If This Is A Man - Primo Levi

“Architects calmly design the gates meant to be passed through only once. Meanwhile, Burger, a German worker, Stern, a Jewish student in Amsterdam, Schmulski, a merchant in Krakow, and Annette, a schoolgirl in Bordeaux, go about their daily lives, not knowing a place is being prepared for them hundreds of miles away. One day their quarters are ready. All that’s missing is them.” – Night and Fog

Primo Levi’s If This Is A Man was released in the U.S. as Survival at Auschwitz, but If This Is A Man fits the theme of the book much better. The question, “if this is a man,…” can be asked in two ways: If the prisoner of the camps is a man, why is s/he treated in this manner? and If the officers, the Kapos, the soldiers are men, how do they find it within themselves to treat other human beings in such a manner? “The personages in these pages are not men. Their humanity is buried, or they themselves have buried it, under an offence received or inflicted on someone else. The evil and insane SS men, the Kapos, the political, the criminal, the prominent, great and small, down to the indifferent slave Häftlinge, all the grades of the mad hierarchy created by the Germans paradoxically fraternize in a uniform internal desolation.”

Levi, an Italian Jew was brought to Auschwitz III (Monowitz, the labor camp) in early 1944. By a stroke of fortune, he was sent to the Ka-Be (the infirmary) because of scarlet fever just before the forced march out of Auschwitz in January 1945 (Eli Wiesel’s Night tells the story of the march). He and a few others left behind in the sickbay forage for food, batteries, and a furnace…(“like the story of Robinson Crusoe in hell” – Phillip Roth)…enough to keep themselves and the others alive until the camp is liberated by the Russians a few days later. Over the course of the book, Levi and the other prisoners lose their humanity, and are able to gain it back. Humanity, according to Levi’s narrative, is gratitude, kindness, generosity, and unselfishness: “When the broken window was repaired and the stove began to spread its heat, something seemed to relax in everyone, and at that moment Towarowski…proposed to the others that each of them offer a slice of bread to us three who had been working. And so it was agreed. Only a day before a similar event would have been inconceivable. The law of the Lager said: ‘eat your own bread, and if you can, that of your neighbor,’ and left no room for gratitude. It really meant that the Lager was dead. It was the first human gesture that occurred among us. I believe that that moment can be dated as the beginning of the change by which we who had not died slowly changed from Häftlinge to men again.”

Levi also describes what he terms the “Drowned” and the “Saved.” The saved “develop ways of surviving” in the camp, mostly through connections and official and unofficial positions within the hierarchy of prisoners. The Drowned, also called musselman are the weak, those who are unable to adapt and survive. “One knows that they are only here on a visit, that in a few weeks, nothing will remain of them but a handful of ashes in some near-by field and crossed out number on a register…they suffer and drag themselves along in an opaque intimate solitude, and in solitude they die and disappear, without leaving a trace in anyone’s memory.” The stories that have come out of the Holocaust are the stories of the saved. The drowned will forever remain in that unnamed solitude. Levi sums up life in the camps in the following, stark way: “here the struggle to survive is without respite, because everyone is desperately and ferociously alone.”

Levi stated in an interview with Phillip Roth that his model for the style of If This Is A Man was the “weekly report” used in industry. This comes across clear, as his prose is distant, simple, and objective. I did not find Levi’s narrative as moving as Wiesel’s Night, though I read that in ninth grade so my remembrance of it might be skewed by my age at the time of my reading as well as the passage of time since then. But Levi’s prose style is effective, and gives the reader a contrast, in that what is described is horrific, but it is told in the manner of an everyday, “everything as usual” manner.

“Even a peaceful landscape…even a meadow in harvest, Even a peaceful landscape...even a meadow in harvest, with crows circling overhead and grass fires...even a road where cars and peasants and couples pass...even a resort village with a steeple and country fair can lead to a concentration camp.” – Night and Fog

The French film Night and Fog (see my previous post) is also about Auschwitz, and I timed my Netflix delivery of the documentary to coincide with my finishing If This Is A Man. It is an extremely moving piece of film, in which there is no dialog, just images of Auschwitz in color, with birds and grass, and black and white footage of the camps, probably of both Allied and German origin. It’s not a film about Hitler (in fact, there is only one shot of him); it’s not a film about Nazis. It is just images with a voice-over. But the images: train tracks leading to the camp, now covered with grass. Decapitated bodies. People with stars of David on their jackets, waiting with their luggage beside the train. A bulldozer pushing bodies into a pit. The fingernail scrapings on the inside of the gas chambers. It is all horrendous. The film brought horrible reality to Levi’s slightly distant prose. The images of the prisoners’ shoes was especially poignant after reading Levi’s account of the problems they caused. Two lessons are taken away from the film: Who is responsible? and will we let this type of tragedy happen again by our complacency…by our belief that this horror happened at time and place that is now passed? This is a film everyone should see.

“Today, I think that if for no other reason than that an Auschwitz existed, no one in our age should speak of Providence.” – Primo Levi

Night and Fog

"Who among us keeps watch from this strange watchtower to warn of the arrival of our new executioners? Are their faces really different from our own? We pretend to take up hope again asthe image recedes into the past, as if we were cured once and for all of the scourge of the camps. We pretend it all happened only once, at a given time and place. We turn a blind eye to what surrounds us and a deaf ear to humanity's never-ending cry."

Rabbit, Run by John Updike

Have you ever seen those commercials for Adovart, the enlarged prostate medicine, in which the person in the commercial has a "going problem"? Well, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom seems to have a similar problem. Rabbit, a 26-year-old former h.s. basketball star one day decides to leave his pregnant wife. So, he just leaves. He ends up living with part-time prostitute Ruth. After essentially forcing her to have oral sex with him as punishment for her "treatment" of him at dinner ("I need to see you on your knees"), he gets a call that his wife (Janice) is in labor. So, he leaves Ruth and goes back to Janice. They are in marital bliss until one night, shortly after the birth, Rabbit wants to have sex with Janice. She's not really feeling it - after all, she just had a baby - so Rabbit tries to force her to have anal sex with him. When that doesn't go his way, he leaves again. While he's gone, Janice (who's an alcoholic of sorts...) gets drunk and accidently drowns the baby while giving it a bath. Back comes Rabbit. He sticks around until the funeral, where he kindly tells his wife, "Don't look at me like that...it wasn't me who killed the baby." Obviously, people aren't really happy about that, so Rabbit turns around and does what he does best, which is run. He ends up back at Ruth's house. There he learns that she's pregnant, and has been thinking about getting an abortion. He tells her it's great that she's pregnant...he's left his wife for good and now they can be a family together. She gives him an ultimatum: get a divorce from Janice, or I'll have an abortion. Rabbit leaves to get sandwiches. But he isn't really going to get sandwiches. Guess what's he's really doing?

Rabbit is essentially an asshole. I don't know that I've ever come across such an irresponsible character before. Or one that I have disliked so much. Granted, the women in his life are always willing to take him back, no questions asked. They are also all pretty two-dimensional. There is Janice, his horribly stupid, drunk, childish wife; Ruth the not-quite-hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold (but close enough); the Mother-in-Law with the evil eye, etc. I read a couple other reviews on the web, many of which praise Rabbit as an individualist and someone who looks out for his own interests. Sure, that's true: he's an individualist, and he'll be damned if he lets anyone come in between him and his sense of freedom, or whatever it is that keeps him running away from everything. One essay I found even argued Rabbit's philosophy is akin to Thoreau's:

Updike’s intention for writing the novel is the same as the philosophy Thoreau presents: live life to find what is right, even if it means going against the norms of society.

I suppose some people see their liberation in Rabbit: running away to solve one's problems. But there is a big difference between finding and doing what is right even when it conflicts with societal norms and just being an irresponsible asshole. And Rabbit is all of the latter, and none of the former.

Updike said in an interview that Rabbit, Run was his reaction to Kerouac's On the Road:

"Jack Kerouac’s On the Road came out in 1957 and, without reading it, I resented its apparent instruction to cut loose; Rabbit, Run was meant to be a realistic demonstration of what happens when a young American family man goes on the road – the people left behind get hurt."

I take great issue with this. On the Road is not an instruction to cut loose, though many (wrongfully) assume it is so. Sal Paradise is on essentially a hero's quest: to be transformed by America into a man, and also, pragmatically, to get material for a book. Sal (like Kerouac) wasn't the "American family man." His first marriage (childless) had been annulled and he lived with his mother. Hardly leaving behind the wife and kids. Kerouac, a deeply religious (Catholic), Republican mama's-boy (I say that out of love, Jack) never eschewed most of the social conventions of the time (other than a little sex and a little drugs), such as his strong belief in order, piety, and "white picket fences and the honey at home", as he so often reiterated. But of course nobody listened...they kept confusing Kerouac with Dean Moriarty, the Neal Cassady doppleganger of On the Road. Now there is a person who could be seen as the inspiration for Rabbit's action. Here was a "family man" (the term only loosely applies to Cassady - he was married and had children but was hardly what you would imagine as a typicaly family man). He married one girl (literally - I think she was 16), they got divorced, and he married again (while continuing to sleep with his first wife), then they divorced after a few kids, and he married again, had another kid, then went back to his second wife. Moriarty, had he been from a Pennsylvania, middle-class, stable family, might have been Rabbit. Rabbit, had he been a slightly schizophrenic son of a hobo alcoholic, who spent his entire childhood drifting across the country, might have been Moriarty. I would therefore classify Rabbit, Run as less of a reaction to On the Road as really showing what would happen if an actual family man took up the Moriarty torch. One also must keep in mind that at the end of On the Road, Paradise leaves Moriarty behind in favor of the traditional life. But then again, Updike states clearly that he didn't read On the Road. I wonder if he had, if he would have written Rabbit, Run in the same context.

I HATE Rabbit, like I hated the jocks in high school who got everything they wanted because they were superstars. But now they'd be 26, like Rabbit, and I wonder if any of them have similar "going" problems (and not the kind caused by prostates, though...). I truely, deeply hate Rabbit Angstrom. But to Updike's credit, I want to find out what happens to Rabbit in the subsequent Rabbit books. Hopefully, he gets his comeuppance.

Dance to the Music of Time - The Movie Part 1

I'm gearing up for A Dance to the Music of Time, Second Movement, so I rented the first part of the movie version. This was a very good idea. One of the problems that I'm having with the novel is its length, which makes it difficult for me to link things that are said in one volume or chapter with a scene in the next volume or chapter. Those details aren't being linked. The movie made me realize this very clearly. For example: Widmerpool tells Jenkins that he was "very indiscreet" with Gypsy Jones and as a result, he had to pay for her to have an abortion. However, prior to this, Gypsy meets Widmerpool and Jenkins when she and Deacon attend a party with them. At the party, Deacon approaches Nick to ask if he knows a doctor for Gypsy... and he doesn't, "mean the usual general practitioner with the restricted views of his profession." Clearly, Gypsy was in the family way before she met Widmerpool, so her comment later to Nick that "somebody had to pay" makes a lot more sense. When I read about Widmerpool paying for her abortion, I assumed that he had gotten her pregnant, but obviously that wasn't the case: he was just the schmuck that paid.

Also, the quips about Mona: When we find out that she has married Templer (when Nick runs into him while waiting for Members), Mona is at the movies watching a movie that Templer thinks is about lesbians. When Nick tells him that it's not about lesbians, he says that Mona will be disappointed. When Mona was introduced as someone that Nick had already met, I didn't exactly remember. However, the movie made that scene clear. Mona is a friend of Gypsy and she is described by Members: "She really hates men." Will this be developed further in subsequent novels?

The movie makes clear how much Widmerpool is the brunt of everyone's jokes...as well as how he always shows up at the right moment. Sometimes it seems as if he is stalking Nick. There he is on the bus after the car accident with Duport; at the ball where he is described as "ploughing his way round the room, as if rowing a dinghy in rough water" (portrayed hilariously in the film); to pick up Stringham when he is drunk after the reunion.

Seeing the movie was like watching a movie about the lives of your friends, showing stories that you have heard them tell of, but that you weren't present for. The scene of Widmerpool dancing made me laugh out loud...it was so characteristically Widmerpool.

Wings of the Dove

I finally finished the evil Wings of the Dove this morning. In fact, I got up early just to read the last ten pages before work, so I wouldn’t have to drag the book around another day. It went immediately onto the Abandoned Books pile…along with three other Henry James books that I had acquired before realizing that I dislike him more than any other author.

The Wings of the Dove is the story of Kate Croy and Merton Densher. Kate and Merton want to get married, but Merton is penniless, and Kate’s family want to see her marry someone with a little money. Along comes American Milly Theale, who met Merton when he visited New York on a business trip. Milly is rich…and she is dying. Kate also discovers that Milly has a thing for Merton. So, Kate hatches an idea: Merton is to pretend that he’s interested in Milly so that she will hopefully leave him at least part of her fortune when she croaks. Then, Merton will be rich and he can marry Kate.

This plan both does and does not work out the way that Kate anticipated. Milly finds out that Kate and Merton are engaged, and Merton refuses to deny it outright because he feels that to do so would be to betray Kate. This causes Milly to give up on life and accept death. Around the time of her death, Merton receives a letter from Milly. He wants Kate to open it. They are sure that it will state that Milly has left Merton some an inheritance despite their deception. Kate flings the letter into the fire. A few months later, Merton receives an envelope full of money from America, which he forwards to Kate. It's a test of sorts, and the fact that she opened it disappoints Merton. He wants to be free of the deception, as he was never really comfortable with it and only participated to please Kate. He gives Kate an ultimatum: marry him without the money, or take the money and be free of him. In other words: Merton wants Kate to marry him because of who he is, not because he has money - to go back to the way it was before Milly. But Kate asserts that it will never be that way again.

I will admit that this novel wasn't as bad as The Ambassadors. But as I said in a previous post, that's not really saying much. For the most part, I was able to discern the plot of Wings of the Dove, which is more than I can say for The Ambassadors. I have come to the conclusion that reading Henry James is like watching a movie through a very thick fog. I cannot really articulate it any better than that. It's like watching a movie through some mist which clouds everything, so that you can see movement, and you can hear dialog, but somehow it just isn't clear.

This book draws parallels with other pieces of literature, the most striking being Vanity Fair and Sister Carrie. The ending of WotD was very Sister Carrie-esque: the characters spend an entire novel trying to get to a certain goal only to find that reaching the goal wasn't what they thought it would be...the grass isn't always greener. Kate Croy reminded me very much of Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair. But while Becky Sharp is a character that is clear and pointed, Kate Croy is nebulous. I had written in response to Sister Carrie that one could tell the difference between a good novel with despicable characters and a mediocre one based on one's response to the character, and WotD definately fits into the mediocre category.

Henry James apparently went through three phases of writing, which are lovingly (I'm sure) called James the First, James the Second, and the Old Pretender. James the First culminated with The Portrait of a Lady (1881), meaning that The Americans, The Europeans, Daisy Miller and Washington Square are part of his apprentice years characterized as simple and direct (obviously the antithesis of his later period). James the Second runs until approximately 1897 during which he focused on short stories and plays. The Turn of the Screw fits into this period, as does What Maisie Knew and The Bostonians. The rest of literary career is as the Old Pretender, which is of course the period that includes the three novels on the Modern Library list: The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl. This period is characterized by "frequent double negatives and complex descriptive imagery. Single paragraphs...run for page after page, in which an initial noun [is] succeeded by pronouns surrounded by clouds of adjectives and prepositional clauses, far from their original referents, and verbs [are] deferred and then preceded by a series of adverbs. The overall effect could be a vivid evocation of a scene as perceived by a sensitive observer." Note that the overall effect "could be" a vivid evocation... it could be, I suppose - but it isn't. Or maybe I'm just not a sensitive observer. If one must be a sensitive observer to enjoy, or at least understand, James's Old Pretender phase, I proudly proclaim that I am not a sensistive observer.

This phasing of James's writing career could explain why I, at one point in time, enjoyed The Turn of the Screw. Yes, I admitted it - I did at one point in time enjoy that particular story. Perhaps all is not lost for Daisy Miller, Washington Square, or The Portrait of a Lady. Or maybe I should give up.

The Telegraph quotes H.G. Wells on Henry James: "His vast paragraphs sweat and struggle; they could not sweat and elbow and struggle more if God himself was the processional meaning to which they sought to come. And all for tales of nothingness It is leviathan retrieving pebbles. It is a magnificent but painful hippopotamus resolved at any cost, even at the cost of its dignity, upon picking up a pea which has got into a corner of its den. Most things, it insists, are beyond it, but it can, at any rate, modestly, and with an artistic singleness of mind, pick up that pea." The article also says that Thomas Hardy once referred to James as Polonius of English Prose. "...surely the Polonius jibe was a very palpable hit? "More matter and less art" is exactly what any honest reader must sometimes wish to scream at the Old Pretender." EXACTLY!

The Telegraph also describes The Golden Bowl as a "dense" novel. Great...something to look forward to! Two down, one to go.

One last note: I had problems finding websites about WotD (the novel at least...there is a plethora of them about the movie, which seems to have taken some liberties with the novel). The only one I could find is here.

In summary, WotD wasn’t as painful as The Ambassadors, and that’s about its only redeeming quality. I got a call yesterday from the library that my interlibrary loan is in – Primo Levi’s If This Is A Man. It must be the universe’s reward for finishing WotD.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Farmers. Grimaldi, Pixley... Gessner!

Seeds drifting through space for years...took root in a farmer's field. From the seeds came pods...which had the power to reproduce themselves...in the exact likenessof any form of life. So that's how it began...out of the sky.

Out of Their Minds - Clifford Simak

This short science fiction novel is very strange. The basic plot is that there is a parallel universe (though that isn't the term used in the book) which is comprised of all the fantasy characters that man has created over the centuries. This other world started out with characters who could build a culture - the devil, fairies, witches, enchanted castles, etc. However, now we are creating spineless characters - Mickey Mouse, Charlie Brown, etc...and the Devil isn't very happy about it. So, he starts to mess with our world in an attempt to make a deal to keep these silly creatures out of it.

It wasn't great writing, it wasn't great fantasy, but the concept of an alterative world in which Don Quixote could spar with Daffy Duck as the Scarlet Pumpernickel is a fun one (though that doesn't actually happen in the novel). Kind of like Who Framed Roger Rabbit ...but that was much better than Out of their Minds.

My only question is: why hasn't Terry Gilliam made a movie out of this? Just to see the odd bird-creature called The Referee come to life would be worth the entire project.