When SS means sex and science

[Joe Allonby]

This may have been intended as a mixed-to-negative review, but it actually
makes the book sound intriguing to me.

On Jan 4, 2008 6:02 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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