A shocking novel. A disturbing novel. A brutal novel.
And if you click into the novel's ironic/humorous/satiric vibe set in the years when Berlin was Europe's most liberal city featuring avant-garde art, radical politics and sex easily available in any and all varieties, then Berlin Alexanderplaz is, I kid you not, a thrilling, enjoyable romp at breakneck speed.
Oh, the picaresque novel with its epigraphs and episodic adventures of an insatiable scallywag usually from the lower classes. True to form, Alfred Döblin trots out his main character and hero, a World War I vet by the name of Franz Biberkopf, fresh from Tegel Penitentiary where he served four years for sending his sweetheart to an early grave by way of cracking her skull and inflicting an assortment of other nasty injuries.
Alfred Döblin's expressionist prose reads like Émile Zola's naturalism on crack and speed, as if nearly every man and woman in its five hundred pages has the jazz driven energy and élan and irreverence of a Henry Miller or a Charles Bukowski. And such qualities include the omniscient narrator who inserts jingles and songs, headlines and screamers, slogans and catchphrases as well as an array of other verbal flotsam that invade a reader's five senses as if one actually spent nights back in 1927-1928, the years Döblin wrote his masterpiece, wandering the Berlin streets and popping into many of the city's decadent, fleshpot theaters.
And, oh, those sardonic chapter openings and epigraphs such as "Franz Biberkopf is on the job market, you need to earn money, a man can't life without money," and "Here decent, well-intentioned Franz Biberkopf suffers a first reverse. He falls victim to a cheat. The shock is profound. Biberkopf has sworn to be decent, and as you've seen, he has been decent for several weeks, but that was really just temporary. In the long run, life finds that too prissy, and it cunningly trips him up."
New York Review Books deserves the highest praise for republishing this German literary classic in Michael Hofmann's stunning translation. Mr. Hofmann also furnishes an extensive Afterward wherein he expatiates on the life and times of Alfred Döblin, the history of Berlin Alexanderplatz and the challenges of translating the author's vibrant language into English.
Actually, it's Michael Hofmann's observations on language I found most helpful - and for good reason: in all the many novels I've read over the years, I have never been as keenly aware of the role of a translator as when reading Berlin Alexanderplatz. I know, I know, Berlin in the 1920s was a special time and a special place, but I had the sense all the many depictions, portrayals, sketches and most especially the words of Franz Biberkopf and others could have also been from a bustling current day international metropolis, say London, New York or Los Angeles. This to say, Döblin's novel is as alive today for readers as it was back when Berliners gobbled it up when first published.
And such crisp, colorful language. There have been frequent comparisons to James Joyce's Ulysses (a novel Döblin greatly admired) and stream of consciousness but if there is one aspect of Berlin Alexanderplatz I would like to stress it is this: I never had the need to go back and reread any passage or bit of dialogue, nor, when listening, did I replay any part of the audio book - the writing is that clear and accessible.
So, what manner of man is Franz Biberkopf now that he’s out of prison and returns to Berlin? At one point, he’s described as a slick dude (hey, Franz is as hip as any hip hop artist). Here’s a passage that comes at a reader as part of one unending gush: “This Franz Biberkopf, previously cement worker, then furniture removal man and so forth, currently newspaper seller, weighs nigh on two hundredweight. He has the strength of a cobra snake and has joined an athletics club again. Decked out in green puttees, hobnail boots and a bomber jacket. You won’t find much money on him, it only comes to him in small amounts, but even so it’s worth trying to get to know him.”
For added flair, the narrator tosses in references from ancient Greek literature, figures such as Agamemnon, Telemachus, Helen. Also, the Bible – Adam, Eve, the Serpent, Job. Not to mention, grizzly details of slaughterhouses: “The killing bays must be at the back, it’s from there you hear smacking sounds, crashing, squealing, screaming, gurgling, grunting sounds. There are big cauldrons there, which produce the steam. Men dunk the dead beasts in the boiling water, scald them, pull them out nice and white, a man scrapes off the outer skin with a knife, making the animal still whiter and very smooth. Very mild and white, deeply contented as after a strenuous bath, a successful operation or massage, the pigs lie out on wooden trestles in rows, they don’t move in their sated calm, and in their new white tunics. They are all lying on their sides, on some you see the double row of tits, the number of breasts a sow has, they must be fertile animals. But they all of them have a straight red slash across the throat, right in the middle, which looks deeply suspicious.” Of course, this passage brings to mind Germany in the not so distant future, the death camps following Adolf Hitler proclaimed Chancellor in 1933. There are references in the novel to the National Socialist Party and swastikas but swinging, freewheeling Berlin remained liberal, artistic and as free as a randy, decadent bird in the pages of Berlin Alexanderplatz.
Not only will readers follow the fate of Franz but also many other men and women. I purposely went light on the story’s arc, curves and swerves (by my eye, many reviewers reveal too much) so as to allow readers to make their own discoveries.
Since so much of the beauty and artistry of Alfred Döblin’s masterpiece is in the language, I’ll end with Michael Hofmann’s favorite passage on the song to the outgrowths of Berlin: “Suffer them to approach. Suffer them to approach. The great, flat plains, the lonely brick houses giving out a reddish light. The towns all in a line, Frankfurt an der Oder, Guben, Sommerfield, Liegnitz, Breslau, the towns appear with their stations, the towns with their great and small streets. Suffer them to approach, the cabs, the sliding, shooting cars.”
What an intense jaunt. I encourage you to hop in one of those sliding, shooting cars and travel to Berlin by way of Alfred Döblin.
German born (in 1957) poet and translator Michael Hofmann
German author Alfred Döblin, 1878-1957
“He swore to all the world and to himself that he would remain decent. And as long as he had money, he remained decent. But then he ran out of money, which was a moment he had been waiting for, to show them all what he was made of.” ― Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz
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