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Read Billiards At Half-Past Nine (1994)

Billiards at Half-Past Nine (1994)

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Rating
3.92 of 5 Votes: 4
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ISBN
0140187243 (ISBN13: 9780140187243)
Language
English
Publisher
penguin classics

Billiards At Half-Past Nine (1994) - Plot & Excerpts

It has been almost a month (and seems much longer) since i finished reading this book. It has been sitting next to this keyboard ever since. I haven't discussed it with friends. I haven't been tempted to share my thoughts in any way. That's about as tepid a 4-star assessment as possible.#1 of all #1s: completely disregard any blurbs to the effect of "The interruption of this routine by an old schoolmate and former Nazi who has become a power in German reconstruction triggers a conflict both absorbing and profound." This blurb would have you believe that's "just the beginning" and that there's a lot of "story" that follows. Completely misleading. If possible, read the book having forgotten everything i wrote in the previous paragraph except for the part about ignoring blurbs.Embarrassing personal revelation #1: i horribly misread Chapter 4 in which the sometimes-focused-omniscient and sometimes-1st-person narrator's perspective becomes that of papa Faehmel (aka Heinrich, aka the architect, aka the self- made man). I, however, continued to read as if in the mind of Robert, his surviving son (aka the robot, aka the destroyer, aka the ruined man), whose perspective held sway in Ch 3.Embarrassing personal revelation #2: Sadly, the point-of-view in Ch 5 befuddled me even more than Ch 4's. 1st page note: "Took me forever to get that the perspective is Edith's" (Robert's wife). Bottom of 3rd page i noted, "3rd try {reading the first 3 pp} and still—NOT Edith? Robert's {perspective, still}?" Top of 4th page i wrote that maybe it's Heinrich "but i must be misreading something." On the 8th page i thought it might be Robert's mom, "in hospital (& demented)?" And finally, funniest of all, at the top of the 9th page i wrote, "Okay, no, the 'narrator' in this chapter is Johanna, Robert's wife" {emphasis mine}. I was almost halfway through the novel and i still didn't know the names, family, relationships (Johanna is Robert's mother, in the hospital, and Heinrich's wife). Combine that with failing to catch that the narrative point of view shifted from Robert in Ch 3 to his father Heinrich in Ch 4, and you get an annoying confusion about the narrator in Ch 5. (Shame on me.)After identifying Ch 5's narrator, i finally figured out this scheisse (in which i am the scheissekopf) of changing narrators with little-to-no changes in voice.Therefore, (a) even though it's gotta be more fun to make these realizations for yourselves, (b) because it's much less fun to feel lost than it is to feel challenged (and that's what i was—almost hopelessly lost), and (c) perhaps out of sympathy, i offer the following summary of narrators.Ch 1: Leonore, the family architectural firm's secretary gives her view of her boss and her boss's father on the day of the boss's father's 80th birthday. Ch 2: Strangely, told from the perspective of Jochen, an old desk clerk at the hotel where Faehmel the Younger plays billiards in strict privacy every day at the same time.Ch 3: At last, the mysterious boss Robert Faehmel going about his secret life. Ho-fugging-hum! Sorry, folks, it's nothing scandalous or interesting. He's a regular guy except that he's a nutter for sameness and consistency.Ch 4: Robert's father's life story. The book is "set" on his 80th birthday, so why not a little autobiography from a guy who almost literally created himself.Ch 5: Johanna, Robert's mother, narrates from inside the sanatorium leading up to and following a visit from her son and/or husband, but not during?Ch 6: Back to Robert.Ch 7: Pingponging between Schrella (Robert's childhood friend finally returned from exile) and Nettlinger (the alleged "catalyst" mentioned in the blurbs that you should ignore).Ch 8: Joseph, Robert's son, narrates—an architect in training (his father & grandfather are also architects, but of very different stripes)—as does his fiancée Marianne.Ch 9: Schrella again.Ch 10: Robert again + his daughter Ruth.Ch 11: More from Johanna, this time she's "talking to" the general under whom her son served in World War II and narrating her plan for her husband's birthday party.Ch 12 & 13: Narrative orgy.Character & Plotishness Notes:Robert Faehmel is Mr. Rigid. He does the same thing at the same place at the same time every day. He's a lot like his dad Heinrich, actually. They're both architects. They both served in World Wars. They both lost (figuratively and/or literally) children & spouses to/during/as a result of those wars. Allegedly "everything" is thrown off balance because a couple characters from his past show up today on his father's 80th birthday. One of them is Schrella, a friend he's been hoping to see ever since the Nazi era. The other is one of his childhood/adolescence's tormentors who turned into a full-blown Nazi scumbag. Robert's mom is in the nuthouse (embarrassing personal revelation #3: i didn't notice/remember why, but all the blurbs i've read say she either tried to save some Jews being forced onto trains or she tried to get on). Joseph isn't sure if he wants to be an architect and coincidentally (today) discovers a dark family secret—will he tell his father? his mother? his grandfather? anybody? Maybe he shouldn't go to the big birthday party for grampa tonight. Maybe nobody should. Gramma's gonna be there, though, and the rest of the family. Did i mention there also happens to be a political rally right outside the very hotel where Robert plays billiards every day on the very night that the Faehmels are having a pre-birthday party at the hotel? Imagine that!Other randumb thoughts:Though the novel takes place in one day, there are so many flashbacks that that assessment is overly simple. It's no Seinfeld episode, let's just put it that way.The billiards metaphor and the Naturalism color stuff (red green white white green red green red red white white green ... ad nauseam) didn't do nothin for me neither. I'll need to read what others had to say about it and rethink. And what's with this whole The Host of the Beast thing? It really annoyed me. In German, it's probably one really cool smooshedtogetherword, but the English phrase is clunky and annoying and its "implication" leads me to utter spontaneously "Bah! Humbug!" I finally bothered to look up the phrase and found this quote from Reading with Feeling that is ironically appropriate to my reaction. "...communion, as well as background knowledge about a contrasting phrase also provided in the text, 'the lamb of God,' will likely affect how one responds to the phrase, 'the host of the beast,' and whether one responds to it at all"! Author Susan L. Feagin goes on: "These associations link the phrase 'the host of the beast' {*sigh*} with a sense of ritual, mystery, and horror, and its repetition encourages mantralike and mystical allusions that are reinforced every time the phrase is used." For me, exasperation is not ritualistic, mysterious, or horrifying. Maybe the reader must be a staunch Roman Catholic, or anybody else who's likely to revere The Host as being The Actual Christ. As a not-Lutheran, the metaphor is a dud.The translation. Strange. Felt very slangy, very 70s (guess it would be 60s cuz it was © 1962), especially at the beginning. Possibly limited almost exclusively to Jochen's voice as narrator/POV in Ch 2. That, too, put me off a bit. I didn't expect the language to be so time-bound. The perfect example from Jochen's chapter is "I can tell if they're out for a shack job even before they step out of the taxi." OK, maybe that's not the perfect example because it's the working-class guy's inner monologue.I feel concerned about translations though when i come across inscrutable sentences such as, "They had had none of the bravado of peace too long diked up." WTF is that supposed to mean, "None of the bravado of peace had been diked up in them TOO LONG"?! I honestly can't parse that sentence into something intelligible without ignoring some of its words. I won't doubt the integrity of the entire translation, but doubt crept in and made itself heard occasionally from there almost to the end.Maybe this book deserves another reading, but i doubt i ever will bother. Maybe it would touch me more upon rereading. Maybe i would finally feel the psychological damage of being a middle-aged (or older) German in the late 1940s, cuz i think that's what he's going for. The form pushed me away from it, though. Was that the point? Was he trying to shield me from his revelation? "Psst, hey buddy, i have something incredibly important in this briefcase that you might wanna see," he says as he squirts me with mace & fits me with the world's darkest blue-blocker shades.CONCLUSION: i wasn't man enough to think myself big enough to give this book—written by a Nobel laureate!—"only" 3 stars at first. I still don't feel big enough, but i'm doing it anyway. I don't think you'll hate it, but i don't want to recommend it either.That was my original CONCLUSION, but then i leafed through the entire book looking for all my marginal notes and was reminded how redeemed everything felt by the end. I felt connected to the characters eventually. I could begin to wonder if i'd glimpsed a hint of why Böll wrote this novel and why he wrote it this way. And now i'm torn between 3 and 4 stars, which is a crucial distinction for me, obviously. :-)I found in the last 25-33%(?) a semblance of understanding why these folks were so crazy and how Böll's saying this craziness was caused by {*sigh*} The Host of the Beast's tainting of their entire society. I almost feel willing to say 4 stars but i just don't dig me no moralist/political fiction and i can't get past either of those aspects of this novel. Final verdict: guilty of 3 starsworthy novelty.

ر این کتاب سه نسل از خانواده فهمل مورد بررسی قرار می گیرند پدربزرگی که با ساختن کلیسایی به شهرت می رسد پسری که کلیسا را منفجر می کند و نوه ای که در حال بازسازی همان کلیساست . هر کدام از آنها انگیزه خاص خود را دارند ، انگیزه فردی در دوران قبل از جنگ ، در دوران جنگ و در دوران پس از جنگ ....نمادی از جنگ و مذهب در زندگی مردمقهرمان داستان ما هر روز ساعت نه و نیم تا 11 در هتل بیلیارد بازی می کند هر چند هدف او بازی نیست هدف او دنبال کردن حرکت توپها و نظم و قانون و یک روند منظم و یاداوری اتفاقات گذشته استدر مورد سبکش هم خوبه ذکر بشه که تعداد زیادی راوی در حدود 14 تا وجود دارند که هر کدام هم به صورت اول شخص قصه را دنبال می کنند .در واقع محور اصلی داستان صومعه سنت آنتونی که در سالهای جوانی توسط فهمل پدر ساخته شد ولی در روزهای پایانی جنگ روبرت در شرایطی قرار می‌گیرد که مجبور به ویران کردن این بنا می‌شود و در زمان وقوع داستان یوزف، آرشیتکت جوان که فرزند روبرت است در حال بازسازی آن است. نسل اولِ فهمل آن را می‌سازد، نسل بعد آن را ویران می‌کند و نسل سوم آن را از نو بنا می‌کند. در هیچ جای داستان به این نکته اشاره نشده است ولی صومعه این مکان مقدس کنایه از خاک مقدس وطن و فرهنگ خانه پدری است، نسلی آن را می سازد و به دیکتاتور تقدیم می‌کند، بعد از مدتی کاخ فرهنگ مادری با خاک یکسان می‌گردد و از آن پس خفقان و ترس و انهدام ارزشها و زیبایی است که حکم می‌راند و نسل ویرانگر در دوزخ بدون امید خود دست و پا می‌زند، انگشت حسرت می‌گزد، ولی امروز نوبت نسل جدید است که بنا را دوباره برپا سازد، چرا که این نسل به ساختن، تعلق خاطر بیشتری از ویرانگری دارد.کتاب سرشار از سمبل‌های تمثیلی است، خون بره و گراز ، رنگهای سبز و سفید و قرمز ، صومعه و ماکت آن که از کیک ساخته شده ، توده نقشه‌های طراحی شده که مانند یک بار گراف بر اساس سال مرتب شده اند، بازی بیلیارد و جریان غمبار زندگی نامزد یوزف که در کودکی مادر نازی او قصد دار زدن او را دارد (و به زیبایی یادآور خودکشی دسته‌جمعی اعضای خانواده گوبلزِ معروف است) همگی این اثر زیبا را خواندنی و قابل تامل کرده‌اند.در انتهای داستان بل با نگاهی به آلمان پس از جنگ و به افرادی که ما از جنایاتشان باخبریم و امروز دم از دموکراتیک بودن می‌زنند، به خواننده می‌گوید سیاست‌های مدرن باز هم تکرار آن سیاست‌های قدیمی است و ظاهرا برد با برسر سفره گرگ نشستگان بوده است که باز در آلمان پس از جنگ نیز طبقه تصمیم‌گیر هستند، ولی این به مادر خانواده فهمل که ساله در یک مرکز نگهداری مجانین ساکن است این فرصت را می‌دهد که انتقام ناگرفته دیروز را امروز بگیرد.به قول مترجم محترم بیشتر از این، هر نوع خلاصه از داستان یا دادن کدهای لازم برای رمز گشایی از آن حاصلی جز نقض غرض نویسنده و ضایع کردن اجر خواننده نخواهد داشت، فقط شما را به مطالعه این اثر دعوت می‌کنم.بل در سال 1971 ریاست انجمن قلم آلمان را به عهده گرفت و سال ۱۹۷۲ توانست به عنوان دومین آلمانی، بعد از توماس مان، جایزه ادبی نوبل را از آن خود کند.

What do You think about Billiards At Half-Past Nine (1994)?

Heinrich Böll with his eternal cigarette(*)Sometimes the Swedish Academy does get things right, and one of these times was the award of the Nobel Prize in 1972 to Heinrich Böll (1917-1985), the year after he published the excellent Gruppenbild mit Dame (though probably my favorite is Ansichten eines Clowns, whence the above quote is taken). I have just re-read one of his better early novels, Billard um halbzehn (1959),(**) and am once again seduced by the many fine qualities of his prose.Though those of my generation may roll their eyes at this truism, it could well be the case that members of more recent generations are unaware that, for completely understandable reasons, in the first decade after World War II the German people had no desire to dwell on what had occurred from 1933 to 1945. After all, they were hungry, their cities were in ruins, their country was divided in two and occupied by four foreign powers, just to mention a few things. In East Germany the Communist Party was able to blame the "other Germans" - a stance which the East German people were gratefully able to adopt - while in West Germany conservative capitalists had taken over the reins again after only a brief interruption and did not want anyone looking too closely at what they did during the war. This began to change a bit during the late 50's and early 60's after the "Economic Miracle" of the 50's had greatly improved the standard of living in the Federal Republic.Böll was one of the first significant German authors to deal with WW2; already in 1949 he published Der Zug war pünktlich, set in 1943, in which he, among other things, displayed the inhumanity of the values of that time. But already in that early text he was no one-note-Charlie. Indeed, in another famous quote Böll said that the most important topics for him were religion and love.So, though WW2 plays an important role in Billard um halbzehn, quite a bit more is going on in this tale of three generations of architects, the Fähmel family, leading up to the fateful 80th birthday of the eldest, Heinrich. Böll artfully eases into his story by introducing the Fähmel's through the eyes of the secretary of Fähmel #2, Robert, with humor and foreboding. Böll's third person narrator moves among the characters and follows their thoughts and, above all, their memories, jumping through time from as early as 1894 till the novel's present, 1958. The reader must piece together the story from this kaleidoscope, but Böll does not make this difficult. In fact, there is a hint of the pleasure of reading a well written detective story as the pieces slowly fall together. At the same time an ominous tension is established and increased until the final explosion.Within this rich story of the intertwined lives of multiple generations, of joy and loss, of ambition and futility, betrayal and forgiveness, subservience and resistance, is mixed the many different ways people could and did choose to act during the period 1933-1945 and the price each had to pay for their choices. At the same time, Böll also addresses the ways in which Germans dealt with the consequences of these choices in the emerging postwar society. All the while, even when evoking the former Nazi who became an important figure in the postwar reconstruction or when Robert is being whipped with barbed wire, Böll's limpid prose flows smoothly and calmly, never psychologizing and occasionally revealing a wry humor that had me laughing aloud. The old hotel porter, Jochen, is priceless.This is one of Böll's generous handful of outstanding books.(*) The well-known quote by Böll means: Atheists bore me, they are always talking about God. Not actually relevant here, but I like the photo.(**) Available in English translation under the title Billiards at Half-Past Nine. Cologne - Heinrich Böll's hometown and the primary setting for Billard um halbzehn Rating http://leopard.booklikes.com/post/112...
—Steve

This is an excellent book to read in order to get a good sense of the German zeitgeist in the aftermath of World War II. It is a complex novel with the narration changing from chapter to chapter by different family members, work colleagues and friends of the family. There are also flashbacks and memories of different places and times. This novel is sometimes compared to Ulysses as it takes place on one day, September 6, 1958. There are strong religious overtones throughout the novel. The words 'Nazi' and 'Hitler' never appear in the text although their presence is felt. I recommend this book to anyone interested in history of Germany after the wars.
—Eadie

While it is tempting to generalize about all mid-20 century German writers struggling with their national disaster, I'll just note that much of Böll's first decade as a writer is focused on the Nazi rise to power and WWII (not until the political upheavals of the 70s does he firmly land on new ground). From a pacifist family and having refused to join the Hitler Youth, Böll was nonetheless conscripted and saw war both at its most gruesome and as one alienated from the unifying ideology. This novel which takes place on a day in 1958, looks at three generations (ages 20-80) of a family ravaged in a number of ways by the prior decades. The war itself is hardly touched - though there were many varyingly traumatic deaths, they take place off-screen. One of those was the sole brother who became a true believer (accepted "the Host of the Beast" in an oft-repeated phrase that places Nazism as a perversion of Catholicism), many of the others were "disappeared", there is some mental illness and so on.While the single day (with explanatory backward excursions via story-telling from older characters to younger and reminiscence), hints at classical unity, the specificity of the date (September 6th) has a Joycean quality. Another modernist touch (not really giving much away here), is a climactic scene where someone is shot (we're never quite sure who), the sound of which caps half a dozen separate scenes covering the prior hour (enumerated to the minute by various devices) as the whole cast of characters is spread around a couple of adjacent buildings in the unnamed city.
—Bob

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