GRGR: Todorov and Clendinnen on the Holocaust

[rj]

> 
> > According to A.P. Riemer, Todorov's "remarkable" and "superb" study is
> > not to be regarded as "merely another book about the Holocaust .... "
> 
> Because, geez, what's more boring that hearing *another* complaint about
> how a lot of people were systematically executed? Gosh, won't those darn
> Jews just learn to quit moping and get on with their lives? What we really
> need is another book on the Y2K crisis or another autobiography by a
> presidential candidate...

I guess I'll let the reviewer answer this sort of no-content dismissal:

"*Facing the Extreme* is distinguished by admirable intellectual rigour,
not by special pleading, or by appealing to abstractions or slogans, or
indeed by the language of outrage. ...

"... The bulk of this superb book is concerned with Auschwitz,
Treblinka, and the other death factories of Hitler's Reich.

"It would be a grave mistake, however, to regard it as merely another
book about the Holocaust. It is far more than that -- and for that
reason it is likely to provoke some distress and more than a few
objections."


Having decided hereabouts that GR *is* about the Holocaust, but not
*only* about the Holocaust, this sounds a little like the reception that
that book received as well.

best