[DianaDrk]

His book, Les Bienveillantes, which I am currently rereading (first time was library book, I hurried through it, at approx 150 pp per hour, can barely remember anything) has had a testy reception in Germany

Many critics all but spit on it. It did not do justice to the Holocaust, it used too many of the old cliches etc etc


Well, well. what about you?

[OvDojQXN]

It doesn't appear to be out in the UK until next year, under the title The Kindly Ones. But I remember hearing about it when it won one of the major French prizes, notably because the author is an American (with dual nationality) writing in French, much like Julien Green was.

[ehib8yPc]

Articles (in English) about this book:

Les Bienveillantes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Les Bienveillantes, Jonathan Littell

An American novelist scandalizes France | Salon Books

Les Bienveillantes ('The Kindly Ones') - Jonathan Littell: an overview of the reviews and critical reactions

[OvDojQXN]

The Complete Review dismisses The Kindly Ones as "a mess", with a 3,500 word review.

[AM1VV9r6]

It was given to me as a present but i do not look forward to reading it.The subject and the size are somehow less than appealing.Still prix goncourt and prix de l'academie Francaise is rarely given to trend or insignicance.The critic can spit but the bird still be flying.(WTF am i saying?)

[ehib8yPc]

I am glad that not all critics are mesmerised by youngish authors, ones who have gleaned all their Holocaust material from books written by others. These opportunists have not, in their hubris, managed to overshadow the people, some of whom are still alive, who were actually inmates of these horrible camps, or otherwise victims of Nazism, through their families or friends.

So I think we should turn our backs on the young careerists writing their 800-page tomes, and read novels, stories, diary accounts or memoirs by Primo Levi, Aharon Appelfeld, Tadeusz Borowski, J?rgen Kieler, Edgar Weinberg, Elie Wiesel, Johan Borgen, Simon Vestdijk, Paul Celan, Anne Frank, Imre Kert?sz, Etty Hillesum, Abraham Sutzkever, Ir?ne N?mirovsky, and hundreds of others, Jews, goyim, gypsies, Poles, Germans, Balts, Romanians, Dutch people, Danes, Norwegians, whatever.

I do not know what is wrong with our generation that we can't be bothered with the fiction or non-fiction written by people who were actually there in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Klooga, Salaspils, Grini, Solibor, Porta Westphalica, Stutthof, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Westerbork, etc., etc., or fought in the Resistance against the Nazis, but keep on getting mesmerised by yet another fiction-wielding charlatan who is using, exploiting, the Holocaust to write bestsellers and make a literary career for himself out of the horrible sufferings and deaths of others.

Everyone is up in arms because one Catholic bishop has denied the Holocaust, a few years after a nutty historian did so, yet people seem to prefer the Hollywood-tinged semi-fictional accounts by people who never experienced the horrors at first hand to the real thing.

[DianaDrk]

I am glad that not all critics are mesmerised by youngish authors, ones who have gleaned all their Holocaust material from books written by others. These opportunists have not, in their hubris, managed to overshadow the people, some of whom are still alive, who were actually inmates of these horrible camps, or otherwise victims of Nazism, through their families or friends.

So I think we should turn our backs on the young careerists writing their 800-page tomes, and read novels, stories, diary accounts or memoirs by Primo Levi, Aharon Appelfeld, Tadeusz Borowski, J?rgen Kieler, Edgar Weinberg, Elie Wiesel, Johan Borgen, Simon Vestdijk, Paul Celan, Anne Frank, Imre Kert?sz, Etty Hillesum, Abraham Sutzkever, Ir?ne N?mirovsky, and hundreds of others, Jews, goyim, gypsies, Poles, Germans, Balts, Romanians, Dutch people, Danes, Norwegians, whatever.

I do not know what is wrong with our generation that we can't be bothered with the fiction or non-fiction written by people who were actually there in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Klooga, Salaspils, Grini, Solibor, Porta Westphalica, Stutthof, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Westerbork, etc., etc., or fought in the Resistance against the Nazis, but keep on getting mesmerised by yet another fiction-wielding charlatan who is using, exploiting, the Holocaust to write bestsellers and make a literary career for himself out of the horrible sufferings and deaths of others.

Everyone is up in arms because one Catholic bishop has denied the Holocaust, a few years after a nutty historian did so, yet people seem to prefer the Hollywood-tinged semi-fictional accounts by people who never experienced the horrors at first hand to the real thing.

Funny, I have read lots of praising reviews and not one of them said it "prefers" Littell to the writers you named, disparaged the writers you named ("turned their backs..."). So, unless it's empty "rant" rhetoric again, there must be a host of positive reviews I have not read. Can you point me to it? I would be interested in reading it.

[ehib8yPc]

Mirabell, as I believe you have read the book, please tell us more about why you prefer the work of some self-serving young American Frenchman (a spoilt brat who is a world away from the suave Julien Green) to the often painful works by those who really suffered in the real concentration camps, Resistance hideouts, and ghettoes.

Once again, the word "rant" is entirely inappropriate. I have opinions, which I express openly and in detail. Those who snipe at others, hiding behind three-line quickies, and offering no opinions of their own, take heed.

[DianaDrk]

Mirabell, as I believe you have read the book, please tell us more about why you prefer the work of some self-serving young American Frenchman (a spoilt brat who is a world away from the suave Julien Green) to the often painful works by those who really suffered in the real concentration camps, Resistance hideouts, and ghettoes.

Once again, the word "rant" is entirely inappropriate. I have opinions, which I express openly and in detail. Those who snipe at others, hiding behind three-line quickies, and offering no opinions of their own, take heed.

I did not say that I "prefer" Littell to other accounts. Nor did any of the critics I read.

An opinion that is based on what is clearly a false allegation, an allegation that is repeated in the next post's "opinion", is plain mud-slinging/libel/defamation. "rant" is a mild expression. yes, maybe it is inappropriate. we should call a spade a spade and a liar a liar.

As to my opinions, here is a (bad) essay of mine on a holocaust novel by Semprun: s*: Wovon man nicht sprechen kann (?berarbeitet)

[ehib8yPc]

Mirabell, note what BlogSpy has to say about the Littell book.

I am still waiting for you to express your own opinions discursively, rather than bouncing off mine all the time. People should stop going on about mud-slinging and defamation and develop their critical faculties. I have strong opinions about young Americans, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, etc., who play on the fact that they are Jewish in order to write huge rambling derivative stuff and make a career out of regurgitating the Holocaust: I feel they are phoneys.

Now, Mirabell, calumny apart, what is your full, worked out, detailed opinion about Holocaust literature? I haven't got to read an essay if its author has so little self-confidence that he writes the word "bad" in brackets, just to cover himself. I want your opinions, spelt out in a "good" way.

"Rant" is not a mild expression; it is an insult. Ask any native-speaker of English.

[DianaDrk]

Mirabell, note what BlogSpy has to say about the Littell book.

I did. Did you? I gather not. Or did you fail to understand what context Brookner's article references. Right. Thinking is a prerequisite for reading. I can only help so much. Sorry.


So you ask for my opinion but decline to read an essay I wrote and linked. Correct? Well, I can only help so much. Sorry.

So you stick to your lies, especially once you reformulated them and applied them to me? Even after I pointed them out to you? Well, I can only help so much. Sorry.

I know "rant" is an insult. It is a rather mild insult, you deserve, ahem, better. For examples, look at my last post.

[ehib8yPc]

Mirabell in #9:

"rant" is a mild expression. Mirabell in #11:

I know "rant" is an insult. I will read your Sempr?n essay, with its Wittgensteinian title, just to prove a) I can read German and b) that I will read things you write when you're being serious.

[OvDojQXN]

Another pasting for The Kindly Ones, this time courtesy of Michiko Kukatani in the NY Times:

...“The Kindly Ones” instead reads like a pointless compilation of atrocities and anti-Semitic remarks, pointlessly combined with a gross collection of sexual fantasies. That such a novel should win two of France’s top literary prizes is not only an example of the occasional perversity of French taste, but also a measure of how drastically literary attitudes toward the Holocaust have changed in the last few decades.

[AM1VV9r6]

But is it really French taste or a tentancy that literary circles have to look for weird and pevert works.As far as i know,it is not a best sellers.
In the defence of the Goncourt,witch to me, is very good(my favorites writers Andrei Makine and Maalouf received it) It had the reputation of being a bit conservative and soft.(Maybe because Houellebecq thought a scandale he was not rewarded and has a heavy imfluance in this circles)Choosing The kindly Ones might have been a way to proove the contrary.
This article reminded me of the critics about American Psycho.Can a writer use a Nazi,serial killer or a pedophile as a narrator?Can such stories be used in novels and if so,is there restriction in the way they should be treated ?
I have not read the book and do not look forward to it but the indignation of the journalist sound very journalistic to me.The book obviously calls for it and he the white knight is his righteousness has an easy role,bravo.
I can't help to notice the little low kick at Le monde in the last phase as a conclusion.We French seems to have reached the ultimate stage of decadence,i hope he with not call for surgical strikes at the siege of the monde and l'academie Francaise....

[Deseassaugs]

I may have said this elsewhere here, but when it first came out in France I read the first hundred pages and put it aside. Littell had done a remarkable amount of research, which landed undigested on the page (first rule of writing fiction: do your research a few years before and walk away from it), and hence the novel felt to me like a meal both undercooked and overcooked: in both cases indigestible and not very tasty.

Stylistically he came off as null.

[ehib8yPc]

Would you say, JPS, that this novel is an example of Holocaust kitsch?

Because, surely, research is no substitute for having experienced the epoch at first hand. I object to what is being attempted in general as much as I would to any stylistic flaws. We live in a crazy age where, on the one hand, young authors are cashing in on the Holocaust, while at the same time, people such as David Irving and Richard Williamson are cashing in on the fact that, for instance, the Holocaust killed "only" 300,000 Jews, not 6 million, or that the gas chambers didn't exist, to enhance their reputations and agendas.

I find the whole Holocaust industry sick. Either you read what the victims and survivors wrote, in diary or semi-fictional form, or you leave well alone. The subject is too recent, too sensitive, too searing to be exploited by people for their own literary and political ends.

[OvDojQXN]

There's now a blog for the book too.

[Deseassaugs]

Would you say, JPS, that this novel is an example of Holocaust kitsch?

Because, surely, research is no substitute for having experienced the epoch at first hand. I object to what is being attempted in general as much as I would to any stylistic flaws.

I think my issue with it was that it's simply a bad novel. As with most books that begin well-intentioned, the results are a mess: sloppy writing, a narrator we simply can't even begin to empathize with, and page after page of research thrown down as though the narrator were learning it for the first time.

This presents a well-worn problem known in Hollywood: make a movie about the Holocaust and the awards come your way. It's in a way a "safe" subject, in that people--apart from the odd archbishop or cardinal or two--won't criticize the wholesale slaughter of Jews. So that Littell's novel really has to be viewed and criticized as a novel per se. Is it effective? Has he digested and used his research well? Has he created a rounded, complex protagonist? I'd say no on each count.

As to the issue of the Holocaust, as a Jew who lost family in it (whose didn't, after all?), I would say that experiencing something is not necessarily a prerequisite for being able to write about it. I've written (and published) about things of which I've experienced exactly nothing, but I was able to imagine them, I believe in a convincing manner, having thought long and hard about them and processed them over time.

However, that said, if I were to write about the Shoah, it wouldn't be from the point of view of someone in it, or someone who survived it, but as someone perhaps researching it. For me, the finest writer on the subject is Primo Levi, who of course was up to his neck in the miseries of the times.

I would also recommend Gita Sereny's superb two books of nonfiction, Into That Darkness and Albert Speer, for true insights into the Nazi mind. These tell you so much more than Littell in his, to me, trite and insubstantial book.

[Gaxiciverfere]

What with all the hullabaloo surrounding the book, I thought it'd be interesting to compare what some critics are saying (those who question, essentially, Littell's artistic aims in writing this novel in the first place) to the issue that J. M. Coetzee's heroine raises in Elizabeth Costello, Chapter 6: The Problem of Evil.

The whole affair seems uncannily reminiscent of that particular situation. Ultimately, Coetzee (or at the very least, his heroine) seems to conclude that some things, some evils, just shouldn't be written about. They stretch our limits of sanity and don't add anything of value to that vague human enterprise we call Art.

I wonder what Coetzee would (or will) say upon reading this particular book.

[DianaDrk]

Ooooh, welcome back. Liam. Or have you just peeked in here?