Richard Ford has become famous for his series of books about Frank Bascombe, the ex-novelist who doubted his calling and became a sportswriter. This is the first book where he appears, published an even 35 years ago this year.
The events take place during Easter weekend. Bascombe has divorced his wife, and the book opens when he meets her by the gravestone of their deceased young son. After his son died, his marriage fell apart, and with that the rest of his life, too. He is living in a self-professed state of ”dreaminess” and he now makes his livelihood being a traveling sports reporter. He has a girlfriend he’s not particularly fond of, and he has recently spent a lot of time with a “divorced men’s club”.
The events of the novel are all related to these facts, as we get to tag along on a sportswriting assignment, a trip to the girlfriend’s father, a late night visit from a member of the divorce club. All the while Bascombe dips in and out of his memories and thinks back om his time doing this and that. He recalls the time he taught college and phones his then-girlfriend. The book oozes of a kind of masculine weariness… Bascombe’s voice has a certain tone which makes most anything he says sound profound and interesting, even though it on closer inspection might not really be. That takes some kind of talent to do as a writer. Ford has also imbued the book with Southern sensibilities, although it is set in New Jersey.
The book reminds me of Walker Percy‘s the Moviegoer – they have even chosen the same kind of title. Both books are filled with a lot of ruminations, and both books are written from a somewhat Southern outlook. I found out later that Ford had been particularly inspired by Percy’s book (which also is centered around a dead family member). Ford is considered a conceptual member of a group of writers whose work deals a lot with middle class suburbia, with authors like John Cheever, John O’Hara and John Updike. I haven’t read anything of their work, it doesn’t feel relevant to me. After having read this, I might consider reading Updike in the future. Maybe.
One reviewer identified kierkegaardian qualities in this book, and argued that it was part of a triptych of American kierkegaardian novels, the other two being the aforementioned Moviegoer and Run Rabbit by Updike. I don’t know what to make of that… but I liked the “dreaminess” of the book.
This is my contribution to the bi-quarterly book reviewing tradition where I join other literature aficionados and review a book from a particular chosen year. This time around it was books from 1976. As soon as it was announced by Karen and Simon that this was the year I started looking for possible candidates. Renata Adler‘s Speedboat? No, I’ve already read it once. Kurt Vonnegut‘s Slapstick? read it as a teenager. Alex Haley‘s Roots? Nah. And Bear by Marian Engel just seemed too weird. I did find a possible pick in Bohumil Hrabal‘s Too Loud a Solitude. I also considered placing a library order for Christa Wolf‘s Kindheitsmuster, but I changed my mind when I came across Herman Sachnowitz‘s It concerns you too. Thank you for once again organizing this event, Simon and Karen!
This rare and largely unknown memoir is by Jewish Norwegian businessman Herman Sachnowitz, and describes the horrors he suffered between 1942 and 1945, being captured, transported to and finally miraculously freed from the Nazi camps. It was published in 1976 in its original Norwegian, and in Danish, Finnish and German translations the following years. It would take until 2002 for it to be translated to English, by Norwegian-American translator Thor Hall. I read the original edition from 1976, signed by the author (borrowed from the Swedish National Library).
Most of us have read one or several Holocaust memoirs, most likely those that are well-known, like the works of Elie Wiesel or Primo Levi. What interests me particularly by this Holocaust memoir is that is is written in 1976 – a good period after books like Wiesel’s Night (first published in 1956) and Levi’s If This is a Man (first in 1947), but before the reckoning of the late 80’s, that resulted in the ”Holocaust moment” of the 1990s with films like Schindler’s List and Life is Beautiful winning academy awards. 1976 was an interesting midpoint between the end of the war and the renewed interest in Holocaust narrative towards the end of the century.
As a narrative of WW2 camp experience it is quite straightforward. Actually, refreshingly so. None of Wiesel’s mystifying airs or the sombre detachment of Levi. Maybe this is accountable to Sachnowitz’s no-nonsense upbringing in Norway? He relates several topics that were left out of later, possibly more lachrymose Holocaust memoirs. He writes matter of factly about the horrible events he lived through, and goes intelligently through the chronology of events. It starts with how he was captured in his hometown by the occupying German forces and then how he and the other prisoners were taken by boat and train to Oswiecim, or, as it is known in German, Auschwitz.
I was struck by how incredibly lucky Sachnowitz must have been, having the fortune of bring taken in by a local camp bigwig and therefore given favors. Only those who had that kind of luck survived, I guess. He recounts so many deaths and unthinkable human fates that it seems nothing short of a miracle that he made it out alive. He managed to become trumpet player in the Buna orchestra, and became knows as Der Norweger. As the Norwegian, he gets to do various assignments, and the book is full of anecdotes from his struggles. In this way, it reminds me a lot of Tadeusz Borowski‘s camp memoir Pożegnanie z Marią from 1946. I was also pleasantly surprised to read that he mentions the story of Shlomo Arouch, the Jewish boxer of Auschwitz, which was made into a film, Triumph of the Spirit, with Willem Dafoe, in 1989.
Another fine touch is the way he starts the book. The first chapter begins by connecting his past experiences to his present, by recounting examples where his mind takes him back to the camps, like when he heard certain sounds that remind him of something in the camps. This is similar to the opening of the Edward Lewis Wallant novel the Pawnbroker (1961), where Wallant depicts the survivor’s post-traumatic distress with flashbacks.
He doesn’t mention anything of what happened after liberation, and I found myself wanting to know what happened to him. Did he have any children after the war? Did the Sachnowitz name live on? Sadly he passed away 1978, two years after the publication of the book. It is seen as a classic in Norway and I believe it is in the school curriculum for 8th grade history there. It was also voted top ten book about World War Two by a Norwegian book association.
All in all, a fascinating and unique account, which is thoroughly Norwegian with numerous references to fjords and great pine trees and even Norwegian Christmas, an atmosphere which Sachnowitz writes that he missed during the cold winters of the camp (but didn’t celebrate himself). He was the only one of the nine siblings who survived the horrors of the war. All his brothers and sisters, and parents, were murdered.
Memorial stolpersteiner for the Sachnowitz family in Larvik, Norway.
Kinship of all Species 