contemporary action takes place during one day (in the case of BILLIARDS, Sept. 6, 1958), but in both there are numerous flashbacks, some quite lengthy. In both, the story is told via numerous narrators, from multiple perspectives -- in BILLIARDS there are at least eight different narrative perspectives, providing the characters and events a multi-faceted depth and complexity. Finally, BILLIARDS, like ULYSSES, is rich in allusion and actual or potential symbolism. (BILLIARDS, however, is of ordinary length; it can be read over a weekend.)

For all of its narrative complexity, the basic story-line of BILLIARDS is relatively clear and comprehensible, and throughout there is an air of mystery and foreboding which helps propel the reader forward. Overall, the tone is calm and measured.

As for my interpretation of the novel, I really don't have that much to offer. It clearly contains a negative, judgmental assessment of Germany's turn in the 1930s to Hindenburg and then to the Nazis. There also is a clear, but by no means strident, endorsement of pacifism and non-violence, as well as a reminder or warning (primarily to the German people of the late 1950s, when the novel was written) that neither complete forgiveness nor forgetfulness would be possible. But beyond that, I don't know what Boll's "message" might be, other than, perhaps, that the political affairs of humankind are inevitably a muddle and that what's important in life are family, especially children. Nonetheless, over the years various commentators and reviewers (some no doubt much more knowledgeable and astute than I) have derived from BILLIARDS a wide array of meanings and messages -- similar, again, to ULYSSES.

I really don't mean to imply that BILLIARDS stands on the same plane as ULYSSES, but it is much more readable and, as I said at the start, it deserves continuing readership. I hope to be able to read it again in another thirty years.

There is a good reason Heinrich Böll won the Nobel Prize for Literature (1972), and Billiards at Half-Past Nine contributes mightily to that reason. In fewer than 300 pages, the novel delivers a searing look at life for middle class Germans as their country went through two punishing World Wars and recovered itself in the wake of Hitler.

The plotline is like a thin aluminum railing that runs around and through panels of its characters' internal narratives, taking place across a single day (6 September 1958) during which the extended Faehmel family comes together for a public celebration. From the first sentence, it is known that forty-something architect Robert Faehmel insists on one thing of the few who know him, that from 9:30 - 11 a.m., his whereabouts never be disclosed except, if need be, to his father, his son, his daughter and a person named Schrella. That would be the time he spends shooting billiards alone at a local hotel, except for the company of a bellhop. You wonder, why aren't his wife and mother on the short list? Who is Schrella?

Through the narratives that hop from character to character, arcing across the first half of the 20th century, Böll reveals what happened to ordinary people under the crucible of Fascism; some would embrace it and die fighting; some would survive as government panderers no matter what the leadership; some would be forced to compromise their ideals; some would stick to them but at costs; some would fight it; innocents would be killed, collateral damage. The youngest generation would not emerge undamaged, either. The actions and choices of individuals impact each other and the future much as the billiard balls strike off one another. What makes this so very readable are the fully realized Faehmels, a flesh and blood clan rendered with sympathy. However tragic, it is also life affirming.

Notes on this edition: Jessa Crispin's afterword considers how the German cultural reverence of motherhood fared in these years and its import for the characters. I don't speak or read German, but the translation seems quite authentic and lucid.

Robert Faehmel, strongly antiwar and antitotallitarian, had fled from the Nazis during their rise, had lost his wife and watched his mother lose her mind amid the horror of their time. He nevertheless became commander of retreating German forces which senselessly destroyed an abbey - the greatest of his father's architectural accomplishments. In an effort to retain his sanity, Robert Faehmel now lives a rigorously scheduled life; his daily ritual includes a game of billiards at the local hotel each morning at half-pat nine. The interruption of this routine by an old schoolmate and former Nazi who has become a power in German reconstruction triggers a conflict both absorbing and profound.
--- from book's back cover

1958, and Germany undergoes political, social and economic reformation.Robert Faehmel looks back over the period of two world wars enabling Boll to explore themes of identity and what fashions identity.German culture led to aggressive militiarism-how to replace it or make it translate into something different;the past isn't easy to erase. Also, the people doing the rebuilding are all in some way linked to this past.
The story perhaps is a little allegorical for some tastes, and this dates the book as Germany and the world has moved on 50 years. Still, its an expertly crafted novel by a Nobel prize winner.

Heinrich Boll, Billiards at Half Past Nine (Signet, 1962)

Heinrich Boll was a brilliant mystery writer. Moreover, he was capable of writing mysteries unlike anything seen before, mysteries that turned the genre on its head. He was also capable of expanding the mystery genre so that it not only bordered on, but crossed over into, literary fiction. Unfortunately, at one point Boll allowed the mystery to slide into the background and started to concentrate on the literary side of things. This leads to the inevitable question for the reader: what does a mystery novel look like when the mystery is absent, or at least so far in the background as to be unnoticeable for most of the
novel?

Billiards at Half Past Nine is your answer. While there are elements of mystery within the novel, the focus is less on what's going on around the characters than the characters themselves. This is not, in itself, a bad thing; the characters upon whom the focus rests, all of whom are members of the Faehmel dynasty of architects, are interesting enough, and it would take conscious effort to make the first half of twentieth-century German history boring in any way. We are shown that period of time through the eyes of various members of the Faehmel family in a series of recollections leading up to Heinrich Faehmel's eightieth birthday party in 1958. And were that the basis of the novel, it would have been a good, solid piece of literature; ultimately forgettable, but good.

Boll felt the need to add something else to it, and it is there that the mystery comes into play. In the opening scenes, Heinrich's son Robert, the present scion of the Faehmel dynasty, tells his maid that, while he is playing Billiards at a local hotel, he is only to be disturbed by certain people. Most of them are family, or other members of his business; there is one name, though, that stands out, because no one knows who this Schrella character is, or why Robert Faehmel considers him on a plane of import with the others. This part of the book is where it is lacking; one gets the feeling that Boll felt it necessary to impart complications into a novel that doesn't require them.

While it's a worthwhile read within the context of Boll's complete works, it's not a place for a novice to begn an exploration of one of Germany's finest novelists. The Lost Honor of Katherina Blum and The Train Was on Time are much better jumping-off points. ** 1/2

Heinrich Boll describes Robert Faehmel as a man who is percieved by his peers as armour-like and unflinching. Slowly, you get to watch the man disintigrate and further on -- rebuild. At half past nine everday, mid-morning, our hero "locks" himself into a room and begins the endless tirade of billiards with the bell-boy of a local hotel. Does he describe the game at all that he has? Only the conversation. Does the character brag about his skill on the felt? Only to tell you that he does it everyday at Half-past Nine. I truly felt that I was reading the journal of someone who was coming to copes with a serious case of P.T.S.D. (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), and you can't but help but be unnerved sometimes by the descriptions, illucidating how badly Boll was running when he wrote this. It's a very un-german approach to writing and it's most likely the reason why he was given the Nobel Prize.

Some of this work makes me feel like it's the unknown life of the ficticous Kaiser Souze. Some of this work seems a little bit on the cusp of 'needs editing'. It's a dark read, but one worth pondering.