In tomorrow’s New York Times Book Review, Francine Prose reviews two novels by the German-born writer Hans Keilson, Comedy in a Minor Key (just now translated into English), and The Death of the Adversary (long out of print). Both are about Europe under the Nazis, and both get the same judgment from Prose:
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. . .
Although the novels are quite different, both are set in Nazi-occupied Europe and display their author’s eye for perfectly illustrative yet wholly unexpected incident and detail, as well as his talent for storytelling and his extraordinarily subtle and penetrating understanding of human nature. But perhaps the most distinctive aspect they share is the formal daring of the relationship between subject matter and tone. Rarely has a finer, more closely focused lens been used to study such a broad and brutal panorama, mimetically conveying a failure to come to grips with reality by refusing to call that reality by its proper name.
Whenever I see a book called a “masterpiece,” I put it on my to-read list. Not because I necessarily believe it, but because I see it as a challenge. “Oh yeah?”, I think. “We’ll see if it’s up there with Anna Karenina.” When Francine Prose calls something a masterpiece, though, I think there’s a very good chance she’s right. I’ll be reading these books for sure.
The New York Times also has a podcast in which Prose further extols these novels, putting Keilson “up there with Primo Levi.”
Keilson, born in 1909, is still alive.
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In other book news, over at HuffPo (I can’t ignore them completely), Anis Shivani has a wonderfully snarky assessment of America’s 15 most overrated writers (at the bottom of the post).
While Hans Keilson lives in the Netherlands, and has written in Dutch, he IS German, not Dutch!
Born in 1909 (and still alive), he fled Germany in 1936. His parents died in Auschwitz (The Keilsons were Jews).
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Keilsonhttp://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Keilson
Links got ‘fused’, sorry:
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Keilson
..
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Keilson
Thanks. It’s not clear whether he’s now a Dutch citizen (which would, I suppose, make him a “Dutch writer), so I’ve replaced “Dutch” with “German-born.”
The primary language of these two books is German, according to the Wikipedia sites.
Yes – Francine Prose is pretty dang good.
This is as good a place as any to put my ‘review’ of Jonathon Weiner’s “Long for this World: the Strange Science of Immortality” (previously mentioned on a thread). I don’t recommend it. Some of it is good in discussing the biological causes of ageing and death, but most of it is just too long and bizarre. I think Nick Lane didn’t a better job in just one chapter in “Life Ascending”.
I’m currently reading Peter Hamilton’s science fiction novel “Pandora’s Star”, which has periodic rejuvenation based on similar ideas as in “Long for this World” (including genetic engineering).
Am I the only one who thinks that, as a surname, Prose is excellent for the career she finds herself in?
Hee hee. Well, now that you’ve mentioned it, I can’t resist recounting these three.
I know an entomologist named Bob Bugg.
When I was a kid, we took our cats to two veterinarians (in the same place) named Wolf and Mouser.
And one of my female friends went to a gynecologist named Harry Beaver (check the link).
Maybe others know people with eponymous jobs?
New Scientist magazine has a treasure-trove of examples.
They ‘coyned’ a term for it:
“Nominative Determinism”
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
P.S. In the 80’s, a hospital V.D. Clinic had a “Dr. Finger” on staff.