Some more books and dvds arrived this morning which was a bit of a relief. I've read just about everything here and was dreading the only book which I have started innumerable times but have never finished. "Der Grosse Duden, 4, Grammatik", a book on German grammar in German! It's exciting stuff but only if you want to know why the verb in the sentence you're reading always comes on the next page (or in Hitler's case three pages on - loved his consecutive clauses did Adolf)
Now in amongst the usual fodder was one I had slipped into the order, the second Artemis Fowl novel, but also there was 'The boy in the striped pyjamas'. Now I've been intrigued by this book ever since I saw the first advertisements for the film. We're a bit isolated down here and I must have missed the fuss when the book came out but was it really a children's book? The theme is rather an adult one. Well it is! Not an adult book pretending to be for kids, it genuinely seems to be a book intended for children, in language, style etc.
Now I read the first three chapters and stopped. No, I will continue it. I stopped because an awful thought crossed my mind. Would I let a 'child' of mine read it? Note the word child. Now Auschwitz-Birkenau is a well known historical fact, David Irving notwithstanding. What went on there is well known both from German archives and eye witness testimony, Primo Levi being the outstanding example. But would I want 'my child', 9 or 10 years old say, matching the main characters' ages, reading about something so horrific, that even now the reality of it beggars belief?
Would I want them to know how far into the pit the human race will go in pursuit of its own beliefs? Before they have to? Shouldn't what little innocence that remains to them be preserved just a little while longer? And yet the children, because they could not work, were always in the vanguard to the gas chamber. Doesn't the child have a right to know that adults, just like their parents, allowed an Austrian dolt of a corporal to gain power and employ a gang of psychpathic maniacs to exterminate European Jewry using essentially the same methodologies as are used to provide their toys or their Big Macs, ie big industry?
And even if we agree that 9 or 10 is too young for tales of backbreaking labour from pre dawn to dusk on 800 calories a day, the gas gangrene and typhus experiments, of the mad scramble to be at the top of the pile when the gas pellets hit the floor, crushing the old and the infirm and the young underfoot, extracting the teeth from the corpses, loading your fellow countrymen and women (and children), even perhaps your friends, into the crematoria, when will they be old enough? Are we old enough?
Are we ever old enough for the 'miracle' of the gas chambers? The small girl, who fainting at exactly the right time, had enough uncontaminated air at floor level to survive the gassing. The only survivor of the gas chambers at Auschwitz! They dragged her out and put a bullet in the back of her head!
Perhaps 9 or 10 IS the right age - experience won't have taught them that this happens all the time!
Looking forward to Artemis though. Children's book as well but such an excellent conceit. The fairies and elves no longer use magic much, it's all high tech wizardry, computers etc, all overseen by a Sys Admin who's a centaur!
A few DVDs, not much but a copy of 'All quiet on the western front' (Im Western, Nichts neues - nothing new in the west) which I think I shall watch tonight as it's subtilted - assuming they all go to bed early. And a copy of Memphis Belle, not subtitled but probably watchable for the planes.
I was going to write about reality and whether it's really there or not today but like Borges' 'New refutation of time' perhaps I'll leave it for another pun!
Oh, and the blow by blow account of Satre v Camus in all its blood-stained, testosterone fueled glory will also have to wait. We would not want to do my heroes an injustice now, would we?
Well, for having completely dodged the question, you still provided a though provoking essay (until, as usual) you went off topic in the ending paragraphs.
ReplyDeleteBut, it's good to know that people, excuse me, penguins, are asking the same questions we humans (in all our stupidity) are asking. You are correct to ask whether we are EVER old enough. I think we are not. And, I think that had my second child not experiened first hand the death of her classmate's parents (both in less than a year) and subsequent homelessness and hopelessness that ensued, she might never have known to be thankful for a partially deranged mother and a half-wit father.
I thought to myself that second graders are too young to know about cancer. And the next week, we were attending a funeral. So death and disease should probably be discussed with as much accuracy and candor as sex and pregnancy, abeit, a little more wisely since they are more permanent conditions.
Off topic? I do it deliberately, I gave up writing 'on topic' a long time ago. 'Tis but whimsy, this blog.
ReplyDeleteSome things never change and are true across species.
ReplyDeleteMale superiority, for instance. It's okay to do something nonsensical deliberately, of course, but to do it with an air of superiority rather than a humble admission seems unnecessarily prideful.
Air of superiority? Hardly, and certainly not machismo driven, but then "'umble, sir, very, very 'umble" never quite tripped convincingly from my beak :-)
ReplyDeleteCareful, I bruise easily.
I'm sorry.
ReplyDeleteForgiven.
ReplyDelete