"The Reader" by Bernhard Schlink, I haven't read the book but the film is very good. I have read his latest - "The Weekend", which is based on Bader-Meinhoff, and it's a thought provoking page turner.
"The Reader" by Bernhard Schlink, I haven't read the book but the film is very good. I have read his latest - "The Weekend", which is based on Bader-Meinhoff, and it's a thought provoking page turner.
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
Interesting. As you can tell, I'm quite ignorant of the book. I just need to read it.
As to holocaust comedy, I, like Alexander, no several extremely inappropriate holocaust jokes. Also, surely there is some sketch comedy dealing with the holocaust, no? Did Monty Python ever go there?
And I would also like to know what cafolini is on about this time. We mere mortals must be enlightened as to our great misunderstanding of history, as usual, and then ol' caf can declare the case closed!
What makes it thought provoking?
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
One could discuss the holocaust with the knowledgeable who know it was no comedy nor a light matter. There is not enough sensible material to even open a discussion in this case. It has been closed from the start with extremely poor information, propaganda and disinformation.
The waters are not very tranquil today, with Iran trying to arm Venezuela and possibly causing a war by closing the channel. We'll see what happens as it proceeds. Ignorance and naivete have gone rampart.
Classic Cafolini right there.
Yes it's amazing that his alter ego, G L Wilson, is sitting somewhere in Australia without realising that his spirit lives on in the LitNet forums.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
Time's Arrow - Martin Amis. The tale of a Nazi doctor told in reverse chronology. Thus, corpses are given life, families are reunited, ghettos are dissolved etc. The closest thing to a comic rendering of the Holocaust that I've encountered, though the inverted time scheme wears thin rather quickly and I suspect it numbers among Amis' lesser novel
Last edited by sixsmith; 01-22-2012 at 08:16 PM.
'Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.' - Groucho Marx
Haha, well. That took an unexpected turn.
We do that too. The humour lies in how extremely inappropriate we're being though, if they were to be on tv or in a newspaper comic strip or something I don't think it would go over well.
Last edited by JuniperWoolf; 01-23-2012 at 05:37 AM.
__________________
"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
Well, let's see we have St Luke's offensive rant where he celebrates the ideas of a dubious scholar like Finklestein, compares the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to Nazi Germany (despite the obvious facts that under Nazi Germany the Jewish populations size and life expectancy were reduced and under Israeli occupation we see the opposite result for the Palestinians, meaning if Israeli forces are Nazis they're extremely incompetent ones), confuses the reprehensible actions of one older Jewish artist he knows with the rest of the Jewish population (the very definition of racial stereotyping), and then wonders why it is difficult to write a comedy about the tragic murder of 6 million+ people.
Nevertheless, there are comical novels being written about the Holocaust or elements of the Holocaust such as Shalom Auslander's new novel, Hope: A Tragedy. Then, of course, there is the Spring Time for Hitler scene in The Producers.
"You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too." - Herodotus
https://consolationofreading.wordpress.com/ - my book blog!
Feed the Hungry!
Don't forget Life is Beautiful and Jakob the Liar.
The British comedy show Red Dwarf did an episode like that two years before Amis' novel came out. He probably saw or heard about it.
Last edited by mortalterror; 01-23-2012 at 09:03 AM.
"So-Crates: The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing." "That's us, dude!"- Bill and Ted
"This ain't over."- Charles Bronson
Feed the Hungry!
It had me wondering if Baader-Meinhoff had the right ideas about dealing with bankers! But, of course, B-M didn't solve anything. Still, thinking about this book threw into sharp relief how pitifully little our politicians are doing to sort out the financial crises, deal properly bankers bonuses, and help the poorest people in society and the world.
To get back on topic "The Reader" really highlighted the complicity that ordinary Germans had in the holocaust, and how many of them got away without punishment of any kind.
Schlink maybe lacks a little in literary values, like "depth of characterisation", But, on my admittedly cursory encounters, he seems to be a top-notch political commentator and thriller writer.
The best part is that rampant was spelled wrong... unless Caf meant that ignorance and naivete have gone 'defensive wall' on us....
"All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours." -Aldous Huxley
"Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." -William Blake
I also found this list... these are popular, of course, which does not mean all are very good or great literature:
http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/holocaust-fiction
"All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours." -Aldous Huxley
"Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." -William Blake
I second The Reader as a great book - the prose is solid but not beautifull but were it really shines is in portraying that complex and unique inter generation conflic betwen the parents who supported/stayed silent during the nazi regime and the younger generation discovering all the horrors of the nazis and being disgsusted that their paernts just stood by and aplauded the whole time.
Struggling....struggling very hard not to launch into a political tirade.
We've seen with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that the Jewish victims have become the victimizers. That's all I'll say about that.
I do agree that the holocaust is not appropriate material for comedy. That film Life is Beautiful attempted to find humour within the horror rather than turn that horror into humour. There is a difference.
The only holocaust book I've read is The Diary of Anne Frank, though I guess it wouldn't count as fiction.
"The premier demand upon all education is that Auschwitz not happen again. Its priority before any other requirement is such that I believe I need not and should not justify it. I cannot understand why it has been given so little concern until now. To justify it would be monstrous in the face of the monstrosity that took place. Yet the fact that one is so barely conscious of this demand and the questions it raises shows that the monstrosity has not penetrated people’s minds deeply, itself a symptom of the continuing potential for its recurrence as far as peoples’ conscious and unconscious is concerned. Every debate about the ideals of education is trivial and inconsequential compared to this single ideal: never again Auschwitz."
Adorno
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