Review of Abel and Cain by Gregor von Rezzori

Another book about a writer writing a book. How many literary novels and works of literature are simply compilations of writers’ notebooks full of ramblings?

 In the same style as William Gass’s The Tunnel, Abel and Cain is cobbled together from literary fragments and disparate scenes, some of which seem totally random and others of which are very eloquent, stirring, and occasionally breathtaking. In the same way, the two books discuss moral questions related to human suffering.

The prose is good here. I would say I enjoyed the book slightly more than I enjoyed The Tunnel, since that other book was unforgivably self-indulgent. This one is still pretty self-indulgent. There were moments of annoyance aplenty. The quirkiness of our main character’s perspective, his inchoate tirades, verged on maddening as often as they flowed like milky outpourings of graceful and sympathetic verbosity.

My favorite parts were when he was spending time with his prostitute. The conversations were interesting. The atmosphere was beguiling. Toward the end of the book we are treated to details related to the Nuremberg trials. After hundreds of pages of intimate details, steaming slices of life and whiny diary entries about authorship and his obsession with the way-more-successful author Nagel, Rezzori brings his themes back to the center of the discussion and indicts various parties for their roles in the tragedy of WWII. His lack of enthusiasm for German might and culture provides much of the fodder for his satirical rants. But the book is mostly about himself. His feelings, failings, laziness, dreams, lusts, and mortality.

We are told that he was trying to forge in the smithy of his soul the uncreated conscious of his race. The pretentious claim that the main character, who is a transparently veiled analog of the author, is trying to recreate Joyce’s accomplishment by writing the most representative book of his country of his time made me scoff. I would have to say that I consider Magic Mountain much better than Abel and Cain, and that this book is far too sloppy, too inconsistent, to stand as the one great work of its time. But like Thomas Mann’s seminal and timeless classic, Abel and Cain was enjoyable to read almost all the way through. It was full of pithy spitballs. It surprised in myriad ways. ‘Twas unpredictable, addictive, and always easy to read. You might draw much meaning from its close-packed pages, even as large chucks of its body slips from memory. 

Joshua Cohen, in his inaccurate Introduction, for the first five paragraphs, sums up the book as a collection of murders of various types, listing off the obvious types of murders that exist unnecessarily. Not only is this introductory summation baffling to me after having finished the book, it makes me wonder if he read a different book altogether. There is hardly any space allotted to murder in Abel and Cain. Murders of various kinds occur, as Cohen intimates, and each one takes down separate concepts and people and ideas, but they are always in the background. There is very little action in this novel. It is a novel of literary fluff. The best comparison I can come up with is Solenoid by Cărtărescu—but less surreal. That beefy book is like a cousin to this one. As is The Tunnel, for how it deals with German history and its language.

This is a language-driven book. There is a spooky action at a distance between the reader and the author. You can feel the author’s presence and influence at a remove. The author insinuates himself through overuse of nonstandard structure, imagery etc. We are supposed to be engaged with the sentences as vehicles for information. Like any good book lacking plot, it operates through fulfilling our brain’s craving for fresh statements. I didn’t really sympathize with the characters. I did not get lost in a story. I simply found the experience of sentence perusal enjoyable. For 900 pages. That alone is a feat. Not one worthy of Joyce, but definitely worth your time.  

Here is a list of monolithic German language books I plan to read or have read.
Magic Mountain & Joseph and His Brothers – Thomas Mann
Bottom’s Dream – Arno Schmidt
Abel and Cain
The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
Anniversaries by Uwe Johnson
Berlin Alexanderplatz and Mountains Oceans Giants
Demons and The Strudlhof Steps by Heimito von Doderer
The Glass Bead Game – Hermann Hesse
Both Wilhelm Meister novels – Goethe
The Arcades Project – Benjamin, Walter

Let me know if I’m missing any for my list!