{"id":10394,"date":"2016-05-23T10:49:18","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T14:49:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=10394"},"modified":"2016-05-23T10:49:18","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T14:49:18","slug":"the-convict-bourgeois-my-hans-fallada-rediscovery-piece-which-i-want-you-all-to-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2016\/05\/the-convict-bourgeois-my-hans-fallada-rediscovery-piece-which-i-want-you-all-to-read.html","title":{"rendered":"“The Convict-Bourgeois”: My Hans Fallada Rediscovery Piece, Which I Want You All to Read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The two biggest things I left out here (mostly due to space constraints): Fallada always gives you a laugh. He has the satirist\u2019s eye for absurdity. His humor is pretty much always also horror (you can make a case that Expressionism influenced him, & horror fans will find a lot of scenes that use genre techniques like \u201cthe things that should not be<\/a>\u201c) and so it turns up even in his Nazi prison diary<\/em>. The whole vignette he opens the diary with, about the night of the Reichstag fire, is a perfectly-tuned cafe absurdity story\u2013except that it\u2019s also the story of how he and his country descended into Hell. The late wartime image of the modest man in his wife\u2019s bathing suit, waiting to be certified fit for military service by doctors so unchoosy they\u2019ve been nicknamed \u201cthe heroes\u2019 review board,\u201d is more typical of Fallada\u2019s taste for horror-satire.<\/p>\n

And also, he did not just roam about using opium and shooting off guns (though he sure did do those things). He did actual farm work, both labor and iirc management, and was a working journalist, and both of those experiences of hard daily service influenced his work as much as his asylum and prison experiences. He really was both halves of my title really intensely. Anyway, here you go, Why You Should Read Hans Fallada:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a four-page passage early on in Hans Fallada\u2019s masterful 1937 novel Wolf Among Wolves<\/a><\/em> in which we meet a policeman. At first Leo Gubalke is a pure stereotype: He\u2019s introduced washing himself in the bath, the correct way<\/em>. (Top to bottom, if you were wondering, and Gubalke will explain exactly why if you can\u2019t guess.) The word \u201corder\u201d and its variants are used six times in one paragraph. But then the cartoon peels off, and underneath, there\u2019s this:<\/p>\n

\u201cHe sighed. If one considered the matter closely, the world was surprisingly full of obstacles for a man who believed in order. Hundreds of things which the less scrupulous did every day were out of the question for him. On the other hand, he had the pleasurable feeling, without which a man could not live, that he was not only keeping the world in order, but was in harmony with it himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then Gubalke goes out the door and runs across a woman dressed only in an overcoat. She\u2019s lightheaded from pregnancy, and her baby\u2019s father has pawned her clothes in order to afford their wedding license. Gubalke arrests her because if he doesn\u2019t bring somebody in he has no excuse for being late to work. And Fallada adds the stinger: \u201c(Order often brings the paradoxical in its wake.)\u201d<\/p>\n

Page one: the ridiculousness of order. Page two: its sublimity. Pages three to four: the cruelty and chaos with which order is imposed. Lots of writers can give you the first thing, a few the second, but nobody except Fallada will give you all three.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

more<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The two biggest things I left out here (mostly due to space constraints): Fallada always gives you a laugh. He has the satirist\u2019s eye for absurdity. His humor is pretty much always also horror (you can make a case that Expressionism influenced him, & horror fans will find a lot of scenes that use genre […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[258,1269,52,106,470,107,103,55,86,113,264],"class_list":["post-10394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","tag-a-hard-man-is-good-to-find","tag-hans-fallada","tag-if-whiskey-were-a-woman-id-be-married-for-sure","tag-no-more-cotton-pickin-prisons","tag-order-is-chaos","tag-prayers-to-st-joseph-cafasso","tag-prayers-to-st-dymphna","tag-prayers-to-ven-matt-talbot","tag-the-dark-continent-europe-in-the-twentieth-century","tag-woman-is-the-irony-of-the-community","tag-work-is-a-four-letter-word"],"yoast_head":"\n"The Convict-Bourgeois": My Hans Fallada Rediscovery Piece, Which I Want You All to Read<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The two biggest things I left out here (mostly due to space constraints): Fallada always gives you a laugh. 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