When SS means sex and science
Dave Monroe
against.the.dave at gmail.com
Fri Jan 4 05:02:25 CST 2008
When SS means sex and science
04/01/2008
Reviewed by David Herman
Omega Minor
By Paul Verhaeghen
Dalkey Archive, £9.99
Paul Verhaeghen's Omega Minor is a big book in every sense. Almost 700
pages long, it takes on the history of the 20th century. It moves
between Nazi Germany and Los Alamos, from the Berlin Wall to
Auschwitz. We meet Oppenheimer and Heisenberg, Mengele and Speer, with
a brief glimpse of Hitler in the bunker.
The novel interweaves the stories of three central characters. First,
there is Jozef De Heer, an elderly Jewish Holocaust survivor whom we
meet in Berlin in 1995. After attempting suicide, he ends up in
hospital where he meets Paul Andermans, a young psychology student who
has come to study memory at Potsdam.
It is the kind of joke that Verhaeghen likes: one memory man meets
another as De Heer tells the student his life story.
Then there is Goldfarb, a brilliant Nobel Prize-winning physicist, who
escaped Nazi Germany and went to America but has now returned to
Berlin. Omega Minor moves from one character's story to another,
mixing Nazis, Jews, physics and sex.
But it is more complex than that.Verhaeghen is an ambitious writer,
switching from the 1930s to the 1990s and back, mixing genres and
tone. While at times the book operates in recognisable territory, one
can never entirely relax.
At the beginning in Berlin in 1995, two old men look back on their
youth. Both were victims of the Nazis. Goldfarb escaped in the 1930s
before becoming a brilliant physicist, whereas De Heer didn't get away
and was taken to Auschwitz.
The central part of the book is set in the 1930s and '40s, with vivid
recreations of the rise of Nazism and of the sharp, intellectual world
of mathematicians and physicists at Harvard and Los Alamos. But there
is a fascinating twist towards the end and suddenly the book becomes a
dramatic thriller. Nothing is what it seemed.
At its best, Omega Minor is an exciting novel of history and ideas.
Verhaeghen is himself a scientist, a cognitive psychologist working in
America, and he is thoroughly at home in the world of scientific
theories. He even makes nuclear physics come alive.
He has also immersed himself in the history of the period and the
literature of the Holocaust and much of the detail feels authentic.
Yet he is also able to change gear, from nuclear physics to the twists
and turns of a compelling thriller. His book is crammed with an
extraordinary cast of characters: neo-Nazi skinheads and SS officers,
film stars, rabbis and magicians. At times it reads like The White
Hotel (but with Einstein replacing Freud) re-written by Thomas
Pynchon.
There is, however, a big but. The sex is graphic, sometimes
pornographic, and the sex scenes involving SS brothels and Nazi
officers are of dubious taste. It seems that, for 30 years, writers
and film-makers have felt compelled to exploit the pornographic
potential of Nazism. Few artistic trends are as unsavoury as this. The
physical violence is just as explicit and there's a lot of it.
Omega Minor is also too often too heavy and slow, awash with
unnecessary detail, characters and indeed plot. Many readers will get
lost and anyone who can understand the ending deserves a share of the
prizes Verhaeghen has already received for the novel.
It is really three books in one and it is a long wait until page 563
for the big twist. Verhaeghen has put enormous effort into this book.
Unfortunately, the reader has to as well.
http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m12s39&SecId=39&AId=57261&ATypeId=1
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