World War II Novels - Pick two

I suggest a comparison of two WWII novels. I have paired them but only as a first suggestion. Here is a proposed list:

The effect of war on personal lives/loves

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen

The effect of war on soldiers

the Young lions by Irwin shaw
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer

The effect of war on personal lives again

The Human Comedy by William Saroyan
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

Jews in Hiding

The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank

the effect of the war on families

Suite Francaise by irene Nemirovsky
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman

The french resistance

The Blood of Others by Simone de Beauvoir
Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks

These are all great ideas, almigwin! Which 2 are you going to start with?

marqad: I'll start with The Hiding Place and The Diary of Anne Frank. One of the interesting things about these two books, is that they are both about hiding jews, but one is by the one hidden, and the other by the one doing the hiding. Also, the authors both ended up in concentration camps. In case anyone is interested, they were both made into movies, and the Anne Frank book was made into a play. Another similarity is the goodness of the fathers of both Anne and Corrie.
Another important character is Miep Gies, the woman who worked for Otto Frank before the war, and kept them all alive with food, and support, and encouragement.
The Hiding Place is about the generosity and bravery of an ordinary man- a clockmaker, who opened his home and risked his life, and the life of his family, to provide shelter to jews hiding ffom the nazis.
In both books, there are characters who are among the hidden, who are querulous, selfish, unappreciative and yet still continue to be helped.
Corrie was a much older woman during this period when Anne was just becoming an adolescent.
I have never been very objective about these books, because I was 14 when WWII ended, and as a Jewish girl, I wondered how I would have dealt with it, or how it would have dealt with me, had it been me.
The things that mean most to me about these books is the importance of putting your life on the line for your beliefs, as the Ten Boom family did, and the ability to retain your humanity under adverse circumstances, as the Frank family did.
This is not really literary criticism, so I hope you don't mind. I'm a passionate reader, but not much of a literary critic.

Thanks for an interesting comparison, almigwin! I'm quite intrigued by the different perspectives of these books - one by the young girl who was hidden (at about the same age you must have been when you became aware of what happened to the German Jews), the other by a mature woman who was hiding others.

I remember when I read The Diary of Anne Frank many years ago, what impressed me the most (since I already knew the basic facts about the Holocaust) was the totally enclosed way they lived during this time. Anne Frank was a gifted writer, and I had a vivid impression of the few small rooms that became the limit of their environment. And yet, in some ways, it seemed she lived as full a life as any young teenaged girl - her emotional life did not seem at all unfamiliar to me. She fell in love and was unsure of how her feelings would be received. She had terrible fights with her parents. The claustrophobic conditions must surely have exacerbated the tensions between them, and yet because they were so dependent on each other and so aware of the possibility of losing each other, it must also have drawn them much closer together and to some extent cancelled out part of the potential for conflict.

I'm sure I read The Hiding Place too, but it didn't make as strong an impression on me and I don't remember it as well. Since I'm not Jewish, it might seem natural for me to identify more easily with Corrie Ten Boom and her family, but I didn't. I think in the first place, it was easier for me to identify with someone who hid because it was her only hope of coming through that time alive than to identify with someone who had the courage to put herself at risk in order to save others. I hope I would do the same thing in Corrie's place, but I know I would do what Anne did - what other choice would there be?

Your comparison brings up themes from Gilead and March, too. Unlike Diary and Hiding Place, both of those two books addressed the question of to what extent violence can be justified in order to put an end to an immoral situation. John Ames' grandfather in Gilead and the March family in March were involved in the underground railroad, though, which is strikingly similar to what the Ten Boom and Gies families did.

Another 2 interesting choices for Jews in Hiding would be:

The Mercy Room by Gilles Rozier and Child of the Holocaust by Jack Kuper

This weekend I may just compare those two and creep out from the shadows here in this group.

I think The Remains of the Day and An Artist of the Floating World, both by Kazuo Ishiguro, make a really nice comparison. Both are stories of older men trying to make a place in a post-war society that no longer has a place for them and each struggles with their place on the wrong side of the war. But while The Remains of the Day is set in familiar post-war England, The Artist of the Floating World addresses post-war Japan. Another poster has already compared these two novels in detail, so here I'll just say that The Artist of the Floating World is an especially compelling slice of a little-covered side of the war and well worth reading.

The Artist of the Floating World is waiting on the floor by my desk as I write! I've read so many WWII books that describe the American and/or German experience, it will add a new perspective to read about the Japanese experience.

Charlene, can't wait to read your comparison! Hope you'll get it posted before I have to take off Tuesday morning. I'm about to spend two months in Texas on a research trip, and I know I'm going to have Books-Compared withdrawal symptoms.

Perhaps looking at the experiences of the Holocaust from a personal view would be interesting - Primo Levi and Survival in Auschwitz, versus Ellie Wiesel and Night.

Primo Levi deserves to be read and re-read. Are there any other personal experience stories of the Holocaust that are worth putting on such a venerated level to compare?? Kertesz perhaps?

I read the (drowned and the saved) by Primo Levi. It describes the author's experiences as a prisoner in one of the death camps, but it also takes on some of the inevitable issues surrounding the holocaust. I won't say more as the work is not at hand and my memory imperfect, except that it was excellent and I would recommend it unreservedly.

Although I would place all of Primo Levi at the top of the list, I recommend The Journey by Ida Fink. It is the story of a polish-jewish girl who masquerades as a gentile, and goes to germany with her sister as a conscripted laborer. The novelist lives in Israel, but writes in Polish, and has also written two books of stories Traces, and A scrap of time. These books don't compare to Night and Survival in Auschwitz because the heroine was not in a concentration camp, but it is a story of the pressure of Nazi persecution, and the danger of being discovered. I would compare it with Wartime Lies by Louis Begley which is the story of a boy who also masquerades as a gentile with his aunt, and escapes the camps and death. Begley also wrote About Schmidt which was made into a movie which absolutely desecrated the book. Don't judge him by the movie.

What about absurdist views of the soldier's experience?

Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

great idea! will you do it? Especially
opportune as a tribute to Vonnegut.

another thought in the absurdist vein: The Good Soldier Shveik and The Charterhouse of Parma

The touchstones didn't get it, maybe this spelling will help:
the Good Soldier Schweik by Jaroslav Hasek and Le Chartreuse de Parme by Stendahl

12 >

I'll have to reread the Vonnegut and get back to you ...

The only one of Primo Levi's books I've read is The Reawakening. One of the things I especially liked about it is that it didn't make the prisoners out to be saints just because they were victims - a temptation for some novelists. I think the essential goodness of many of the people portrayed in Levi's memoir came through all the more strongly because he wrote about them in such a realistic way.

Re Message 13: What is the parallel between the Good Soldier Schweik by Jaroslav Hasek and Le Chartreuse de Parme by Stendahl? What possible connection?

#17 - I think the parallel is the stupidity of war and the innocence of the soldier who is a pawn in the big picture. Fabrizio was looking for glory, but when he got to the battlefield, he didn't know which side he was standing on. It's been a long time since I read the Good Soldier Schweik, so perhaps that is a poor choice.

#18

Do you think Le Chartreuse de Parme and The Red Badge of Courage might work better?

you read my mind, but i thought the idea was to use books from ww2 and not mix wars. But I think those two would be a great comparison.

You know, I got hung up in the soldier looking for glory and the RBoC immediately came to mind. As soon as I hit submit I thought oops, off topic.

I'd like to go ahead and compare Wartime Lies with A Journey just briefly. As I mentioned above, they are about jews masquerading as gentiles to escape from the nazis. Both are based on true stories. The boy in Wartime Lies was quite young, about 6 or 7. His whole escape was managed by his beautiful, brilliant and glamorous aunt. He was taken into the gentile area of Warsaw,and then moved around to various places including the country. In one situation, when there was an Aktion (a gathering of jews for transport to concentration camps), his aunt went up to a german officer, and complained about the crowded railway platform, and said she had come into the city to go to the dentist, and needed to get back, Her german speech was so cultivated, and her looks so elegant, that she was accepted at face value and escaped the aKtion. There were many other adventures, including her relationship with a german officer. In the Journey, the 'child' was an adolescent girl, and she went to Germany with her sister from Poland to be farm laborers. Instead of having a beautiful, brave adult to hide her, and lie for her, she had to be the heroine, and save herself and her sister, who was weak and sickly. The authors both survived and louis Begley became a very successful wall street lawyer, and novelist. He wrote About Schmidt which was made into a movie. Ida Fink lives in Israel, but writes in Polish.

Have just finished reading Fatelessness by Imre Kertesz.

I think this is a great book to compare with the almost incomparable Primo Levi and his masterpiece Survival in Auschwitz because they both represent the plight of the Jewish Holocaust victim. Levi's book is less recent in my mind so excuse any slips.

The protagonist in Fatelessness is transported from Hungary as a 14 year old boy. It is transparently autobiographical, even if presented in this novel format. Levi writes of his own experience as a young man, transported from Italy at about the same time. Obviously both these men entered the camps in the last year or two - it would have been almost impossible to survive if they had been transported earlier.

The major difference in these two writers is the manner in which they react to the horrors of the Nazis. Levi has a detached superhuman and almost heroic narrative which sees the good in his companions and their reactions to the situation.

Kertesz approaches his novel from the point of view of the ordinary person - a person who admires the current Nazi administration at the beginning and has an almost delusional concept of his situation until at last it is clear that he is fated by history to be one of the 'criminals'.

Adjusting to his fate, ths writing becomes more confused and unstructured as he is broken by the regime and reaches near death -which initially I mistake for a deterioration in the novel style but later realize is intentional and very effective.

Both books deserve the highest praise. Both approach the intolerable situation from a different angle that makes the reader think long after the book is ended. If you have read Primo Levi, I would recommend Fatelessness as a wonderful counterpoint to the same subject.

I have heard readers making comparisons between Suite Francaise and The Diary of Anne Frank. I think these books can be compared on a several levels. First of all, both authors were Jewish and living in a occupied country and at fear for their lives. Neither survived the war - both died in concentration camps. They were both brilliant writers (although Anne had yet to develop her talent to the degree that Nemirovsky had - understandable given her age). When I read each of these books I was unable to separate the author from the the story - I was profoundly moved (to tears) that their lives were cut short and we would never be able to read anything else they had written. Both their "novels" were essentially unfinished - Anne's diary ends abruptly; Nemirovsky's novel is left uncompleted.

#25- Nemirovsky was a popular writer in France before the war, and her other novels are being translated into English, so you will be able to read more of her work. An interesting comparison with Nemirovsky might be Simone Weil because they both converted to Catholicism. Nemirovsky's family escaped Russia because of the Russian Revolution, before which they were very wealthy. Although Nemirovsky wrote about jews, not always sympathetically, she was not a practicing jew, and converted to catholicism. Anne Frank never disengaged herself from her identity as a jew. However, she died so young, no one can know what she would have believed or done if she had lived.

Almigwin: I hope to read David Golder one of these days - I'm happy that Nemirovsky wrote and published fiction earlier in her life so we can still enjoy her work; but I'm sad we will never read any future work by her. I've followed some of the "controversy" circling around Nemirovsky's faith - it is hard to really know her thoughts since she isn't here to engage in the dialogue! I wonder sometimes how my writing might be interpreted over the years - well, actually sometimes my writing has been interpreted in ways I didn't mean it to be, so I'm skeptical about the "truth" being put forth by some. But you are right - Nemirovsky did convert to Catholicism, and was not a practicing Jew at the time of her death (although that hardly made a difference to the Nazis). For Anne Frank, we can only guess the woman she might have become. I have not read anything by Simone Weil, but will have to remedy that situation one of these days!!