Children are Civilians Too: a review
May. 7th, 2007 05:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zenithblueChildren are Civilians Too is a collection of Heinrich Böll's earliest short stories, set either during or after the second World War. On the back of my copy is a quote from Joseph Heller: “ Böll combines mammoth intelligence with a literary outlook that is masterful and unique.” The quote itself is bland, but the connection between Heller and Böll is an interesting one. More than anything, what links the two men is a profound understanding of not just the horror and misery of war, but of its fundamental absurdities.
Böll is at his best when detailing the struggles of civilians after the war is over. There's a lyrical simplicity to the best of these stories that steers away from the obvious pain and pathos available at every turn when describing a people ravaged by war. Rather, Böll steps away from that pathos and towards the simple fact of making-do that occupies his characters. Amongst the strongest in the collection is “The Man With the Knives,” about a man whose friend makes a living during a knife show: “Perhaps one of them, just one, will go home and not forget me. 'That man with the knife, for Christ's sake, he wasn't scared, and I'm scared all the time, for Christ's sake,' maybe that's what he'll say because they're all scared, all the time. They trail their fear behind them like a heavy shadow, and it makes me happy if they can forget about it and laugh a little.” And of course, by the end of the story, the protagonist is in the show, knives flying at his head: without fear for just one moment. In another story a man takes a job counting people crossing a bridge, for the statisticians, but he sabotages his numbers by refusing to count a beautiful young woman every day, a tiny rebellion against numbers and commodification. And in the story “Black Sheep,” a man fulfills his destiny as a useless slacker, one of the few people in the family not bent to mindless productivity. Everywhere amongst people with dreary, painful jobs and lives, there are tiny moments of beauty, strength, and humanity.
Other stories describe soldiers killing boredom with drunken meanderings, men dying in ditches and tiny shacks, men tucked away in prison camps. One incredible story, “Stranger, Bear Word to the Spartans We...” depicts a man brought to a high school that's been converted to a wartime surgery, and too late recognizing it as the high school he departed only months earlier as the doctors remove his leg.
By and large the stories are beautiful, and felt timely, given the constant news of a far-off war we don't always see the fall-out of. There are a few places where Böll's careful tone slips towards the sentimental, particularly in a few of the war stories; that said, erring on the side of pathos over detachment feels the right literary choice in a book about eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds losing their lives to the hubris and foolishness of their elders. To anyone interested in an intellectual and yet touching account of man at war, I certainly recommend this particular book.
Böll is at his best when detailing the struggles of civilians after the war is over. There's a lyrical simplicity to the best of these stories that steers away from the obvious pain and pathos available at every turn when describing a people ravaged by war. Rather, Böll steps away from that pathos and towards the simple fact of making-do that occupies his characters. Amongst the strongest in the collection is “The Man With the Knives,” about a man whose friend makes a living during a knife show: “Perhaps one of them, just one, will go home and not forget me. 'That man with the knife, for Christ's sake, he wasn't scared, and I'm scared all the time, for Christ's sake,' maybe that's what he'll say because they're all scared, all the time. They trail their fear behind them like a heavy shadow, and it makes me happy if they can forget about it and laugh a little.” And of course, by the end of the story, the protagonist is in the show, knives flying at his head: without fear for just one moment. In another story a man takes a job counting people crossing a bridge, for the statisticians, but he sabotages his numbers by refusing to count a beautiful young woman every day, a tiny rebellion against numbers and commodification. And in the story “Black Sheep,” a man fulfills his destiny as a useless slacker, one of the few people in the family not bent to mindless productivity. Everywhere amongst people with dreary, painful jobs and lives, there are tiny moments of beauty, strength, and humanity.
Other stories describe soldiers killing boredom with drunken meanderings, men dying in ditches and tiny shacks, men tucked away in prison camps. One incredible story, “Stranger, Bear Word to the Spartans We...” depicts a man brought to a high school that's been converted to a wartime surgery, and too late recognizing it as the high school he departed only months earlier as the doctors remove his leg.
By and large the stories are beautiful, and felt timely, given the constant news of a far-off war we don't always see the fall-out of. There are a few places where Böll's careful tone slips towards the sentimental, particularly in a few of the war stories; that said, erring on the side of pathos over detachment feels the right literary choice in a book about eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds losing their lives to the hubris and foolishness of their elders. To anyone interested in an intellectual and yet touching account of man at war, I certainly recommend this particular book.