Customer Reviews

Ergo

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

 

 

This book is a reprint of the late Ralph Manheim's translation of Jakov Lind's 1966 novel Ergo. Manheim translated numerous works from both French and German into English, including several of the most important novels of Celine, Hesse and Grass. It is a joy to read any of his translations, and this novel is no exception.

I am generally familiar with the reputation of Jakov Lind, but must admit this is the first of his books I have read. His is both a singular voice and yet typical of a generation of Germans that experienced World War II as children, coming of age in the difficult post-war years. Discovering an authentic voice was not easy, and the solution taken by many of his generation was to be oblique, sardonic, anything that did not employ a simple, straight forward narrative.

On the surface this is a story of Wurz who has not left his home in 17 years, and his friend Wacholder who has tried various schemes, including dozens of letters, to get his friend to leave his house. Nothing he does works. This supposedly simple tale is told with raucous, highly inventive language and a cast of supporting characters. There are pseudo-religious tracts, agitprop, slapstick humor and more. And at the core of the book is the sinister Leo, Wacholder's freeloader tenant. Leo sizes up Wacholder, ridiculing him as not a real Nazi, simply a fellow-traveler. Instead of denying this, Wacholder whines "I wanted what happened to happen, Isn't that enough?"

Since writing letters failed to extract Wurz, Wacholder decides to hire a municipal water department worker to put nerve gas through the pipes into Wurz's house to kill him. Then, surely, Wurz can be removed from his home? This plan too fails, but Leo convinces Wacholder that he can solve the Wurz problem. "I'm not interested in stylistic experiments, my line is philosophical nonsense." And that nonsense is the placental theory of existence in 16 points. But while this is all farcical, the underlying concept has an eerie similarity to the methods used by all authoritarian governments to exert control. "We take away his being by maintaining that he doesn't exist."

While Wacholder operates solely from his waist down, has leprosy and an engorged dick, at core he is merely pathetic and harmless. In the past he, like his role models the Nazis, raped and murdered, now he is almost to be pitied. In his place it is the finicky, organized intellects that have devised a bloodless yet equally chilling solution to perceived societal problems. When that government harassed Wacholder, what is his solution? To go stay with Wurz. The book ends with Leo instructing Wacholder to dig a grave and bury himself.

There is always a Leo or two around even when you get rid of the Wacholders. Beware!

This may be a good book or even a great one for someone who is looking for an intellectual challenge. I was quite interested in the premise of the book --- Wacholder is living in Customs House 8 and facing his greatest challenge, getting his nemesis Wurz to leave his house, something he hasn't done for the last 17 years. He keeps upping the ante with the letters he sends to Wurz, numbering 74 by the time Wurz is set to celebrate his 17th anniversary in confinement.

The struggle I had with this book is that is the type of novel that you read for a literary class in college. You have the time to debate and discuss the deep and "existential" meaning that Lind created in this work. However, this was a far more complex and difficult novel than I was looking for and had the patience to endure. Since joining Open Letter Books (where I got this book from), an oranization dedicated to translating important foreign works into English, I've enjoyed all the novels I read. However, this was their first translated novel that I just couldn't connect with or enjoy. Several times I came close to giving up on it, but since it is so short, I stuck with it. While I enjoy intellectually challenging and thought provoking novels, this one veered too far beyond that zone. Read this one at your own risk.

I'm not dumb. Seriously. I like books that make you think.

But I don't even know where to begin with this one. "Ergo," first published in 1966, is my second Jakov Lind book after "Landscape in Concrete," which wasn't the greatest book I ever read although I liked it well enough. Had a very "Catch-22" feel to it. But "Ergo". . .

To put it simply: this guy Wacholder is obsessed with this other guy Würz who hasn't left his house in seventeen years. He has obvious symptoms of what we would recognize today as severe OCD (he's obsessed with germs, cleanliness, and order). Convinced that Würz is a menace to society, Wacholder has been trying to "smoke him out" through a series of annoying, threatening, or otherwise obnoxious letters, some 74 in total over the years. Wacholder, meanwhile, lives in a pile of paper in the dilapidated Custom House No. 8 with his son Aslan and a bedridden philosopher named Leo. He then gets a bunch of government workers together for dinner and an orgy, following which he will hold a rally to collectively declare Würz's non-being, pursuant to Leo's placental theory of existence.

Now, um, I guess there is some obvious comedic source material here. But my reaction from practically page one is that this novel is not dissimilar to one of Wacholder's own letters. I am not sure if "Ergo" is meant to be quite this ironic or not, mostly because I'm not even sure if Wacholder's letters are really supposed to be nonsense or not. Part of what Lind is trying to get at is that people are insane and that civilization is insane. (I can't figure out what the other part is.) So is this book *supposed* to be completely confusing? Is this, like, some kind of reflection of Lind's argument as to the innate incongruity of various aspects of German-Austrian small-town life in the 1960s? Am I on the right track here?

Plus, there are some pretty crude moments in the narrative that give the whole thing a really icky feel that I just could not shake off the entire time I was reading it.

Soooo. . . I hate to be really lame but is there anyone who can explain this to me?

* Review copy *