Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson (1947, translated by Damion Searles, 2009)

"Literature is the memory of humanity" - Hans Keilson 

German Literature Month November 2014 Year IV

Works I have so far read for German Literature Month 2014

1.   Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

2.   Gertrude by Hermann Hesse 

3.  "Diary of a School Boy" by Robert Walser (no post)

4.  Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse

5.  Burning Secret by Stefan Zweig

6.  Life Goes On by Hans Keilson

7.  Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson 

The schedule and guidelines for participation are on the event webpage.  Just reading the  posts of all the other participants is tremendously informative. 

I am very happy to be once again participating in German Literature Month, hosted by Caroline of Beauty is a Sleeping Cat and Lizzy of Lizzy's Literary Life.   Events like this are one of the great things about being part of the international book blog community.  I know there is a lot of work that goes into a month long event and I offer my thanks to Lizzy and Caroline.

Hans Keilson (there is a little background information on him in my prior posts) wrote three novels, Death of the Adversary set in Nazi Germany, Life Goes On takes place  between the wars years in Germany and helps us understand why ordinary people turned to the Nazis, and Comedy in a Low Key about a married couple in the Netherlands hiding in their house a Jewish man from the Germans.

If it were not for Lizzy and Caroline hosting German Literature Month in 2013 I probably would never have read Hans Keilson.  I will always be thankful to them for this.  

Comedy in a Low Key is the shortest of his books at under 150 pages.  It moves back and forth in time without explanation but it is not hard to follow.  it tells the story of a Dutch married couple, around 1942 or so, when the country is occupied by Germans.  The Germans are looking for Dutch Jews and many people hid them in their homes, some for humanity and some for money.  There was a kind of "underground" railroad network of connections but it was a very dangerous think to do.  Keilson with his characteristic understated brilliance, lets us see exactly how this impacts the lives of the couple and the man they house.   The story takes a fascinating twist and I will not spoil the plot other than to tell you that you can read it to the end without fearing for the couple.  

I could rave on for a while about the many wonderful things about this novel but it might seem like hyperbole.  Keilson, a German Jew, spent the war years in the Netherlands and you can feel his very justified admiration for the Dutch.  The portrayal of the marriage and the hidden man are small masterworks.  

There is a fascinating interview with good bio data in The Guardian, done during the year Keilson turned 100.  

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/nov/21/hans-keilson-novelist-holocaust

His three novels all together are under 700 pages.  I am so glad I found out about his work.  I wish there were thirty more of his novels still to be read. 

Hans Keilson's books and his inspiring life are a tribute to the ability of the human spirit to triumph over evil.

Mel u

Life Goes On by Hans Keilson (1933, translated into English by Damion Searls in 2012)

"For busy, harried or distractible readers who have the time and energy only to skim the opening paragraph of a review, I’ll say this as quickly and clearly as possible: “The Death of the Adversary” and “Comedy in a Minor Key” are masterpieces, and Hans Keilson is a genius."  Francine Prose in The New York Times Book Review

To this we must add Han Keilson's first novel, wriiten in 1934, Life Goes On, which was not translated when Francine Prose wrote about Keilson.

"Prussia, the ruler of Germany was always an enemy of the intellect, of Jews, Christianity and the humanism of Europe.  Hitler's Third Reich is alarming because it sets itself to put into action what was always a Prussian project, to burn the books, to murder the Jews and revise Christianity".   From "The Auto-da-Fe of the Mind" by Joseph Roth, 1933 - written in French while Roth lived in Paris

German Literature Month November 2014 Year IV

Works I have so far read for German Literature Month 2014

1.   Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

2.   Gertrude by Hermann Hesse 

3.  "Diary of a School Boy" by Robert Walser (no post)

4.  Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse

5.  Burning Secret by Stefan Zweig

6.  Life Goes On by Hans Keilson

The schedule and guidelines for participation are on the event webpage.  Just reading the  posts of all the other participants is tremendously informative. 

I am very happy to be once again participating in German Literature Month, hosted by is Caroline of Beauty is a Sleeping Cat and Lizzy of Lizzy's Literary Life.   Events like this are one of the great things about being part of the international book blog community.  I know there is a lot of work that goes into a month long event and I offer my thanks to Lizzy and Caroline

During German Literature Month in November 2013 I read and posted on The Death of an Adversary  by Hans Keilson (1909 to 2011 -yes, 101 years).  It was the read along book for the month.  Not everyone liked it, some expressed the opinion that the narrator, a Jewish boy in the early days of Nazi Germany was a coward for always caling Hitler "The Adversary", never mentioning him or Nazism by name.  Based on the life experience of family members who lived under the rule of a relatively benign dictator Ferdinand Marcos I thought this totally wrong.  Marcos was not a mass muderer, not an ideologue, he was more into building personal wealth, but those who criticized him often disappeared.  My wife lived under all the Marcos years, from young girl to college freshman.  She and her siblings were trained never to speak of Marcos to anyone.  This background helps me relate to the novels of Keilson.    

Life Goes On centers on a long time married couple and their children.  The novel, set in Germany, starts about 1919 and ends around 1933.  There are not dates given in the novel but it is not hard to set in place based on events in the novel.  The focus is on the slowing crushing and ultimately devasting impact of post WW One inflation and the collapse of the German economy on the family and those in their circles.  

The father served four years in the war and returned uninjured. He was awarded an Iron Cross for valor but he never wore it.  His wife kept it in a drawer.   He worked as a peddler for a few years until he saved up enough to start a general store in the small town in which he grew up.  He married a decent hard working woman and they had three children.  They lived above the shop.  When times were tough they just said "well we lost the war" what can you expect.  The same customers have been coming in for years just as they have been buying the merchandise they sell from the same suppliers for a long time.  They are constantly struggling to survive as their customers can buy less on less.  Increaingly they have to sell on credit or they will lose trade to bigger merchants.  Likewise they buy what they sell largely on credit.  There is a lot to be learned about German society and the economy in this wonderful book. Their daughter lives and works in Berlin and when we first meet him their son Fritz is getting ready for college.  We see his existential struggles to find value in studying in a society with few jobs.  Slowly, kept masterfully in the background, we see social unrest developing, organized mobs, police goon squads and even and old friend of the father becomes a full time politcal agitator.  From his rhetoric he might be a Commuist but could just as well have been a Nazi.   The couple  wants no part of politics and urges their son to stay apolitical.

Soon the couple has trouble paying their own bills and they have to borrow from Peter to pay Paul.  This is humiliating for the couple who always prided themselves on their reputation.  The downward spiral of the couple's finances was very painful to witness.  You can feel the impact of all this on their marriage.  

Time goes on and soon almost no one can buy anything and customers cannot pay for what they have bought on credit.  In a completely chilling heart breaking series of scenes we see the wife going to the homes of their customers to try to collect a bit of money.  Once affluent people where their coats until they turn to rags.  Everyday things get worse.  Keilson in his genius makes us feel the oppression in our bones.  Things keep greeting worse and worse until the incredible close, which was really inevitable, but I am pretty sure no one, I certainly did not, will see it coming.  

There are numerous brilliant minor characters and perfect small scenes.   It is also an excellant portrait of a marriage surviving and changing through terrible times.  There is much I have left out.  I strongly urge the reading of Keilson's three novels, only about 650 pages. 

At the close of the novel there is a fascinsting afterword by the author added decades later, in which he explains how his publisher told him he needed to change the ending of the novel to avoid offending the Nazjs by appearing to suggest the father had turned to the Communist Party.  In a terrible to read sentence he closes the afterward by telling us both of his parents died in Auschwitz.  His father, the novel draws on autobiographical elements, earned an Iron Cross during WW One and thought it would save them. 

Keilson was 23 when the novel was published.  The Nazis burned it and many of the book's first readers.  

The life of Hans Keilson is very inspirational.  The New York Times published a very informative obituary.  

I have begun his Comedy in a Minor Key, set in the Netherlands when it was occupied by the Nazis.

Mel u

The Death of the Adversary by Han Keilson 1959

I am happy to be once again participating in German Literature Month.

.  In the link below you will find lots of great reading ideas.  Caroline and Lizzy's only real rule is the work must be originally written in German.

German Literature Month November 2013

So far I have read and posted on these works, all but Kafka are new to me writers. 

The Tin Drum-by Gunther Grass

"The Judgement" by Franz Kafka

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque -very powerful war novel 

"A Letter from an Unknown Woman" by Stefan Zweig. 

I hope to read, among others

The Death of Virgil by Herman Broch

Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald.

Chess Game by Stefan  Zweig

German Literature Month November 2013

Caroline will be leading a discussion on her blog on November 29 on The Death of The Adversary.  I am looking forward to learning from it and will keep just to brief remarks here.  This is a brilliant novel by another new to me writer, I confess I had not heard of him until a few days ago.  

I knew from the notes in Amazon that it was set in Germany during the period of its take over by the Nazis.   The story begins with the first person narrator talking about B, about how he hates him, about the strangely hypnotic power of his radio addresses, his masterful ability to bring out the worst in people. The narrator reflects on his relationship to his adversary.   We are given to see he is Jewish and gradually at first he is excluded from things, the only job he can get is packing purchases at a department store.  He senses the growing fear of his parents.  In one heart breaking segment the father packs a ruck sack in case he will be taken away.  There is a long amazing view of the "banality of evil" depicting the horrible trashing at night of a Jewish cemetery by a few Nazi youths.  They tell the story to the narrator who is trying to hide his background and blend in.  It is an amazing set piece.

Hans Keilson is the author of Comedy in a Minor Key and The Death of the Adversary. Born in Germany in 1909, he published his first novel in 1933. During World War II he joined the Dutch resistance. Later, as a psychotherapist, he pioneered the treatment of war trauma in children. In a 2010 New York Times review, Francine Prose called Keilson a “genius” and “one of the world’s very greatest writers.” He died in 2011 at the age of 101.

Death of an Adversary is an over powering work.  I will seek out more of his work.