Paul Verhaeghen: Omega Minor

Omega Minor by Paul Verhaeghen

This is a very long, very slow-paced novel that takes patience to read. In many ways, it is the kind of novel I like to lose myself in.

It revolves around the lives of several characters who have lived and experienced some notably grim segments of the 20-th Century. The life story of Jozef deHeer, a survivor of Auschwitz, provides the main focus for the book, while Paul Goldfarb is eventually a Nobel Laureate whose career path takes him from Europe to Harvard to the Manhattan Project at Los Alomos. The principal narrator is Paul Andermanns, a psychology major whose field is memory research, who falls into the role of listening to and recording deHeer's recounting of his life experiences. Hannah Sidis is a post-doctoral researcher seeking to discover the magnetic monopole and she is also the predecessor of Donatella into Goldfarb's bed. In addition a group of Skinheads, who bring the historical coverage right up to the minute, are plotting a major disruptive event and in the meantime are wreaking physical violence and injury with baseball bats and bare knuckles on randomly encountered Jews in the streets and subways of Berlin.

Verhaeghen seems to have no end of patience, nor ever to fail for words, as he provides detailed and filled-in pictures for the lives of each of his characters, some from childhood on. Given the overall story, emphasis falls on detailed descriptions of Germany during the rise of Hitler, and especially during the Holalaust. But in additon one reads briefly of the changes at Harvard University as faculty and bright doctoral students are siphoned off into the Manhattan Proect and disappear unaccountably overnight. And one reads a relatively brief description of the small-city encampment of physicists, engineers, technicians and aministrative personnell which was created for the bonb project, out in the desert behind securely guarded closed gates at Los Alamos. If any of this is new to the reader it can make interesting reading. All the famous names are there. For myself, I have to say, that the victimization of Jews that is seen through deHeer's recollections, and of their transport and murder in the unconscionable horrors of Auschwitz, seems pallid compared to more grisly and horrific descriptions that have long been available in both fiction and fact. To my reading, the author evokes no new depth of emotional reaction nor does he provide any expanded insight into that gruesome story, again in my opinion.

All of this is background information and it takes 550 pages to complete, before the dramatic tension rises and the makings of a dramatic novel seem to appear. The lifelines of the characters finally begin to intersect and play themselves out only in the remaining 150 pages. My reaction is that there are precious few plot lines to support the weight of this novel of almost 700 pages. A girl, Nebula, who has been in and out of the story all along as a photographer recording events, arises as an avenging angel in a major plot twist. In addition the Skinhead threat provides complications to be addressed. And, also, one of the characters has had a major secret from the reader throughout nearly the enitre book, which only comes to the surface in the closing pages. One has to question whether one really must read 550 pages of quasi-historical background for only 150 pages of plotted 'story.'

What takes so long? Words. Words. Words. Descriptions run on and on and they are variously imaginative or memorable or even indeed brilliant. The orgasmic climax that opens the book -- the first of many that the author uses to document character's feelings for one another -- is well and artistically imagined. Memorable also are the several times where one hears a certain kind of European disadain for America and Americans explained and laid out in mocking detail. And finally, brilliantly vivid descriptions come to mind for the historic torchlight parade accompanying Hitler's triumph 70 years ago and for a chilling proclamation of the Skinhead dogma of today. In between, the words just go on, at length, to slowly advance the minutiae of the story or indulge the sometimes sophomoric philosophizing of the characters, such as "Evil is the only reality . . " and so on.

The book begins at a literal climax and then, often brilliant along the way, wends its way down to a bleat: the world will go on. Such also were my high hopes to begin, and then my disappointment by the end. But the world, often brilliant along the way, will go on.

[Eric]

It'll be interesting to see general reviewers' and critics' opinions on this book. It does indeed seem long.

Another long and recent Holocaust book, one that will soon hit British bookshops, is the translation of the American-Frenchman Jonathan Littell's "Les Bienveillantes" (The Eumenides, The Kindly Ones), written in French.

See:

http://www.signandsight.com/features/976.html

and

http://www.signandsight.com/features/1665.html

Personally, I'm more inclined to read authors who themselves experienced Auschwitz, the SS, or life as a fugitive from the Nazis, etc., etc., such as Paul Celan, Aharon Appelfeld, Primo Levi, Tadeusz Konwicki, Etty Hillesum, Avrom Sutzkever, and others.

I am rather sceptical of a younger generation of authors, mostly American, but also including the Dutchman Arnon Grunberg, who have created something of a derivative Holocaust literature, where rather comfortably off people, who have only read about the Holocaust in books, write a lot of material as a morbid kind of entertainment. This cheapens an examination of one of the most horrific episodes of the whole 20th century. Better to read history books, plus the memoirs and novels of those who were there.

As a translator myself of books written in Estonian, describing how the Russians also put people in cattle trucks and shipped them off to labour camps, I again want to read what people who experienced this have written, e.g. Jaan Kross, not what some young squirt knocks together into a bestseller. Kross was imprisoned for some months during the German occupation of Estonia (1941-44), then, when the Russians took over (1944-1991), he spent a total of eight years in labour camps and Siberian exile. Now there was a man who knew what he was talking about.

Does Dabbler think that the Verhaegen book rises above all this and adds something to Holocaust literature?

Originally Posted by Eric

This cheapens an examination of one of the most horrific episodes of the whole 20th century. Better to read history books, plus the memoirs and novels of those who were there.

Does Dabbler think that the Verhaegen book rises above all this and adds something to Holocaust literature?

Eric,
I've taken the two of your sentences that mean the most to me.

I feel very strongly that the Holocaust was, as you say, a uniquely horrific episode of the 20th century and cheapening it is absolutely the last thing that should ever be permitted to happen. It and the name Adolf Hitler should be retained vivid and used only for the absolute evil that they unleashed upon the world and which they uniquely and alone signify. They should not be allowed to become terms for merely bad things that happen, or to pass into general use in the language merely as derogatory epithets.

Does the Verhaeghen book add something to the Holocaust literature? Absolutely not! Not at all, not from what I have read, nor especially that I know directly from contemporaneous news reports in the US as the camps were being opened during my childhood, nor from reading since then. I don't believe that heightening consciousness was his intention, unless for younger people totally unaware of those abysmal events. But I find that hard to credit. My view is that he was writing a novel with fictional characters set against more or less realistic background -- and with respect to the Holocaust, not realistic or terrible enough.

[Stewart]

Omega Minor has won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2008.

[Eric]

British reviewers´and critics´reactions to "Omega Minor" will be very interesting. I´ve put my cards on the table as regards my reservations about this kind of novel, which arguably belongs to the "Holocaust industry", as described above. Now that Sign & Sight is busy discussing the Littell novel "The Kindly Ones", and Grunberg has also made his mark with his book, I can imagine that this novel will be embedded, in critics´minds in the same genre.

As I have already said, I hope that we can get past this phase of popularising the murder of European Jews as a way of selling novels, and try to promote the reading of more things by those who actually experienced the epoch at first hand, and wrote either fiction and non-fiction.

Originally Posted by Eric

British reviewers´and critics´reactions to "Omega Minor" will be very interesting. I´ve put my cards on the table as regards my reservations about this kind of novel, which arguably belongs to the "Holocaust industry", as described above. Now that Sign & Sight is busy discussing the Littell novel "The Kindly Ones", and Grunberg has also made his mark with his book, I can imagine that this novel will be embedded, in critics´minds in the same genre.

As I have already said, I hope that we can get past this phase of popularising the murder of European Jews as a way of selling novels, and try to promote the reading of more things by those who actually experienced the epoch at first hand, and wrote either fiction and non-fiction.

Eric,
I have recently come across and acquired:
Saul Friedlander's The Years of Extermination, and
Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners.

Apparently Goldhagen doesn't think much of Friedlander's work, calling it 'introductory' only, while a good friend of mine recommends the Goldhagen work very highly.

Your thoughts? Or alternative recommendations?

[Stewart]

Phew! I just bought Omega Minor today and, looking at the first page, I can see it's going to be a long, long ride. If anyone needs tempting (or put off) by the book, then here's that first page:

Im Anfang war die Tat - In the Beginning was the Act.

And this is what concludes that act, that serpentine pas-de-deux so skillfully performed against the satin backdrop of the blackest night: A lightning bolt hurls upward in a blinding curve of pristine white, the laws of gravity suspended for a quarter-second. There is a scream of triumph as the gushing garland - that string of boundless energy - spouts into the springtime air: With a dull thud the alabaster blob flops on a silken belly, tan and taut and humid with moonlight, and in the panting silence after the victory cry the room echoes with the silent howl of half a billion mouths that never were: 23-chromosome cells thrash their tiny tails in terror on the bare and barren skin. An illicit hand sends another power surge through his penis, fiercer still than the first - then a compassionate tongue descends, its trembling tip dipping into the basin of his navel: For an instant, a sticky thread of pearls connects the woman with the Center of his Being, then she swallows - she drinks my seed, he thinks, she WANTS my seed, and the thought makes his heart swell, not with love but with misplaced pride - and then her lips slide full over his lingam and the last fruits of her labor slither down her shiny throat. And while the man's mouth is still screaming in triumph, the gametic hordes yell out in Todesangst, for their worst nightmare has come true: In the woman's churning stomach the cell membranes break open, the molecules dissolve, and the strands of code unwind, and naked lies the blueprint, the secret of who Goldfarb is - the nucleic acids adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine swirl around in irreperable chaos, their alchemy forever lost. Here lies a man, exulting over the demise of a world population.

Sure, I can see how that last sentence may tie in to a Holocaust theme. But, what to say about how he gets there? Not a dictionary page wasted.

You have just seen a fair sample of what you are in for.

[Eric]

I see. I haven't seen the book. Does it go on like this stylistically?

I think I'll give this one a miss (like the one who was doing a Monica Lewinsky on him in the paragraph Stewart quoted). This sort of gushiness-squidginess-splurginess is not for me. I would become an inmate if I had to read 695 pages of this.

It'll be interesting to see how many of the copies are sold in the ejaculation of enthusiasm occasioned by the prize. And how many are read to the end!!! Having the book lying prominently on your coffee table is not good enough. I'm afraid this first paragraph does not bode well. I know that style is all, but this style is a trifle overdone for the jerkasm involved. (Verhaeghen pulls all the right levers...) Gushing garlands to you too. And he would have to do the chapter heading in German to boot. Why? Couleur locale? Plus 120 pages of excised footnotes. Manic, man.

I don't have the patience to get engrossed in these huge wordifications.

Well, Eric, I guess we'll have to await Stewart's reactions to the book. In retrospect, my reaction to his post should be counted as much too glib.
So, no, the book is not built around verbal ejaculations describing sexual encounters; nor is it built around the Holocaust, despite the possible metaphorical connection that Stewart has astutely observed on the first page. As for 'wordification' that can refer either to the style of the prose presented or to its content, it seems to me. With respect to content, I would say the book is quite varied. With respect to style, I don't think I can say it better than I said it in the review. The author seldom seems at a loss for words, no matter what the subject of his narrative description. If the orgasmic opening scene is not to one's taste, for content, then perhaps the author's style seems more congruous when applied to a description of the torch light parade that impressed me. (Now I have to find it, among all the words). Or perhaps there is a description of a banal scene that conveys his style equally well when applied to ordinary narration. I'll see what I can do on that score. Finding a 'typical' excerpt from such a panoramic book is not so easy. However, it should be easier than my trying to describe someone else's accomplished literary style with the really quite limited literary capabilities that I have. So let me search out some scenes -- spectacular and ordinary.

[Eric]

Dabbler: nothing wrong with the content of the first paragraph. Most normal people like a bit of sex now and again (or all the time), as do abnormal people. But if the author is looking for a new "angle" to introduce the reader to the murder of Jews to sell his book, vying with the others waiting in the queue for glory with their second-hand HolocaustLit, he'll succeed in mesmerising those uninformed souls for whom the Holocaust / Shoah / Khurbn is just another bagful of historical facts created by History to give novelists something thrilling to write about.

Someone who is never at a loss for words, and starts lists of obscure ones to impress university stoodents doing literature degrees is dangerously near to the entrance to Pseuds Corner:

...the nucleic acids adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine swirl around in irreperable chaos,

It is possible to maintain narrative tension (and the reader's interest) by occasionally and postmodernistically listing things from science, history and the like, but if the technique is overused, and interspersed with dozens of pages of unparagraphed sentences, you begin to get the impression that the author is manic, rather than a genius. Variety is the spice of literature. Although I was making a cocky pun when I said that Verhaeghen "pulls all the right levers" (one Swedish novel even has a protagonist called Jerker), I did mean to imply that, judging by Dabbler's review (which I have now re-read), the Belgian author is pandering to a new generation of innocents that know nothing about the Holocaust, and want too "ooh" and "aah" at the sheer well-distanced and surrogate horror of it all - as if it were Frankenstein or Dracula.

I find that what Dabbler says about 550 pages of historical background (i.e. things that Verhaeghen has nicked from other people's books), blent with 150 that move the plot forward, rather implies that the author props his edifice up too heavily with historical detail, in order to disguise the fact that beyond generating shock value, he has little to add to any psycho-historical examination of the Holocaust.

In summa: there's nowt wrong with an orgasm, but in the right place. And, in logical terms, Verhaeghen is rather equivocal as to whether the semen is resting in the dip of his navel, or is coursing uselessly down her sucking throat. Must have a lot to go round if there's enough "salad cream" for both receptacles.

Well, Eric, perhaps I'm dense, but even if I grant the accuracy of what you say -- for purposes of present discussion -- I still do not see the book as being built around the Holocaust. I don't think I have implied that it is, or suggested that to be the sine qua non for evaluating it, or to be a particular reason for reading it. So I think I'll stand with the overall accuracy of what I have said, without further examples necessary. I have no vested interest in who reads the book, and I imagine you will be one of the people who does not. So be it. With respect to your other suppositions about the book, I don't really know how to answer.

[nnyhav]

Well, I recently purchased it, and I'm looking forward to reading it. But not yet. </Augustine>

[Eric]

Well, Dabbler, whatever the book's about, I am not going to buy it. I always avoid cults, and this is a prime example of one.

Without having read it, my intuition and what Dabbler wrote tell me the following: Belgian genius translates his own complex long novel and fills it with a mish-mash of facts and detail, plus various nods to political correctness, to enhance his fat book. Then he wins a prize, where the judges are already members of the London-Oxbridge, mainly Left-wing, literary élite.

Some critics will go on and on about its poetic beauty (though the Complete Review has some dissident voices: "mish-mash"), most of whom won't actually have read it cover-to-cover. The book sounds like one of those unbounded splurges that are written by people who want to blind their readers with science and detail over hundreds of pages to appear profound. I reckon this book will prove a white elephant for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in the long run.

People who have no knowledge of the sheer variety of Belgian literature marvel at this clever man, now living in the States, where you get promoted if you know the right people, especially in academe. Gullible masochists among British readers buy the book in droves 'cos it won a competition. They will all stop some way through the book they have rushed to buy, then quietly put it on an obscure shelf of their library so they are not reminded of the money they spent buying it.

In a word, I am prejudiced against this book right from the start.

*

Please re-read my thread on Belgian literature and think about all those other Belgian authors who haven't gone to America, but have stayed at home and written (in Dutch or French) a whole gamut of literature about aspects of their country. But because the Brits and Yanks can't be bothered to translate them, this one manic self-translating emigré chap now "represents" Belgian literature in the eyes of the monolingual British and U.S. world.

The Danish author Peter Adolphsen also introduces aspects of science and a ragbag of realia, as does Max Sebald. But their books are kept in proportion to the tale they tell.

I look forward to hearing the thoughts of others who are now reading the book. It is a big and sprawling work and there is ample room for a variety of opinions.
Perhaps, Eric, you could translate some authentic Belgian reactions into English for us, to show us genuine Belgians' reactions to the work. Or are they all the same as yours?

[ions]

Paul's Top 10

[Eric]

Good idea, Dabbler. The Belgians, usually totally ignored in the English-speaking world except for their capital city, berated as being a hotbed of bureacracy, will be over the moon that a Belgian has won a prestigious literary prize. I will seek out the reviews and see what they say.

[Eric]

So, the first review I found in De Standaard (28th May), the more conservative quality Flemish daily, tells of the languages into which to book is being translated: Greek is the latest. Nothing about the book itself.

The Dutch literary promotion organisation, the NLPVF, describes it as a "thoroughly impressive and fascinating book". They give a reasonable survey of its contents.

The liberal-Left Flemish daily De Morgen (30th May) simply lists the facts of the prize and the prize money. No analysis.

On 11th April 2005, in Goddeau an online magazine for literature and the arts, critic Peter Mangelschots says the following: he says the book is long, but he is glad. He wants it to go on forever. He compares it to Mulisch's "De ontdekking van de hemel", also a thick book. A book to be savoured. Mangelschots gives a reasonable description of the basic plot.

Boekbesprekingen.nl, a website for literary reviews, gives a description of the plot, but no comment. (Undated.)

The website vlabin-vbc has a longish article which covers some of the press opinions. This author says that: Omega Minor is een breed uitwaaierende encyclopedisch roman en een zeldzaamheid in de Nederlandse letteren. Talloze verhaallijnen en uiteenlopende stijlen komen daarbij samen in een ambitieus boek over wetenschap, technologie, geschiedenis, psychologie, filosofie etc. (Omega minor is a broad, fan-like and encyclopædic noveland a rarity in Dutch-language literature. A multiplicity of plots and different styles come together in an ambitious book about science, technology, history, psychology, philosophy, etc.) The American reviews are positive, but the (anonymous) reviewer says that reactions from the Netherlands were less positive. Arie Storm tells of a soporific plot and "deliberate purple passages" ('Het Parool', 6-1-2005), whilel Kees 't Hart uses the expression "literary kitsch" ('De Groene Amsterdammer', 14-8-2004).

The Flemish weekly magazine Knack says nothing except that he's won.

The Dutch weekly magazine Vrij Nederland says very little too, and falls back on a Time interview to fill out its comments.

*

In summa: so far, I can find surprisingly little in the Flemish and Dutch press which isn't merely a rehash of the story, or an announcement of the prize. Maybe the literary journos are busy reading it right now before commenting.

In looking around, I noticed this quotation on another site, (boldface added by me):

Or to take a more recent example: late in 2007, the Dalkey Archive Press published Dutchman Paul Verhaeghen’s novel Omega Minor. Few translations would seem better-poised for success in the United States: Though literary, Omega Minor is a meaty read with a clear political subtext. Even better, the political subtext is directly applicable to everyday Americans: The plot centers around the Holocaust (a subject we seem to never tire of hearing about), and it also gives a prominent role to neo-fascism, a subject of more than a little interest over here post-9/11. The book was awarded the Netherlands’ most prestigious literary honor, and it even came with a rave from the famous and respected American novelist Richard Powers. But now, several months after its publication, it is safe to say that Omega Minor will be forgotten along with many other translations that washed up on our shores in 2007.

1. There seems to be a fascination that eludes me, in connecting Omega Minor and the United States. But, being American, I suppose many might say that it would.

2. I didn't especially notice that it 'centered around' the Holocaust. But, again, I suppose reactions might differ.

3. And, with respect to the book being forgotten, that I would definitely call hyperbolic. The book has many features, but after reading the 700-page story, 'forgettable' is not one of them.

So, more than ever, I'm eager to see what others think.

Many thanks Eric! I see that we have cross-posted but I am chuckling heartily at the phrases, . . . soporific plot, . . . deliberate purple passages, and . . . literary kitsch. I like them!
There is definitely arguable merit in those descriptions and I would never deny that supporting evidence can be found in the book. Nevertheless I might add that it was absorbing overall and I never dreamed of giving it up once I started. I should probably have confessed earlier that I like slow novels, and will often read as much for the words as for the plot.
Purple? Maybe, but perhaps brilliant purple!