The Kindly Ones
By: Jonathan Littell
2006
"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen."
Ernest Hemingway
I have had a recurring dream since my childhood of being buried alive in garbage. The refuse fills my lungs and I scream to gasp air. I try to see what kinds of waste surround me, but I am unable to fully comprehend what is encroaching my body. It's a mass, a grey/black mass that pushes on me and directs me into a dark place where I will never be found. This is a place where I am alone. In those few moments before I wake a gasp, I attempt to struggle free. Futility renders me impotent and I accept the end. The end.
It's odd that I have not had this dream while, or after, reading The Kindly Ones. One may say that the novel has acted as some kind of cathartic agent, allowing me (unconsciously) to come to terms with this dream (that psychoanalysts would have a field day with.)
But, the dream I mentioned above, I've described in a subjective, even poetic way. Does that make the dream credible? I'm not sure. All I know is if someone disclosed the same dream to me I would be concerned yet somehow ambivalent and questioning its meaning. Max Aue, our protagonist of The Kindly Ones dreams and hallucinates similar fatalistic reveries. He is haunted.
Max Aue. Max Aue is one of the most unreliable narrators I have been privileged to read in historical literature. He is a man who instead of trying to justify his actions, explains them in a bureaucratic fashion. His involvement in the extermination of the Jewish race is explained by his actions. He even criticizes the intentions of the Third Reich, even though he is a fundamental piece to its "solution to the Jewish question."
I am conflicted writing about this novel because I felt I should analyze it in a very academic way. After careful consideration I thought it would be a disservice to the novel. Littell has formulated a novel that bridges academic historical inquiry and informal post-modernist story telling. As a reader I felt profoundly conflicted while reading this tome of a novel, and I believe that is Littell's intention with this novel. He shows the dehumanizing nature of bureaucracy. To clarify, how bureaucracy destroys the the person who perpetuates it and the people that it impacts. Littell has packed this novel with an incredible amount of research, but I feel the heart of this novel lies in Aue. It is the way he navigates through the cardinal moments of the second world war and how they affect him.
With a little Googling I was able to find out who the Kindly Ones were. In Greek literature they are ghost like entities that follow a character around reminding him or her of their actions, which are usually associated with a murder. This is the reason why I included the quote from Hemingway above. This novel is Aue. He talks and talks and talks, he tries to explain away his actions and tries to make the reader complicit in his actions by implying that we are infallible and he is a victim of circumstance. The one moment in the novel when Aue has time away from his responsibilities in the Third Reich he secludes himself in a house, and this is when the reader starts to learn about Aue. This is when the Kindly Ones come to Aue and remind him of his atrocities. He has no way of processing these feelings in a positive way so they become manifested in incestuous thoughts and reveries. It is a dark moment of the novel. Pitch black really.
This novel may me think of things that I may have done in my life and I have not fully processed and how my mind has tried to remind me these actions. Well I believe the dream I mentioned above is The Kindly Ones telling me that there is something I need to address. Maybe it signifies excess or superficiality, the hypocrisy of being critical of marketing and materialism, yet my apartment is filled with books and DVD's. All I know now is that I am listening. This is one of the best novels of the 00's. It is risky and a liability on your bookshelf. You have been warned.
With a little Googling I was able to find out who the Kindly Ones were. In Greek literature they are ghost like entities that follow a character around reminding him or her of their actions, which are usually associated with a murder. This is the reason why I included the quote from Hemingway above. This novel is Aue. He talks and talks and talks, he tries to explain away his actions and tries to make the reader complicit in his actions by implying that we are infallible and he is a victim of circumstance. The one moment in the novel when Aue has time away from his responsibilities in the Third Reich he secludes himself in a house, and this is when the reader starts to learn about Aue. This is when the Kindly Ones come to Aue and remind him of his atrocities. He has no way of processing these feelings in a positive way so they become manifested in incestuous thoughts and reveries. It is a dark moment of the novel. Pitch black really.
This novel may me think of things that I may have done in my life and I have not fully processed and how my mind has tried to remind me these actions. Well I believe the dream I mentioned above is The Kindly Ones telling me that there is something I need to address. Maybe it signifies excess or superficiality, the hypocrisy of being critical of marketing and materialism, yet my apartment is filled with books and DVD's. All I know now is that I am listening. This is one of the best novels of the 00's. It is risky and a liability on your bookshelf. You have been warned.
Grade:
A+
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