Hans Fallada's Crisis Novels 1931-1947 by Geoff Wilkes (review)
2005; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 100; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/mlr.2005.a826659
ISSN2222-4319
Autores Tópico(s)German Literature and Culture Studies
Resumo564 Reviews this complete listing of all editions and variants in German could be the basis for a critical edition of Feuchtwanger's works. The later volumes impressively show the full extent of Feuchtwanger's reception in German-speaking countries, as well as the international reception of his work and the wide range of adaptations of his works for film,stage, and television. Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, London J.M. Ritchie Hans Fallada's Crisis Novels igji-ig4y. By Geoff Wilkes. (Australian and New Zealand Studies in German Language and Literature, 19) Bern, Berlin, Frank? furt a.M., New York, Paris, and Vienna: Peter Lang. 2002. 167 pp. SwF 46; ?19. ISBN 3-906770-32-x. Despite the widespread interest in Fallada's 1932 novel Kleiner Mann ? was nun?'and in the author's own career (there have been at least four independent biographies), Fallada's other literaryworks, with the possible exception oijeder stirbtfiirsich allein (1947), have received comparatively little attention. There are a couple of important collections of essays, but few overviews. For that reason alone, the present study, despite its not entirely persuasive limitation to five so-called 'realistic crisis novels' (p. 11), is to be welcomed. Broadly, Wilkes argues that Fallada's assessment of the purchase of 'personal va? lues' on the various economic, social, and political crises which his protagonists face changes and is more complex (and confused) than 'traditional' accounts have sug? gested. That is to say, Fallada's novels represent neither, simply, a triumphant and psychologically subtle account of human decency and spirit in adversity, nor, crassly, an obtuse failure to comprehend larger social processes. There is much in this which is sensible. After a brief introduction, the book provides close analyses, in chronological order, oiBauern, Bonzen und Bomben, Kleiner Mann ? was nun?, Wolfunter Wolfen, Der Alpdruck, and Jeder stirbtfiirsich allein. It ends, not with a conclusion, but with an appendix, which takes us back to the firstof those novels and provides a detailed discussion ofa single article by Ellis Shookman ('Making History in Hans Fallada's Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben', German Studies Review, 13, (1990), 461-80). Worthwhile though this is, it is out of place here, and would have been better published as a separate article. The readings ofindividual novels tend to concentrate on plot and character analysis, and the relationship to Fallada's known historical models. The approach is limited; none the less, it does serve tactfully to disclose Fallada's vaguely nationalistic 'apoliticism ' and his inclination to reduce everything to psychology. There is, however, far too little discussion of a wider context for all this. The few pages devoted to the context of Wolfunter Wolfen in NS Germany are insufficient,and an interesting tale of deleted and 'corrected' prefaces is confined to a footnote (p. 83). It is not until we get to Chapter 5 that we have a section on collaboration, compromise, resistance, and propaganda, and then Wilkes is naive, or even evasive, about Fallada's stance?finally hinting, wrongly (as has recently been demonstrated by Hannes Lamp in Fallada unter Wolfen (Friedland: Steffen, 2002)), that he may have been a fellow-traveller of Nazism and time-serving in his post-1945 condemnation of dictatorship. Fallada's was a fascinating career, with an output of successful publications, in various genres, outwardly undisturbed but inwardly in turmoil, throughout some alarming regime changes. It warrants a differentsort of analysis. This is a scholarly book-of-a-thesis, with some useful exploitation of archival ma? terial, but it feels as ifthe author has never sufficientlyasked himself quite what he is doing, or why.It is revealing that ithas no conclusion. Instead, itworks cumulatively? the comparisons between the novels become more frequent, the attitude to Fallada's MLR, 100.2, 2005 565 arguments increasingly critical?so that the best chapter is the last, on Jeder stirbtfur sich allein. But Wilkes remains too literal and too unliterary in his readings. He looks, forexample, forexplicit 'evidence' of attitudes in Kleiner Mann ? was nun?, whereas in fact, although the point of view is not consistently that of the Pinnebergs, the tale is largely told within a deliberately restricted petty bourgeois mind-set which must...
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