Customer Reviews

Boys & Murderers

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Avoid this anthology of short stories if you are new to Hermann Ungar. The works herein are not his best and I would only recommend them to Ungar completists and those interested in expressionism. The Maimed and The Class (Dedalus European Classics) remain Ungar's masterworks and evidence that his strengths as a writer are better displayed in his novels.

The contents of this anthology are a little confusing and Amazon's product details lack any information about what this book contains. "Boys & Murderers" is actually the collective title for two novellas: "A Man and a Maid" and "Story of a Murder." These are the finer specimens in this anthology, dark and expressionist. "A Man and a Maid" tells the first person account of a man's lifelong obsession with dominating a maid who ignores his every action. This is a powerful short story about a desperate and impotent protagonist who cannot physically, mentally, or emotionally break this maid and in the end is broken himself.

"Story of a Murder" is of similar expressionist angst: a first person narrative about a sadistic and alienated individual and how he becomes a murderer. This is a sordid tale of cruelty, abuse, and humiliation. There are many grotesque, grimy, and shocking moments, all appropriately expressionist. The most disturbing element of the story is the cold and explicitly detailed descriptions of torturing animals. Here are some examples: "I proceeded by clamping the [cat] into a vice-like instrument I had made and stretching it until it died of its torments" and "I did not know what to do but crush the cat's head with the heel of my boot." Cat lovers beware!

"Colbert's Journey" is the next major collection of nine unrelated short stories. Thomas Mann calls this collection a "minor masterpiece", but I found most of them dull or so-so. Like Kafka's short fiction, most are ambiguous and so simple that it's easy to overlook a deeper message. The short story "Colbert's Journey" from which the collective title stems from is bizarre. The plot centers on the hopes and aspirations of an aristocrat who wants to visit France with his servant, Modlizki, the strange and enigmatic servant from Ungar's "The Class". Ungar isn't just giving Modlizki a cameo appearance, but allows for some startling character development by exploring the servant's sexual perversities and bottled-up malice. Other tales include "The Wine Traveler", about a murderer who escapes justice, and "Reasons for Everything", a suspenseful mood piece about a vision that comes true. The rest of the stories are ho-hum.

The "Uncollected Stories" are a compilation of six very short vignettes, some only two pages long. Again, there's not much of interest here. The only outstanding exceptions are "Sanatorium" and "Little Lies". The former is a poignant and bleak account of life in a sanatorium: "For us... there's no more spring, no summer. No seasons at all. No love, no friendship. We just lie calmly and wait. Wait for death." This little story is, I think, the greatest of the entire anthology - in less than two pages, Ungar reaches a level of profundity and despair not revealed in anything else he wrote. "Little Lies" is a dialogue between a married couple, which reads like an interrogation by the husband. What's so fascinating is how calm and innocent the husband's questions are, and yet they unearth the subtle truth that the wife is having an affair as she desperately fabricates layers upon layers of lies.

Bottom line: There are some gems here, but also many duds. For those who haven't yet read any Ungar, I would advise skipping this anthology in favor of his masterpieces, The Maimed and The Class (Dedalus European Classics). But the two novellas under the collective title "Boys & Murderers" are decent reads, even if they do not match up to the aforementioned novels. Of the uncollected stories, "Sanatorium" and "Little Lies" are very memorable and enjoyable. In the end, I would only recommend this book for fans of Ungar and expressionist literature.