Winterspelt/My Disappearance in Providence and Other Stories
Feo, Ronald De
In the case of this book, such a pastoral challenge. The Christian stand is that son, is the "parable of God," the one goal-even if only partially achieved-is God can and does "act"...
...In recent years, several major christological manding officer of a German infantry MY DISAPPEARANCE IN PROVIDENCE battalion stationed at the town of Winstudies by Catholics (e.g., Kung, AND OTHER STORIES terspelt had decided to surrender his men Kasper) have devoted large portions of their attention to the biblical data...
...KOTELIANSKY Bloomsbury...
...This assumption needs critical hopeless days (for Germany) just prior to Major Dincklage, the officer who reCommonweal: 150 solves to surrender...
...In a way, theology has returned to a investigations and reconstructions of the Yet the way in which Winterspelt promedieval conception in which all legiti- Hitler years...
...his mistress, Kiithe As a whole, the short story collection, pieces is admirable, but at times we feel Lenk, a schoolteacher...
...In that (still neglected) one hand, he wishes to remain distant from the security of his world...
...And ness of his existence...
...On the other, he cant events from his own life: his youth- nical skill was on display, as his conwishes to interest us in their lives...
...For here we have a scenes from their lives...
...color to engage us...
...editor of the New Age...
...At this point Schil- God," a God who, in turn, is paradoxibook are powerful and intensely moving, lebeeckx returns to an image with which cally and parabolically revealed through almost homiletic in tone, and almost he began his study: Jesus, a human per- Jesus as "totally for man...
...For one, the theological style of possibility (to borrow from Andersch...
...It isn't ful communistic activities which eventu- stantly flowing narrative moved with long before we realize that Andersch is ally led to his imprisonment at Dachau, great ease back and forth in time...
...Literary underworld Winterspelt might be described as a novel of suspended action, and this, un- LIYEi AND LETTERS: they provide a lively contrast to the fortunately, results in another major A.H...
...But still it is a hopeful sign of be, "Not again...
...In fact, Ronald Do Feo sive narrative of nearly 500 pages...
...teristic of several recent christological assumed that German writers would look Andersch makes no great effort to create studies...
...Indeed, after the appearance ceeds makes for a very odd book, not at mate theology was understood to be bi- of a host of accomplished and imagina- all the documentary or historical novel blical interpretation...
...Dylan Qualities), Winterspelt lacks the weight Thomas...
...Yet, as if he were writing a pure Schillebeeckx's efforts to reach the tions, all of which are concerned, almost naturalistic novel, the author interrupts proverbial "general reader" are ham- obsessively, with the past...
...Even with all the referonly for exegetes and theologians, but ing or set in the period continued (alas, ences to troops and strategies and the wants it to be "within reach of anybody continues) to be written...
...Virginia Woolf called Lewis and the teenage prodigy, satirical density...
...period, specifically in the desperate, participate in the meditative drama: himself...
...What if, Andersch suggests, the comSchillebeeckx's work is significant...
...In this account of a forces who is puzzled and disturbed by a Better House" is a cold, objective, Dincklage's plan...
...every segment of this study contains material which has rich pastoral potential...
...them "the literary underworld," and Raymond Radiguet...
...ORAGE, KATHERINE MANSFIELD, wealthy, well-educated but rather preproblem...
...Some portions of his human history...
...ing, mixture of dramatic detail and corporal whose bitterness and frustration Again that odd sense of distance is very philosophical reflection...
...though WinDincklage's offer to surrender and the which the narrator tries in vain to resur- terspelt, for all its faults, is an impressive argument it stimulates-does not possess rect his dead past, and in the anecdotal technical achievement, both books are the urgency it should...
...But his concentration on the biblicall data is so despite the pyrotechnical display, which intense that the book is more of a pro- DESPITE the appearance in recent years is impressive, and the exhaustive examilogomena to christology than a christol- of important works by such relatively nation of moral positions, which is also ogy as such...
...stories in the players, all military men, and given a detailed portrait of Captain Kimbrough, worlds, and the remoteness seems quite book, it is "Daughter," the gentlest, the Georgiatborn head of the American appropriate to the subject matter...
...The coldness of the girl to her strange surroundings...
...Naturalism is constantly at war here with abstraction...
...almost report-like account of a retired German doctor who takes his daughter to But for all the time Andersch spends German businessman who buys a manor Oxford, where she is to begin as a student, Andersch very well conveys the . on these characters and for all his at- house on the west coast of Ireland and in tempts to give them substance, they his isolated setting confronts the empti- man's sense of guilt and loss as he leaves somehow never truly spring to life...
...Efficiency and sophistication did not diand remote, witout sufficient detail and The restraint and taste exercised in these minish feeling...
...and -Reidel, a homosexual most attractive feature of the novel...
...On the too far not only from the beach but also raim's Book...
...In this respect, the novella "The taking strolls across enemy lines...
...Even least profound and adventurous, that is the most affecting...
...16 March 1979: 151...
...in which quite disappointing when measured fronts, but is unable to adequately solve, a typical family man on vacation strays against Andersch's previous work, Efa very tricky stylistic problem...
...Perhaps it is safe to say, Peter Bischel and Hans Erich Nossack, thinking and is still another in a long line that no major christological study in the so much of contemporary German fiction of novels reflecting German guilt (in this foreseeable future can afford to be less still seems inspired by German history of case inspired by the Wehrmacht's failure skillful (even if less voluminous) with the the 1930s and '40s, with innumerable to break with Hitler and hurry the war to a New Testament materials than this work...
...novels and short stories cast as memoirs, conclusion...
...Schil- Alfred Andersch to the American forces positioned outlebceckx's book, even though the origi- Translated by Ralph Manheim side the town...
...ous...
...his intricate, chronologically jumbled pered not only by the technical nature of It is understandable then that a reader's fantasy at various points to provide biohis exegetical discussions but also by a initial response to Alfred Andersch's graphical sketches of his characters and translation that, at times, is simply massive new work, Winterspelt, might to relate supposedly very significant laborious...
...Hulme, Aldington, Read and...
...explore the possibility in a dense, elliptiother efforts, represents the most devel- cal and sometimes maddeningly digresoped example of this approach...
...But working at cross purposes...
...But fiction recall- verisimilitude...
...Since he his desertion from the German army dur- there was more: color, lyricism and keeps so aloof )-from his creation, the ing the Italian campaign, and his con- above all, a strong sense of involvement...
...The author con- "A Morning at the Seashore...
...We are also outsiders (foreigners, prisoners of war, travelers), both physically and psycho- Oddly enough, however, for all of the granted glimpses of the American logically removed from their particular stylistically sophisticated...
...was the first to Castle, for example, or the collateral publish Pound, Mansfield, Muir, Campaign in Musil's The Man Without New Directions, $15, 307 pp...
...There are porthe times that a pastoral goal has become novel that is not only set during the Hitler traits of the main German figures who part of the modern theological enterprise...
...Doubleday, $10, 480 pp...
...But even at that, Schil- abstract, philosophically oriented writers impressive, if occasionally ponderous, lebeeckx's achievement is impressive as Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, the work is really a grand piece of wishful and valuable...
...Beyond question, this is a book that is Pyrotechnics without life a credit to its author and, much more important, a service to its subject...
...But it is we have had, to cite but a few examples, characters appear to exist in a closed, doubtful that anyone who does not have Bo71's Group Portrait with Lady, Lenz's rather orderly little world, far removed some academic background would get The German Lesson, Andersch's Ef- from the devastating and chaotic war outfar in this book or at least enjoy doing so...
...The Christian stand is that son, is the "parable of God," the one goal-even if only partially achieved-is God can and does "act" in and through whose human existance was "wholly for not mere lip service...
...this is one of the reasons, at least, why style complements, even enhances,the Though this collection is a good (if the central action of the book- theme, as it does in the title story, in unremarkable) one and...
...Dincklage's decision and the end- His interesting, perceptive book con- ings, a talented satirist and fiery feminist, less discussions and negotiations it cerns five representatives of a par- who never wore drawers and later had sparks simply do not have enough ticular kind of literary life in the first half love affairs with Modigliani, Wyndham metaphorical, philosophical, or even of this century...
...novel related by a world-weary journalist from his characters, treating them in a In a number of stories Andersch al- who probes his past while on a visit to cold, objective manner, as figures in a ludes or refers directly to several signifi- Berlin, the full range of Andersch's techvast moral drama...
...The author writes his work not elsewhere for material...
...Orage's assistant, chief connecessary to hold us for an extended Jeffrey Meters tributor and mistress was Beatrice Hasttime...
...the struggle to sharply with the coolness and control ex- most, if not all, of the pieces focus on achieve freedom in an oppressive world...
...tive books focusing on this dark period one anticipates after reading the opening There is another point that should be (such instant classics as Boll's Billiards pages, which present excerpts from acnoted about the style of this work, and at Half-Past Nine and Grass's monumen- tual war memoirs and records as historihere, too, Schillebeeckx shares a charac- tal The Tin Drum and Dog Years) one cal background for the fiction to come...
...The author goes on to nal Dutch edition predated many of these Doubleday, $7.95, 231 pp...
...WIIITERSPELT the Battle of the Bulge, but one that atMany impressions linger from an intel- Alfred Andersch tempts to rewrite a bit of history, or ligent and often inspiring book such as Translated by Richard & Clara Winston perhaps more accurately, to play out a this...
...Doctor Schefold, fly Disappearance in Providence is that the subjects warrant somewhat more an art historian who has the odd habit of more successful, though far less ambiti- passion...
...world he attempts to project seems vague finement as a POW in the United States...
...For unlike those classic novels BEATRICE HASTINGS, MIDDLETON cious and now over-rated coterie of in which an action or event is prolonged MURRY, S.S...
...We again find the efficient prose, Cherries of Freedom," the most ambitiHainstock, a Communist organizer and the cool, measured narrative voice, and a ous piece in the collection, is a rather agitator who shares- Kathe with strict guiding intelligence (which was the strange creation, an uneasy, yet interestDincklage...
...In recent years intense focus on individual soldiers, his interested" ("Foreword...
...A. R. Orage, the gifted and left unresolved (K's quest in The John Carswell, ed...
...hibited by other characters...
...Here Andersch bring about a tragedy and whose passion- much in evidence...
...raim's Book and Herlin's Commemora- side...
...But here it often transforms the narrative of a wartime deate, undisciplined nature contrasts works to the author's advantage, for serter into a meditation on...
Vol. 106 • March 1979 • No. 5
