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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very German Indeed,
By
This review is from: How German is It: Wie Deutsch Ist Es: A Novel (Paperback)
Walter Abish has a reputation for writing experimental fiction and much of his work is not all that accessible but this novel will appeal to readers of both experimental fiction and readers who like a solid plot and believable characters as the book treads ground familiar enough to appeal to the reader with a taste for tradtional novels and yet the psychologies studied are quite modern and so the reader of experimental fiction will find much to admire as well. Abish is an American and this book won the most prestigious American book award(PEN/Faulkner) in the year of its release 1981 but the authors that come to mind when reading HOW GERMAN IS IT are German or Austrian. The lead character is named Ulrich and any lover of German language literature will immediately think Robert Musil when hearing that name. In a way the book is reminiscent of Musil's Man Without Qualities in that its lead character is a kind of cipher without any real identity of his own, at least not one that is readily apparent. Abish's Ulrich is an author and throughout the book Abish has different characters in his book comment on how unreliable authors are. This is kind of a modernist joke but one that gains in resonance as the book progresses. Abish writes in a way that may remind some of Kundera but without the humor, and without the hip 60's sensibility. Like Kundera however he places his characters in very specific historic contexts. For Abish however there is a kind of delayed reaction as the present of the novel is the late seventies but the historic context still defining each character relates back to the 1939-45 period. The truths and obsessions that define the German character that was so very evident in those years have never really vanished is Abish's conceit. And each character must deal with those truths in his own way and define him/herself against them. In addition there is the irony/ambiguity in the title that suggests or asks if these are just German obsessions or are these obsessions shared by all modern capitalist societies. But all is done below the surface as Abish reveals all very subtly through his characters which he flushes out only very slowly and this slow and gradual flushing out of each character is where the real appeal of the novel is. Who is really standing for what. It is not so easy to see or say who is on what side and who stands for what in the modern version of Germany. Not til the last page do you know the defining truth of the lead character. And it is a surprise which I did at no time see coming. A great psychological study of half a dozen characters told in a meticulous and deliberately paced prose which reveals this while concealing that. Virtually perfect in every way which makes this novels answer to its own question HOW GERMAN IS IT :very German indeed.
11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Extremely Relevant,
By Doug Maliszewski "D Fresh" (Jamesburg, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How German is It: Wie Deutsch Ist Es: A Novel (Paperback)
The master journalist H.L. Mencken once wrote, "If you are against labor racketeers, then you are against the working man. If you are against demagogues, then you are against democracy. If you are against Christianity, then you are against God. If you are against trying a can of Old Dr. Quack's Cancer Salve, then you are in favor of letting Uncle Julius die. This novel is 23 years old; the Second World War ended over 59 years ago, yet the plot is still relevant today. It will be a long time before Germany as a nation, and the Germans as a people will be live apart from the legacy of Nazism and the atrocities and destruction that was wrought during those few years. While the descendents of the victims will continue to usurp the role of the victim, the descendents of the perpetrators will inherit guilt for the crimes, and then there are those who are not sure how they fit into this scheme from a historical perspective. The naïve, the disgruntled, the apathetic, and the nazis-new and old-exist side by side, this is the crux of "How German is it." The setting of this story is a town that was once the site of a concentration camp. For posterity the camp has been leveled and a modern town has been built and named after Germany's most celebrated contemporary philosopher. The story surrounds a writer who is the son of a former high ranking German military officer executed for his role in the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. While not a military story, this novel weaves through the daily activities of this man and the constantly reminders of the events past due to relationships both professional and personal, and a small band of terrorists, a very interesting plot. Although written in 1980, terrorism is explored as a form of expression for the disgruntled. The author does a good job to explain how a government can tweak the circumstances and the fears surrounding terrorism to gain more power, allocate more funding, and remove personal freedoms. The characters are well developed in this very important novel for it covers events that are beginning to find there way into American society. Terrorism was a novelty in the United States in 1980 whereas it was already a common place event in the rest of the world. This novel will make you think about your lifestyle relative to the rest of the world. Very cleverly written.
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Albish lost his grasp....,
By Matko Vladanovic (Zagreb, Croatia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: How German is It: Wie Deutsch Ist Es: A Novel (Paperback)
Story begun to unravel itself quite interesting, yet somehow familiar. We see a character with unknown (to us) but troubling past who is returning to his homeplace from Paris. And slowly, but steady, that character begins to tell us a story of Germany in a post war years, and we feel lulled and intrigued. Our main character is troubled by his association with notorious terorist organisastion but struggles to lead normal life.
And that is how it begins. Suddenly we find ourselves looking to world with different eyes. Albish changed his narrator. And yet again. and again, almost the method we observed at Faulkner. Slowly we learned that Germany is troubled with the fact that concetrational camps even existed, and willingly and conciously is trying to bury that fact deep into nothingness. But then something unexpected happens (like discovering of a mass tomb) and everything becomes a blurr again. Albish putted his characters into a state of drowsiness, where they just walk by, and just "happen to be", and they are leading their small life, troubled by their own pettite troubles, with sex being just a thing that people do, and social life being just game with a complex rulebook. Yet familiarity remains. We've seen it before, and better. Ulrich is not memorable and neither Helmut is, picture of Germany is troubling, but it is not quite "German" it's rather American view and not quite deep enough. (It wouldn't really matter, but opening passages led us to believe that author is reaching for a more complex goal in this book than this) All put aside, it is a story of a lost man trying to find himself in a lost time. And there are far better out there. For example "Kaddish for a child not born."
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