Doctor Fischer of Geneva or the Bomb Party (Hardcover)

Dr Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party is late Greene. It is very short, unremittingly bleak in its outlook on humanity (or rather one sector of society), and is a savage sarcastic satire on capitalism.

Fischer is a multi-millionaire, his fortune founded on human hygiene. At regular parties he surrounds himself with acolytes, all rich, all prepared to go through humiliation for one of Fischer's gifts. Fischer is cold, cruel, manipulative. The narrator's encounters with Fischer and his parties spawn disgust on many levels - Fischer's view of others; the visceral disgust of his "porridge" party; and the disgust of the corruption of money, and the greed that goes with it.

Aside from the (allegorical?) examination of capitalism all aspects of human life are here. We see poverty, extreme wealth, love, and death. And in illustrating these aspects the relationships in the book are conveyed powerfully (be the underlying emotion affection or anger). The relationship between Fischer and his daughter, a gentle creature abhorring her father's attitude and more particularly the attitude of those acolytes of Fischer (whom she christens "toads"); and that of Fischer's late wife and her friend/lover are especially noteworthy.

The book is short, but the imagery of Fischer's parties, his humiliations, and the bleakness of his view of humanity will live long with this reviewer.

It is a minor book, but highly recommended. Still in print in the UK it is perhaps time for a US publisher to reprint this later work of one of the twentieth century's greatest novelists.

When he meets the young and beautiful daughter of the powerful Dr Fischer, his world suddenly expands - not by numbers or any increase in wealth, but by love. Anna-Luise finds in him a husband as well as a father in a happy twosome clouded only by the demonic disinterest of her father.

Nevertheless, Alfred Jones becomes a part of Dr Fischer's world and his experiment with the greed of the rich when he, contrary to his wife's wishes, partakes in Dr Fischer's infamous parties.

If you read The Bomb Party as a failed "accurate depiction of a certain class of society" as the Amazon reviewer Kevin Kane seems to have done, you miss the point. Dr Fischer's guests are only minor characters, flat characters who are functions in the plot, not the focus of our attention. At one point they are even described as Pavlovian dogs which suggests to me that Dr Fischer's experiment ("to test the greed of the rich") was meant to fail: they would be greedy by nature, but the extent to which their greed takes them has been set up by the master engineer, Dr Fischer.

The focus of the novel is the contrast or confrontation of Alfred Jones and Dr Fischer which ends in the survival of one and the downfall of the other. The operative words are "the poor man's pride", arrogance and the difference between contempt and hatred. A question seems to be whether contempt is contagious, a disease which spreads to infect your entire conception of the world as opposed to hate understood as provoked and focused.

However, Alfred Jones is never caught up by the splitting of hairs of Dr Fischer and his victim Steiner, nor by the circumlocution of the toadies. However drab, dreary and resigned Alfred Jones is, he is present in his own life.

It is true that the novel is not a comedy, but it is a comment on human nature which very indirectly celebrates a life of integrity.