‘Look Who’s Back’: Germans Reflect on the Success of a Satire About Hitler

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Yes, it's entertaining and what you call thought provoking, even on 
second read.

For anglophone readers the NYT's actual review gives a good impression 
of the book:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/books/review-in-look-whos-back-hitler-returns-and-hes-amusing.html?action=click&contentCollection=Books&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

 > Mr. Vermes has created an ingenious comedy of errors in which the 
jokes are either on Hitler’s misapprehensions about the modern world or 
the modern world’s refusal to take him at face value.<

And the most unfavorable portrait in the book is one of the right-wing 
party NPD whose supporters can certainly not laugh about it. "Er ist 
wieder da" has nothing to do with 'revisionism.' The funniest scene is a 
TV debate between Renate Künast from the Greens and the Hitler character 
in which he calls Joschka Fischer a "Kriegsminister" ...

Renate who? you now might ask. Which brings up the problem most 
non-German readers probably will have to face. Lots of the jokes work 
only when you're familiar with the public sphere in Germany. I give you 
an example from the review:

 > His behavior turns more hard core, as when a gushing female fan asks 
him to autograph her dirndl during Oktoberfest — and comes away with a 
swastika on her chest.<

Not sure that it's precisely her "chest," but that's not the point here. 
Thing is that this "gushing female fan" is identifiable as Verona Pooth 
(née Feldbusch), a TV personality, big in the 1990s and to a certain 
degree comparable to Kim Kardashian. To get the scene it's good to know 
this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verona_Pooth

And just like that there are one/couple dozen references in the book 
which require for understanding a knowledge of contemporary German 
culture. But then again it's always like this when you read books from 
places where you don't live yourself. I'm sure that lots of NYC insider 
jokes in "Bleeding Edge" escape my understanding, no matter how hard I 
try ...

And the moral issue? I don't think there's a problem. The serious debate 
about the Third Reich and the Holocaust goes on, my children learned and 
learn far more about it at school than I did a generation ago. Not that 
it's all good in German political culture - how could it? -, but there 
is imo no reason to see in Vermes' book a sign of Germany trying to 
forget about its historical responsibility. And humor is a benign human 
potential to deal with difficult issues. We cannot do without it, can we?



On 05.05.2015 00:25, James Kyllo wrote:
> It's an interesting read.  I'm a ways from finishing it though - my 
> limitations with the German language keep it slow.
>
> On Mon, May 4, 2015 at 7:38 PM, Dave Monroe 
> <against.the.dave at gmail.com <mailto:against.the.dave at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/books/look-whos-back-germans-reflect-on-the-success-of-a-satire-about-hitler.html
>
>     LOOK WHO'S BACK
>     by Timur Vermes
>     Translated by Jamie Bulloch
>
>     http://maclehosepress.com/book/Look-Whos-Back-by-Timur-Vermes-ISBN_9780857052926#.VUe8bc5H18c
>     -
>     Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> http://www.last.fm/user/Auto_Da_Fe
> http://www.pop.nu/en/show_collection.asp?user=2412
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