I read this book quickly and enjoyed the limpid, unpretentious style. There’s the odd brilliant phrase like the woman laughing so hard the narrator expects her ‘to lay an egg’! The characters and the narrative weren’t so good.
Fabian is an unengaging and deeply annoying protagonist. He hardly seems to know what he wants or even likes most of the time. Alongside this infuriating lack of conviction he is also presented as a morally perfect letting homeless people live in his room and slipping tips to prostitutes who he hasn’t slept with. He isn’t believable or relatable in any way. It’s clear that at some level Fabian stands for decency but the conception is narrow and, frankly, not very enticing. The book has Fabian saying to Labude, ‘when you’ve got your Utopia the people there will still be punching each other on the nose!’ (p38) but neglects to show Fabian’s own character as anything other than pure and good. It’s as if the author recognises the problems inherent to the human condition but then merrily goes on to construct the wholly unlikely and unlikeable Fabian as a paradigm of ‘goodness’ who’s also a paradigm of weakness and indecision! To me, this is simplistic and silly moralising that can’t convey anything meaningful about life.
The book had a consistently prudish tone that I would also consign to the rubbish dump of silly moralising. Later on, Fabian declares, “I look on and wait. I wait for the triumph of decency; when it comes, I can place myself at the world’s disposal.’ (p74) Why? Because he is so inherently decent? If that’s the case why can’t he do something more concrete for himself or the others around him? His excuse is because the world is so depraved. But if he is a human, and not some character like Dostoevsky’s idiot, then he’s exactly the same as the world around him and is simply making childish excuses for his own shortcomings. His excuses are also grandiose and delusional; isn’t he inevitably at the world’s disposal all along? The whole juxtaposition of decency (Fabian) set against its opposite (the World) struck me as self-congratulatory, sanctimonious and, most importantly, totally wrong. How is it possible to see the world as one thing and yourself as something else completely distinct from it? It’s all nonsense to me.
I’m pretty ignorant of 20th century German history so I’m sure a lot of the book’s historical significance is lost on me. Even though I had very little idea about the authors, places and events described in this book it is very obviously written to be some form of allegory or metaphor for its contemporary environment. Of itself, this isn’t a problem. However, I found that the author’s style is too heavy handed in this regard. To be effective, I feel like an allegory has to be a good story first and foremost. This book might be the most wonderful description of, or allegory for, the pre-WW2 Berlin but it comes across poorly as a book! It’s been suggested to me that the book’s status as a classic is as a historical document or source rather than as a novel, which would be in keeping with my reading. Events and characters are clunkily bashed around in a manner that might perfectly describe the ambience of Berlin before 1933 but made for very little enjoyment of the text as a pure story.
One section I did particularly enjoy was this section:
“Labude had stood on solid ground; he had tried to march forward and stumbled. He, Fabian, was floating in the air, because he lacked weight and substance; yet he was still alive. Why did he go on living, when he did not know what he was living for? Why was his friend dead, when he had known why he lived? Life and death still came to the wrong people.” (p155)
To me, this captured the contradiction and incomprehensible nature of life as experienced by humans. Very little can be known, even less understood. This quote clashes violently with my interpretation of the rest of the book where both Fabian and the author seem to share the delusion that they know what is ‘right’, ‘decent’ or ‘moral’ and can instruct others on the subject or absent themselves from action until everyone else conforms with their conception of it. Silly sausages!!
In conclusion, this is a bad book written in good prose. It is probably a much more fulfilling read if you’re an expert in early 20th century German culture but I found a lot of its symbolism heavy handed.
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