Texas City Reads 2012

This year's Texas City Reads book is Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts.

Although In the Garden of Beasts is nonfiction, it reads like fiction: suspense, scandalous love affairs, political intrigue and heartbreak.

It depicts the story of the American ambassador and his family who were stationed in Berlin in the years just before WWII, just as Hitler was gaining his power in Germany. The ambassador, William E. Dodd, was a fairly tame personality, but he had one of the hardest jobs around trying to represent American interests in Germany as Hitler gained political ground.

Dodd's daughter Mary, however, made up in spades for her father's conventionality. She was an inveterate flirt and a very opinionated young woman; later in life she became an author and then ended up fleeing the United States after being accused of spying for the Russians.

Larson does not try to hide the Dodds’ shortcomings or prejudices — for example, they didn't seem to be too bothered by the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Germany when they first arrived — but he also portrays their strengths, such as Dodd's admirable refusal to kowtow to the future Fuhrer.

You may recognize Larson's name; he wrote Isaac's Storm, about the 1900 hurricane that struck Galveston — the greatest natural disaster to ever strike the United States. In the Garden of Beasts has received excellent reviews and appeared on many best books lists of 2011.

Intrigued yet? Here are a few reviews of the book:

New York Times
L.A. Times
Brevity magazine, an online journal
We Heart Reading book blog
NPR

The library will have multiple copies available for check-out at the Circulation Desk. We have In the Garden of Beasts in book, large print and audiobook form. We will host discussions of the book in the Holland Meeting Room of the library in September. All are welcome at the discussions.

A German Requiem by Philip Kerr

Named for the poem written by James Fenton about Germany after the Nazi era, this novel is the third in Philip Kerr’s ‘Berlin Noir’ trilogy. Bernie Gunther is the antihero, the ex-policeman who as part of the German police force worked for the SS but asked to become a soldier to avoid being involved in the crimes of the Third Reich. He was eventually captured by the Russians and sent to work in the mines. A year later, he was to be sent back to Germany, but was resourceful enough to jump the train and avoid the pitfalls of repatriation, especially as it was being carried out by the Russians.

The Fenton poem is cryptic and skirts its subject, glancing off and on what was done and what transpired. The poem’s structure seems to mimic our inability to absorb and to process such barbarities. As in Heidelberg, when I visited there: coming down a hill, seeing a small amphitheater sitting there on the grass, all deserted, with no identification, no plaque… “That was where they held the rallies”, my sister said, with all solemnity. Philip Kerr duly mentions throughout the book the horror of the world regarding Nazi atrocities. However, his main focus is to show how life went on in postwar Germany, with new players mingling with the old.

The time is 1947, and Gunther travels to Vienna to investigate a murder of an American officer by a German policeman, one with ties to the underworld. What you find with Kerr is that the “underworld” is almost everywhere. Whether it’s his wife Kristen carrying on in Berlin with an American officer for the material goods he can get for her, or the Allies deciding to work with ex-Nazis to go after the Communists, almost everyone has an agenda – to look after themselves. Gunther finds out the truth about everyone, so there isn’t much to say about anybody, unless it’s the poor girl with a lover who was silenced so that she gets killed almost as an afterthought.

Kerr knows his history, and the reader can be grateful by the end that at least somebody understands who was doing what and for whom. Kerr is clever enough to have some big spoils hinted at to keep us reading – no less than Hermann Goering, who Kerr suggests was never brought to justice, but is alive and well under a new identity, working with the Americans. This twist is just to help nail in the relentless view that Kerr wants us to acquiesce in…that villains may fall, but only new ones take their place.

The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion / by Ford Madox Ford

English author Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) was actually born as Ford Hermann Hueffer. And though his surname bore a characteristically German tinge owing to the shared nationality of his father, writer Francis Hueffer, Ford was actually descended from a long line of noted British aristocrats including his maternal grandfather, the renowned painter Ford Madox Brown, whose middle name the writer would formally adopt in 1919. A man who did as much to promote the literary careers of his contemporaries as his own--his journals The English Review and Transatlantic Review were vitally instrumental in the development of early 20th century literature--Ford was a writer who wrote a great deal but achieved success sparingly such as with his 1915 book The Good Soldier, repeatedly named as one of the best novels of all time. Dealing with the damning consequences of infidelity and falsehood which befall two Progressive Era couples, it has been characterized as an ironic commentary on the author's own philandering lifestyle during the period.

"This is the saddest story I have ever heard." So the reader is told by John Dowell who proceeds to tell of the tragedy which befell him and his friends in the space of nine years. In 1904, the John and his wife Florence are incredibly rich Americans who've arrived at the pleasant town of Nauheim in Germany to help heal Florence's "weak heart" through a series of prescribed spa treatments and thermal baths. By chance they form an acquaintance with the Ashburnhams, an Edwardian English couple who are also at the spa to the seek treatment for a heart ailment, that of Edward the husband. Also a decorated Army officer, a captain whose served in countries like India and South Africa, Edward seems the quintissential English gentleman and makes quite the impression on both John and Florence with his stoic bearing and seemingly implacable demeanor, always the courteous, courtly escort with Florence and an accommodating whiskey drinker and cardplayer with John. Over the preceding summers as John tells it--the couples parted ways in the intervening seasons, the Dowells touring the continent and the Ashburnhams back to their Surrey estate--the friendship between the two couples grew immensely, their fondness for one another remaining all the way up until one night when Florence's "weak heart" gave way and she died.

John Dowell's arrival at the Ashburnham's home in England, following a series of letters requesting that he visit, abruptly turns everything on its head as he's brought to the gripping truth which erases all of his his existing preconceptions on the past few years. Related to him by Leonora, and told in pieces interspersed throughout the narrative, is the infidelity of Florence and Capt. Ashburnham, the pair's torrid love affair being carried on right under his nose. Even more arresting is that Leonora knew (had always known) about Edward's string of illicit love affairs, his hopeless inability to remain faithful to his wife and Leonora's hellish lifestyle of basically having to be complicit in the ordeal--the couple's wealth was basically bankrupted by Edward's notably desperate liasons with a steady stream of needy lovers. Edward's affairs, his past and present have offset a plethora of miseries. Florence's death, not unlike that of Maisie Maiden, another spa attendant who'd been led on by Edward, was in fact a suicide. In truth, nothing was ever wrong with Florences' heart. She'd only fabricated the condition to get John to take her away from her own past which included her own series of scandalous affairs. The illuminated truth is not only something to which the past has suffered, it is now something that will have lasting reverberations and immediate repurcussions on a disillusioned John for the remainder of his life.

Ford actually based The Good Soldier on his own life; at the time he'd made a complete mess of his existing marriage through extramarital dalliances with more than a few "family acquaintances". What's so great about the story though is the way it reflects a culture at large just prior to the earth-shattering trauma of World War I. It is indeed a grim vision of things to come for a world at the brink. The posh, comfortable lives of the Dowells and the Ashburnhams have seemingly everything going for them. Neither want for anything and each couple embues the standard of aristocratic distinction, Capt. Ashburnham especially resplendant as the dashing officer, the "good soldier", and Florence the darling product of a blue-blooded New England family, a shining example of American capitalism, ingenuity and good breeding. And yet everything is crumbling before their eyes; the very core of the British Empire is corrupt and the backbone of the American Protestant system, its Calvinist work ethic and Puritan foundation, is a fraudulent hypocrisy. As Dowell, as unreliable a narrator (a device Ford uses to perfection) as their ever was, puts it, "It is a queer and fantastic world . . . Is there any terrestrial paradise where, amidst the whispering of the olive-leaves, people can be with whom they like and have what they like and take their ease in shadows and in coolness? Or are all men's lives like the lives of us good people — like the lives of the Ashburnhams, of the Dowells, of the Ruffords — broken, tumultuous, agonized, and unromantic lives, periods punctuated by screams, by imbecilities, by deaths, by agonies? Who the devil knows?" (FIC FORD)

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005) A film by Marc Rothemund, starring Julia Jentsch, Fabian Hinrichs and Gerald Alexander Held

In February of 1943, Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans were arrested by the Gestapo for distributing leaflets at the University of Munich that protested the Nazi regime. What inspired the director to make first a television feature, and then the film, was reading the historical documents he found in the archives of the former East Germany. These were the transcripts of the interrogations of Sophie and her brother and others, who were members of the organization of passive resistance called “The White Rose”.

The screenwriter worked from the transcripts, and the movie follows her and her brother’s quick plunge from activism to arrest for a crime they knew was not to be tolerated. With the transcripts was a letter written to Sophie’s parents by Sophie’s cellmate, who describes Sophie’s last three days in captivity. What is interesting is that the documents should have been destroyed as the Gestapo destroyed all their files at the end of the war. But these happened to be sent to the People’s Court in Berlin, so they survived.

The heart of the film is Sophie’s interrogation by Robert Mohr, who is a staunch Nazi and yet is strongly affected by her testimony, even to the point of first believing in her innocence. Even though we know the film’s outcome, the drama is believably sustained by Julia Jentsch and the other actors, showing the tension between the terror of their situation and their belief in what brought them there. I found myself wondering, why was there no physical torture in the interrogation? But when the law itself upholds evil, perhaps there is no need for it.

The Reader / by Bernhard Schlink

Post World War II Germany was both a pivotal time and place; the country ravaged by war, its population decimated, its people torn and relationships severed. In Berlin, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is on his way home from school one day when he suddenly falls ill, collapsing on the side of the street and awakening later to find himself in the company of his rescuer, a beautiful woman named Hannah Schmitz. Despite the fact that she's a war widow twice his age, Hannah and Michael are soon entangled into a passionate love affair, the two forming an almost ethereal bond, sharing their lives, secrets, pasts and most intimate of intimacies. It lasts three months until the day Hannah inexplicably disappears, vanishing without a trace.

It is ten years before they meet again. When Michael does once again finally see his beloved--who he’s only been obsessing about every day for the last decade--he is a law student at the university and Hannah is in court, standing trial for an unspeakable crime Michael was never aware of. Only now, as the trial progresses, does Michael realize the terrible secret Hannah has been guarding all these years, a secret she has up to now considered too shameful to tell anyone, even Michael. Schlink, a former judge turned full-time author who lives in Berlin, has crafted a breathtaking tale of love, passion and coming of age. An Oprah Book Club book and bestseller following its release in Germany in 1995, The Reader is a compelling read, “ensnaring both the heart and mind”* with its moving tale about a young man's confrontation with love and the loss of innocence.

*L.A. Times Book Review

Buddenbrook: The Decline of a Family / a novel by a Thomas Mann; trans. by Klaus Marie Brandauer

Among the pinnacles of German literature, Thomas Mann is one name which shines exceptionally bright. Born in Lubeck in 1875, Mann was the son of a moderately well-to-do town merchant and prominent baroness. Though he would publicly poke fun and even revile his bourgeios background he was, self-proclaimedly, quite fond of the culture which it preserved. His most recognizable feat was perhaps capturing, with sardonic candor and discerning commentary, the transition of German society from an age of loosely defined aristocracy to a united federation and forerunner to a republic. Published in 1900 after over three years of writing, Buddenbrook is seen by critics as, if not his best, at least his most autobiographical and densely layered novel.

In northern Germany nearing the end of the 19th century the Buddenbrooks of Lubeck represent one of the rich, highly educated families which at the time form the upper class level of Prussian society. Though prosperous and influential, the family is well-grounded in morality, sternly pious and deeply reverential towards established traditions of integrity and hard work. The Buddenbrooks live in a world where strict divisions of society are laid down. Distinctions between the labor classes, bourgeoisie and upper-middle class mercantile families are easily identifiable even within the relatively small town of Lubeck where the Buddenbrooks play a major role in maintaining the status quo in regards to both themselves and everybody else. Unspoken guidelines for whom their children should associate with, which schools they should attend, who they form ties to and, of course, whom they should ultimately marry go hand-in-hand with daily tasks. Both sides of the social spectrum are aware of the often costly implications an inappropriate match could have which is why it is so important that the couple’s youngest daughter Frau Antonia "Tony" Buddenbrook marry Herr Grunlich, a visibly successful businessman from Hamburg and a man seemingly of good taste and distinction, even if Tony doesn't like him.

Tony's poor opinion of her "chosen" mate isn't so inaccurate. As it turns out, within months after their wedding, Herr Grunlich is found out as a scoundrel, unworthy of all good society and especially of being wed to such a catch as Tony. The marriage promptly dissolves in divorce, a lamentable but necessary action which eventually puts the Buddenbrooks back into relatively modest standing among their peers. Other problems crop up though as Christian, the family's middle child chooses a life in the theater, a heretofore unheard-of and near scandalous profession to embark upon. As further indignities cause friction and highlight conflict, the family fortune, once worth nearly 100,000 marks, has now dwindled to an alarmingly low sum as collective debts force the once and still proud family to face reality.

Mann's novel is not so much about the family Buddenbrook epitomizing the ruling class as it is about their decline, a dissolution which parallels the demise of an entire epoch and the ultimate dismembering of the Hapsburgian Empire. Even as shrewd decisions are made by upstanding family members in order to preserve their "place", shifting paradigms of a world beyond their control force the family and indeed the whole of Germany to confront change and transition. Mann was one of the great commentators of his times. The turn-of-the-century changes affecting his native land, the growing nationalism, imperial transitions, political reconfigurations and the creeping advance of German militarism are perhaps best detailed through his exquisite works both fiction and non-fiction.