Every Man Dies Alone

Hans Fallada can take you from wry irony to terror to a heartbreaking poignancy in the space of a few pages. From the opening chapter's Eva Kluge and her effort to keep her layabout husband out of her apartment to the Gestapo appearing one moment as a the Keystone cops and the next as the loathsome evil they were, the reader is carried along a roller coaster of emotions in this novel about German resistance during the war.

For Fallada, there are good people, and there are bad people. The good people make mistakes and even the bad people are human. But they are bad, irremediably bad. What makes for a good person? At some level, there is integrity, a line that cannot be crossed. Anna Quangel and Trudel Baumann, both good people, crumple under Gestapo torture or are betrayed by their own cowardice, but at some point there is within them a moment when they stand up to the terror. Integrity requires courage, and sooner or later, good people are called upon to display that courage.

Otto Quangel, foreman at a furniture factory that is now making coffins to bury dead troops, breaks with his former disengagement with the world and embarks on the quixotic mission of dropping treasonous postcards in various Berlin buildings. He dreams of his fellow citizens passing these missives furtively among each other, encouraged by this act of resistance to stand fast themselves against the oppressive Nazi regime.

But in fact all but a handful of the postcards are turned into the police by those who find them. These terrorized individuals don't even dare finish reading the cards but turn them in as quickly as possible. Instead of sowing resistance throughout the capital, Quangel is only keeping one Gestapo inspector busy pushing pins into a map of Berlin as each new card narrows his search for his quarry.

When Quangel sees the apparent futility of his resistance, he simply resigns himself to his fate. His fall ensnares all who are close to him, so that his act is beyond futile -- it is fatal for him and those in his life.

But it is a martyrdom that is still better for all concerned than subjection to an evil regime. This is Fallada's message and his condemnation of the German people who failed to resist. They are for him like Enno Kluge -- the cowardly, pathetic shirker who falls victim to the Nazis without ever understanding what happened to him.

Fallada succeeds in creating a novel of ideas without introducing a concept. His characters are everyday people from wartime Berlin, whose motivations are not articulated but speak loudly through their actions. The good people inspire by their hesitant courage, and leave the reader wondering what he or she would do in their place.

Hans Fallada

I've started reading Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada, a new publication in English of a book originally written shortly after the war. It was reviewed very positively in the NYTBR a few weeks ago.

I have a connection of sorts to Fallada because one of his other books, Ein Mann Will Nach Oben (loosely, A Man Strives to Get Ahead) was filmed as a miniseries when I was living in Hamburg 1978-80. I watched it religiously -- this was the time before VCRs, Tivo or DVDs, so if you wanted to see something you had to be parked in front of the TV when it was on. It was a very affecting story about a young man who arrived in Berlin at the turn of the century -- the Gruenderzeit in Germany -- and worked his way up the ladder of success, leaving behind the small group of friends he met when he first came to the city.

Every Man is set during World War II and deals with resistance to the Nazi regime. I've only just started, but John Marks, a discriminating reader whose tips are very reliable, loved the book. Already some early scenes have been surprisingly moving.

I've pretty much abandoned Redbreast by Jo Nesbo. It's not a compelling read in any sense, neither from style or from plot. Too much jumping around between past and present.

Also just starting The Omnivore's Dilemma, part of my new interest in food writing (see my food blog, You Are What You Eat).