David Albahari (1948–2023)

I got this book as part of a 1 year subscription to Restless Books and I wasn't that thrilled at first, since I'm not a Kafka fan. When I flipped through the pages and realized that it's a 200 page paragraph, I was more than a bit dismayed. But I liked it! The key for me was to read it quickly, which isn't difficult since the writing is clean and the narrative flows smoothly, in it's own surreal way. I felt like I was on a run, with the scenes and characters unfolding to my left and right, and me exclaiming Haha! Heh Heh! Yuck! 'What?' as I zipped along. One of the cover blurbs says it's "between Kafka and Kubrick" - and I can see it as a movie in the 'Dr. Strangelove' mode. Peter Sellers would have been great as the commander.… (meer)

We'll be sorry, I told my students, if we ever stop telling stories because if we do, there will be nothing to help us sustain pressure of reality, to ease the burden of life on our shoulders. Almost at the same moment, as if on command, all of them stopped writing and looked up at me. But, they asked, isn't life a story? No, I answered, and touched my earlobe, life is the absence of story.

Gotz and Meyer begins as a detective story and concludes as sort of a field trip. How else can one describe the mechanics of a process by which women and children were exterminated? How do we portray the stewards of this process? Is it wrong to muse on their hobbies. . .their laughter and their homesickness? Albahari doesn't use paragraph breaks, much less chapters. He wants the dear readers to push through to the terminus. The conclusion isn't happy. How could it be? The novel takes place largely in Belgrade, yet the landmarks are in the skull of its bewildered protagonist. Žižek implores us not to think of the Holocaust in tragic terms; such is a disservice to the memory of the lost. Tragedy was not at play as its victims were not extended choices. Gotz and Meyer is a damning novel, though no one is to blame.
… (meer)

As stated previously, I'm always fond of books that depict Belgrade. This one was a chore, but a pleasurable one. It as if an erudite Paul Autser wandered the streets of Serbia instead of NYC. There was a hermetic edge to it, a collision of the eschatological and the absurd, all steeped in found art and prime hashish.

My friend Roger was reading this concurrently. he quipped that Albahari captures how asshat crazy it was, doesn't he? I told I him I found it a Holocaust novel. He stared at me as if I was sullenly drooling. Trust me, I know that look.… (meer)

> Hitler à Chicago est son premier recueil de nouvelles traduit. On y lit des histoires sans tapage, faussement naïves, qui chutent avec fracas. Albahari invente des personnages déroutants – un Indien en costume d'apparat, un rêveur en peignoir... – pour mieux raconter ses propres blessures : le déracinement, la fracture des cultures, l'impossible rencontre avec l'autre. Son atout : la dérision, cette pincée d'humour qui donne à ses nouvelles les plus graves une légèreté réconfortante.
—(Martine Laval – Télérama du 9 avril 2008)

> Harzoune Mustapha. David Albahari, Hitler à Chicago, 2008.
In: Hommes et Migrations, n°1273, Mai-juin 2008. Histoires des immigrations. Panorama régional. pp. 226-227. … ; (en ligne),
URL : https://www.persee.fr/doc/homig_1142-852x_2008_num_1273_1_4751_t1_0226_0000_1… (meer)