Book Review: The Street Sweeper

The Street Sweeper: A Novel by Elliot Perlman (New York: Riverhead Books, 2012. 640 pp)

Born to second-generation Jewish Australians of East European descent, Elliot Perlman studied at Monash University. While working as a judge’s associate, Perlman submitted a short story that eventually won The Age Short Story Award. Upon becoming a full-time writer, Perlman’s debut novel, Three Dollars, won The Age Book of the Year and the Betty Trask Prize. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.

History as the Spoils of War 

History is written by the victor. When peace arrives and diktats emerge, the narrative that develops often becomes one sided. For this reason, we can never conclusively know history because our narratives carry bias. I vividly remember surprise upon hearing my high school physics teacher—born and raised in the southern region of the United States—indicating unease regarding Abraham Lincoln. Although my teacher affirmed the goodness of liberating slaves from the South, he rejected the notion that Lincoln was a great president.

In The Street Sweeper, Elliot Perlman somewhat unsuccessfully seeks to tell the story of the marginalized.

The Street Sweeper 

Centering on two heterogeneous characters, The Street Sweeper explores both the holocaust and the civil rights movement. On one end, Perlman ponders the difficulties facing Lamont Williams, a poor, black ex-convict sweeping streets and taking out the trash at a Manhattan cancer center through a correctional pilot program. If Lamont lasts six months, he will earn full-time employment and the opportunity to focus his resources on finding his daughter, a metaphorical casualty of spending years in the joint. Would you want an infant to remain relationally connected with a prisoner?

Early during his probationary period, Lamont encounters a cancer-ridden holocaust survivor named Henryk Mandelbrot. Striking up a friendship, Henryk shares with Lamont the harrowing story of Auschwitz and his involvement in the Sonderkommando, a slave labor unit forced to work the gas chambers in the death camps.

At his core, Lamont is an innocent man. He earned six years in prison for a crime his friends committed. Having agreed to give a ride, Lamont’s life took a turn for the worst when his friends, unbeknownst to him, held up a convenience store. Describing Lamont’s obliviousness as a personality trait consistent from childhood, Perlman writes,

“Lamont liked to read the magazines but Michael had always been more interested in the candy. Michael was the first to steal and it had been candy, Now and Laters and Hershey bars, he’d stolen. Lamont had his head buried in a magazine and hadn’t known what Michael was doing until they’d left the store” (67).

The Historian

On the other end of the character spectrum, Perlman contemplates the civil rights movement and the holocaust through the lens of a Columbia historian named Adam Zignelik. The son of a prominent Jewish lawyer who contributed to the legislation that paved the way for the civil rights movement, Adam gained scholarly acclaim for a book praising the role of lawyers in civil rights.

“But worrying if [Adam] would ever have another sufficiently good idea was now a luxury he could no longer afford because it wasn’t enough to have a good idea one day. It probably wasn’t enough to have one even now. He really needed to have had one before now because, having spent five years at Columbia with only one book to show for it, an untenured academic seeking tenure was in very big trouble” (52).

Desperately in need of an idea and with his job on the line, Adam inspects a lead from a close friend regarding the potential link between black World War II soldiers and the liberation of concentration camps. If the link exists, it’s possible that World War II could function as a harbinger that provided the necessary strength for returning African-American troops to stand up for civil rights.

During Adam’s search, he uncovers original wire recordings of displaced persons—the title before holocaust survivor—created by a Chicago psychologist, Henry Border. With the wire recordings unveiling potentially the earliest historical record of the holocaust, Adam’s research begins to shift toward these stories. In learning more about the psychologist that traveled to Europe in the summer of 1946, Adam draws nearer to Henryk Mandelbrot and Lamont Williams.

Overt Racism 

For the most part, Perlman’s prose is engaging and at times masterful. Especially in the early stages of The Street Sweeper, I marveled at Perlman’s ability to link stories and to write poetic sentences. But as the novel developed, I found certain holes difficult to overcome.

First and most worrisome, Perlman sets the current events in this novel in a somewhat parallel state where Columbia University is willing to host Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and race relations are tense.

“The day before, someone had left a noose hanging on the door of a black professor from Columbia University’s Teachers College. The professor, a woman who hailed from a disadvantaged southern background, now a professor of psychology and education, was known for her particular interest in the psychological effects of racism on victims. Now she was a victim of it herself” (411).

Lithograph by holocaust survivor Leo Haas

Yet descriptions such as this one refuse to probe deeper, existing as a hanging thread. Despite heartbreaking explanations of the holocaust and the civil rights movements, Perlman refuses to expand on these imagined current issues. To a certain extent, Perlman’s densely packed narrative provides little space to expand on these complicated parallel issues. In my mind, the novel would have been better served without complicated current events.

Additionally, Perlman’s race discussion teeters between relevant and dangerous. A white Australian of Jewish descent, Perlman’s depictions of the African-American condition could easily be mistranslated. Interestingly, Perlman admits the danger in the acknowledgement section of the novel confessing that any description of another race inherits risk although he intends not to offend.

What Is Life if We Can’t Remember? 

Nevertheless, The Street Sweeper portrays some compelling characters. The reader wants Lamont and Adam to find success in their endeavors and such a position is the first order business of a good story. The Street Sweeper asks us to remember people when we consider history. Certainly, events exist on an institutional level, but we should always remember that history happens to people.

“Lamont Williams was desperate for people to remember other people. If they didn’t, what did anything mean, what had anything been for” (553)?

Despite certain reservations, The Street Sweeper is an entertaining and enveloping read. If you are interested in historical fiction and willing to read about heartbreaking topics, The Street Sweeper is for you.

Verdict: 3.5 out of 5

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Posted by: Donovan Richards

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Book Review: Boxer, Beetle

Boxer, Beetle: A Novel by Ned Beauman (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011. 256 pp)

Ned Beauman was born in London in 1985 and studied philosophy at the University of Cambridge. His writing appears in Dazed & Confused, Another, The Guardian, and The FinancialTimes. His first novel, Boxer, Beetle, was shortlisted for the 2011 DesmondElliott Prize and the 2010 Guardian First Book Award.


Review copy provided by Library Thing.

What Pawn Stars Can Tell Us about Nazis

A couple weeks ago, I watched an episode of Pawn Stars. Setting aside its obvious staged events and scripted dialogue, the show carries an appeal for those interested in the artifacts of history. In fact, I venture a guess that most hope to see someone bringing in an object similar to their family’s prized heirloom wishing that the value of the object is astronomical.

Well in this specific episode, someone wanted to sell the pawn shop some Nazi memorabilia. Despite the object’s value, Rick from Pawn Stars rejected the item a priori telling the cameras that Nazi items creep him out (let’s ignore the damning evidence on You Tube of Nazi memorabilia in the shop before the Pawn Stars where stars). This statement on fascism, though, summarizes my thoughts on Ned Beauman’s Boxer, Beetle: Nazi stuff creeps me out.

A Jewish Boxer and a Fascist Scientist

In this tome, at 256 pages in length, Beauman splits the plot into two eras. The “A” story surrounds the lives of Seth “Sinner” Roach, a Jewish boxer from lower class London who finds sexual satisfaction in young men, and Philip Erskine, an intellectual, elitist, and effeminate fascist who studies entomology (the study of insects) and recently has become enthralled with the idea of eugenics (the aim of improving the genetic composition of a population). Erskine, impressed by Sinner’s strength and determination in the boxing ring (despite his short stature) endeavors to study the boxer.

Despite his desires to avoid the scared-of-his-shadow intellectual, Sinner ultimately agrees to sell his body to Erskine out of sheer economic despair.

Thus, Erskine begins studying Sinner in between his work genetically modifying beetles. Worried about the escape of his captive, Erskine keeps tabs on Sinner day and night. Such a meticulous watch brings chaos to the relationship when Erskine brings Sinner to a fascist conference in the English countryside.

A Nazi Memorabilia Collector and a Neo-Nazi Hit Man

Meanwhile, the “B” story occurs in present-day England with a Nazi memorabilia collector named Kevin. A mundane check-in with a friendly investigator reveals murder and intrigue as Kevin’s life turns upside down when a neo-Nazi hit man chases Kevin throughout London searching for the clues that would reveal what went terribly wrong with Erskine and Sinner 75 years ago.

Erudite Prose, yet Difficult and Unrewarding

If you still understand what’s happening, I applaud you, because Beauman’s plot is exceedingly and deleteriously deep. Both “A” and “B” plots could comprise a full-length book. Coupled with scholarly prose, Boxer, Beetle is a difficult and unrewarding read.

Yet, my displeasure with the novel as a whole does not equate to a condemnation of Beauman’s writing. In many instances, the depth of his prose provides moments of beauty. The author actually begins the book waxing poetically on two of the most evil people in human history:

“In idle moments I sometimes like to close my eyes and imagine Joseph Goebbels’ forty-third birthday party. I like to think that even in the busy autumn of 1940, Hitler might have found time to organize a surprise party for his close friend – pretending for weeks that the date had slipped his mind, deliberately ignoring the Propaganda Minister’s increasingly sulky and awkward hints, and waiting until the very last order had been dispatched to his U-boat commanders on the evening of Tuesday, 29 October before he led Goebbels on some pretext into the cocktail lounge of the Reich Chancellery. A great shout of ‘Alles Gutze zum Geburtstag!’, a cascade of streamers, some relieved and perhaps even slightly tearful laughter from Goebbels himself as he embraced the Führer, and the party could begin” (1).

Despite some well-written passages, the subject matter provides this book with its death sentence. As this quote illustrates, the reader must interact closely with fascist ideology in the form of the novel’s characters. Of course, Beauman is not a fascist and his Nazi-leaning characters are by no means portrayed as saintly, but the very subject matter creates an internal reaction similar to Rick from Pawn Stars. Nazi stuff just creeps me out.

Ultimately, Beauman tries to plant too many themes in this small book. Additionally, the subject matter makes Boxer, Beetle an unrewarding read. In short, search elsewhere for WWII-era fiction.

Verdict: 2.5 out of 5
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Posted by: Donovan Richards

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Film Review: Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds directed by Quentin Tarantino (Universal Pictures, Weinstein Company, A Band Apart, R, 153 minutes)

Starring Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Eli Roth, Mélanie Laurent, and Christoph Waltz.

Dual Duels

Set in France during World War II, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds tells the story of two separately planned attempts to assassinate the leaders of the Nazi party.

In one storyline, Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) – nicknamed “The Jew Hunter” for his ability to locate Jews in hiding – interrogates a dairy farmer learning that he is harboring a Jewish family under the floorboards. While Landa’s men shoot through the floor, teenage daughter Shosanna Dreyfus escapes the carnage.

Three years later, Shosanna hides in plain sight as a cinema owner in Paris under the identity, Emmanuelle Mimieux. While changing the marquee, she meets Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), a decorated German sniper and star in an upcoming German propaganda film. Smitten, Zoller convinces Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) to move the premier of the film to Shosanna’s cinema.

Understanding that this premiere will provide an occasion for all of Germany’s high ranking officers to be in the same room, Shosanna realizes that she has an opportunity for revenge.

Killing Nazis

In the second storyline, 1^st Special Service Force First Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) assembles a team of Jewish-American servicemen to go undercover in France with the sole mission of inflicting terror on the Nazis.

A sadistic killer, Raine insists that his soldiers kill Nazis and scalp them as proof. In fact, he requires each soldier to personally give him 100 scalps. Through the information provided from a double agent, the Allied Forces learn that the Nazi leaders will all attend the premier of a propaganda film in Paris. With the help of the informant, Raine and some of his men gain entry to the event with the sole intention of wreaking havoc. Of course, none of this actually happened in real life. But Inglourious Basterds is a film that ponders the “what-if”.

In the Midst of Bloody Carnage, We See Compelling Characters

At its core, Inglourious Basterds is about the characters.

Waltz, playing Colonel Landa, is brilliant and deserving of every award bestowed on him for the performance. Landa is complex; ruthless on one hand, he possesses a sinister intelligence with no loyalties on the other. In every scene, he hovers over the rest of the characters as if he knows the whole plot and is only playfully toying with the other characters.

Pitt, playing Lieutenant Raine, represents the opposite of Landa. His sense of retribution trumps all other human emotions. For Raine, if a person wears the Nazi uniform, he deserves death and/or public humiliation. Although the Allied Forces are the film’s protagonists, their actions are more violent and less forgiving.

If Everyone Dies, Who Is the Protagonist?

Ultimately, the bloodshed in the film portrays the senselessness of war on both sides. As with every Tarantino film, everyone dies. But in this instance, death shows us how retribution can be, in itself, deadly. The Nazis killed millions of Jews and Inglourious Basterds allows us to watch them suffer for their crimes once more.

Yet, our desire for retribution can create psychopaths no different than the Nazis. Inglourious Basterds reminds us to be careful what we wish for.

The film represents another signpost in the Quentin Tarantino canon. Stylistically, it is everything one comes to expect from Tarantino films. However, the acting of Christoph Waltz and the juxtaposition of Nazis and retributive psychopaths makes for an excellent movie.

Verdict:  4 of 5.

Book Review: Sepharad

Sepharad: A Novel by Antonio Muñoz Molina, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden (Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 2003. 400 pp)

Antonio Muñoz Molina is a Spanish writer and member of the Royal Spanish Academy. He studied art history at the University of Granada. While working as a journalist in Madrid, Molina published a collection of his articles for his first book. As an author, he has won Spain’s National Narrative Prize twice and the Planeta Prize once. Molina currently lives in New York City.

Margaret Sayers Peden is an American translator and professor who received her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. Currently a Professor Emeritus, she teaches classes on Spanish, Spanish American literature, Translation, and Interpretation. Her English-language translation of Molina’s Sepharad won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize in 2004. She resides in Columbia, Missouri.

Origins

Since as early as the 2^nd century, Spanish Jews have labeled the Iberian Peninsula – the land mass of Portugal and Spain – as “Sepharad.” To this day, Modern Hebrew still refers to Spain as “Sepharad.” For many, “Sepharad” is a word that signifies the culture of Spanish Jews.

Photo by Daniel R. Blume

In Antonio Muñoz Molina’s work, Sepharad, the author details the consequences of World War II on this population. Put simply, the holocaust acted not only as a heinous genocide, but also as a divider. In the horror of a fascist-occupied Europe, Sephardi Jews dispersed throughout the world.

The Diaspora

While “novel” hardly conveys the experience of reading Sepharad, Antonio Muñoz Molina utilizes beautiful prose while telling the stories of the Sephardi diaspora.

In other words, each chapter in this tome provides an unconnected look at the life of the Sephardi. Whether depicted during the war, in its aftermath, or in current times, each chapter poetically narrates the story of this broken community.

Speaking on the dispersal of community, Molina writes of the unspeakable connection between the Sephardi,

“You go away and forget the habits and figures of that little enclave in the heart of Madrid, and years later remember, for no reason, a place, a face, a fragment of a story with no beginning or end, a novel we each carry but never tell anyone” (228).

While the Spanish Jews maintain this fragmentary connection, their new communities certainly change them:

“You are not an isolated person and do not have an isolated story, and neither your face no your profession nor the other circumstances of your past or present life are cast in stone. The past shifts and reforms, and mirrors are unpredictable. Every morning you wake up thinking you are the same person you were the night before, recognizing an identical face in the mirror, but sometimes in your sleep you’ve been disoriented by cruel shards of sadness or ancient passions that cast a muddy, somber light on the dawn, and the face is different, changed by time, like a seashell ground by the sand and the pounding and salt of the sea” (288).

The Horrors of World War II

Photo by Za Rodinu

Alongside this sense of connection between the Sephardi, Molina discusses World War II in brutal detail. With stories detailing the holocaust, Russian communists, and interactions between Jews and Nazi sympathizers after the war, Sapharad explores the depths of hatred, violence, and war.

In one poetic passage, Molina writes

“The war was filled with coincidences like that, with chains of random events that dragged you away or saved you; your life could depend not on your heroism or caution or cleverness but on whether you bent down to tighten a boot one second before a bullet or shard of shrapnel passed through the place where your head would have been, whether a comrade took your turn in a scouting patrol from which no one came back” (303).

More Memoir, Less Novel

As I hinted with my quotations earlier, Sapharad is not your common form of a novel. Molina explores many true stories in the book including the love letters of Franz Kafka and many personal interviews with the Sephardi.

At one point, Molina in a memoir-voice mentions,

“On one internet page I found, in white letters on a black background, a list of Sephardim the Germans deported from the Island of Rhodes to Auschwitz. You would have to read them one by one, aloud, as if reciting a strict and impossible prayer, to understand that not one of these names can be reduced to a number in an atrocious statistic. Each had a life unlike any other, just as each face, each voice was unique, and the horror of each death was unrepeatable even though it happened amid so many millions of similar deaths. How, when there are so many lives that deserve to be told, can one attempt to invent a novel for each, in a vast network of interlinking novels and lives” (365)?

Few Adventures in Life Tie Up All the Loose Strings

Ultimately, Sepharad is a difficult read with little narrative direction. For those looking for a story, Seapharad will leave them disappointed. In fact, Molina contends,

“People always want to know how stories end; whether well or badly, they want the resolution to be as neat as the beginning, they want sense and symmetry. But few adventures in life tie up all the loose strings, unless fate steps in, or death, and some stories never develop, they come to nothing or are interrupted just as they are beginning” (285).

But, the people of Sepharad have a long and complicated history worth documenting. In the wake of the holocaust, the Sephardi diaspora have many unique stories, and yet, remain connected through cultural lineage.

Antonio Muñoz Molina writes some beautiful prose and Margaret Sayers Peden deserves recognition for a masterful translation. While I am glad to have read this book, I am unsure if I am able to recommend it. Sepharad is a laborious read that requires every ounce of a reader’s attention. If you can’t handle that, don’t read the book.

Book Review: Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut (New York: Dell Publishing, 1969. 216 pp)

Kurt Vonnegut was a fourth-generation German-American who lived in easy circumstances on Cape Cod (while smoking too much), who, as an American infantry scout hors de combat, as a prisoner of war, witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, “the Florence of the Elbe,” a long time ago, and survived to tell the tale. Slaughterhouse-Five is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers come from. Peace.

The Muzzle of a Gun

Despite the glorification of war on the silver screen, the principle of war is not only brutish and disheartening but also perhaps the most disgusting trait of humanity. Although other animals fight and kill each other on occasion, the speed, efficiency, and scope by which humans kill each other is unparalleled.

For some, war is a necessary evil. To them, when dialogue fails to rehabilitate a group, nothing forces correct behavior like the muzzle of a gun.

For others, no amount of conflict necessitates the taking of another’s life.

Even a war universally justified like World War II has its detractors. Of course, the atrocities of Hitler required a response and no pacifist condones Hitler’s actions. But some people don’t bleed red, white, and blue.

Dresden

In the bombing of Dresden, Allied forces fire-bombed an entire city indiscriminately. In addition to the many military personnel who perished in the burning city, 25,000 civilians died. Vonnegut, a prisoner of war in Dresden at the time, experienced the calamity first-hand and found its destruction futile in the grand scheme of things. In Palm Sunday, he wrote of his book, Slaughterhouse-Five,

“The Dresden atrocity, tremendously expensive and meticulously planned, was so meaningless, finally, that only one person on the entire planet got any benefit from it. I am that person. I wrote this book, which earned a lot of money for me and made my reputation, such as it is. One way or another, I got two or three dollars for every person killed. Some business I'm in” (302).

With Slaughterhouse-Five – perhaps his most famous work – Vonnegut retells the story of the Dresden fire-bombing through a nonlinear narrative, an exploration of fate vs. free will, and a darkly satirical voice.

Nonlinear Narrative

The novel follows the life of Billy Pilgrim, a Chaplain’s Assistant in the war and an optometrist in his later years, as he time travels between his experience on the front, his life post-war, and his time spent on Tralfamadore, the home world of the alien race who abducted him.

Time: An Exploration of Fate vs. Free Will

These aliens view time much differently from humans. While humanity understands time in one direction, the Tralfamadorians view all moments in time simultaneously.

Influenced by his abductors, Billy Pilgrim jumps between eras in his life inadvertently. His perception of circumstances is exceptionally fatalistic. When it comes to death, Pilgrim glibly exclaims, “So it goes.” He knows that death is only one moment among many simultaneously occurring circumstances.

Vonnegut’s dark view of human nature expands when he pens,

“’If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings,’ said the Tralfamadorian, ‘I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by “free will.” I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will’” (86).

A Satirical Voice, Darkly

On top of these philosophical notions, Vonnegut writes beautifully. His inventive prose is entertaining, evocative, and creative. Discussing a moment when Billy perceives time in reverse, Vonnegut writes,

“American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewman. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.
The formation flew backwards over a German city and that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks.
The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed” (75).

The Futility of War

Despite the prose jumping from decade to decade and from earth to a distant planet in the universe, Vonnegut ultimately centers the story on the fateful bombing of Dresden. Instead of glorifying war and creating charismatic heroes, Vonnegut considers these deeds futile. Concerning one of Billy Pilgrim’s fellow soldiers, Vonnegut asserts,

“There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters (164).

Whether or not a just war is possible, the actual performance on the frontlines of battle is a heartbreaking part of the human condition. Is it possible for humanity to stop war amongst its constituents? Are we capable of change? Will time even present a conclusion? Vonnegut believes that a dance with death is necessary for great art. He danced in the fires of Dresden and Slaughterhouse-Five was the result. Just as many find hope in an excellent war story, others flourish with a well-told anti-war novel. Slaughterhouse-Five is a brilliantly written book. If you have yet to read it, please do so.