Herbert Rosendorfer (1934–2012)

Given the day that's in it --today is Holocaust Memorial Day--I suppose it's a good time to copy over a review from amazon, one I wrote because when I googled the book I was shocked to see how little information in English was to be found--a snippet of film of an Amazon Night, a good essay about it @ http://www.habermehl-web.de/Downloads/Amazon%20Nights.pdf, and not much more::

Night of the Amazons is z novel about Christian Weber, the man awarded charge of the government of Munich under show more Hitler. Weber was one of the old guard who knew Hitler back in the day when he was known only as a pub bore and became a brown-shirt and then SS member whose gaze was never averted from the main chance. From the beginning he availed of his Party connections--as well as blackmail, theft, and violence--to become a very rich man. From the beginning he would readily have observed Sabbath or waved a red banner on May Day instead of becoming a Nazi had doing so offered the same opportunities. He was a lout and a thug and Rosendorfer finds not a trace of a redeeming quality, a sympathetic strain, in him.

The story covers the years from the early 1920's until the war's end and is told in a series of episodes and conversations, not always in chronological order, with the author himself sometimes emerging to wonder or elaborate or explain; it's more a coherent collection of nuggets than a linear account. And given the subject, it's unusual in another way: it's amusing. I wouldn't call the book a comic novel any more than I'd call it a standard historical one, but it sometimes made me smile. Wryly. The humour, obviously the product of utter loathing and complete contempt, for the most part lies in a very understated sarcasm and gives the book a power that a simple condemnatory tone wouldn't have..

Rosendorfer and an associate did a tremendous amount of research for the novel, but with few exceptions it's almost impossible to know which details are historical and which fictional. Nearing the end of the book the writer himself steps forward to address this, as he does to explain why he wrote a book about so undeserving a swine as Weber, and here he makes some particularly interesting points about the value of documents and about present-day attitudes toward Nazism.

And by the way, Night of the Amazons is a wonderfully readable book; whenever I put it aside I felt like washing my hands and leaving it aside for a long while, but in the event I was always eager to return to it. show less

Anton L., a neurotic and rather unpleasant little man, wakes to a strangely quiet morning. Gradually and with increasing fear and confusion he discovers that all other humans seem to have vapourised sometime in the night.

The book won't sound promising when I say that much of it is about Anton's changes of residence, methodical explorations of the city, his ferrying firewood and paintings about, occasional recollections of earlier times, and search for a certain book and is written in show more matter-of-fact, almost flat, prose. Yet the book is terrifically interesting (and at times amusing) and the style is perfectly suited to the content: There are no life-or-death moments and Anton seems to come to accept his situation quickly, with nary a moment of anguish. Rosendorfer's descriptions of wild animals invading the city, floods undermining and demolishing buildings, and vegetation splitting the pavement makes the reader feel these things in a second-hand sort of way, just as Anton seems to have seen the world, especially people, at one remove.

Anyone who's read Glavinic's Night Work will probably be reminded of it whilst reading this. I liked Nightwork a good deal, but while the subject and some of the details were quite like, the books weren't markedly similar. Rosendorfer's book is richer than Glavinic's--the humour, the abnormal becoming mundane, the fact that by the end Anton L. seems rather endearing--and has more depth: One is left with questions about unexplained elements in the story--indeed, about the story itself--but also with questions about redemption and whether our knowledge should be limited. Grand Solo will, I'm sure, reward re-reading and has made me eager to read another of the author's books. show less

(Note: this review is for the original German edition, not the English translation)

A light, quick read, which I found a pleasant change of pace from the other German books I've been reading lately. Using the perspective of an outsider to criticize society is a well-established literary tradition, but the story manages to remain fresh. Part of the charm is the particular perspective of the narrator, a time-traveler from ancient China who mistakenly ends up in modern-day Munich, to his utter show more bewilderment. His experiences in the strange culture are told with a mixture of naivete and humor mixed with light irony.

By the end of the book, however, his attitude begins to get slightly tedious. He dislikes practically everything about this modern, Western world, finds the people barbarous and lacking any sense of morals or respect for custom and tradition. He finds precisely two things he likes: classical music and champagne, which he indulges in while enjoying the luxuries of the culture he despises. His close-mindedness and arrogance ultimately prevent him, the reader is inclined to suspect, from learning from the experience. And this is what keeps the book from being 'great' instead of merely good. At the end, asked by one of his friends to write about his experiences for the enlightenment of the local people, he declines, concluding that people would read his book and agree that he's absolutely correct, and then forget about it and go on with their lives. That reaction describes this book as well. It doesn't go beyond criticism to offer a glimpse of a meaningful alternative.

In short, worth reading, but I was hoping for something more, considering the following the book has gotten in Germany. show less

Anton L. awakes to find that the rest of humanity has disappeared and he is the only one left (though it takes him some time to realize and accept this turn of events). This is not the first time this premise has been explored, as there is an entire collection of short stories edited by Asimov called The Last Man on Earth, furthermore I Am Legend comes to mind, many castaway stories essentially fit the bill, the excellent nonfiction book The Earth Without Us takes a scientific perspective on show more the topic, and the idea has appeared on television and movie screens since at least 1959 with the Twilight Zone episode Time Enough At Last. I found the take on the premise that Rosendorfer presents here to be notable for two reasons: first, the narrative meanders along rather aimlessly for most of the story. Unlike many such stories there is no goal that Anton is trying to accomplish or message about the environment or society that the story is attempting to convey. Second, Rosendorfer chooses to make the last man of his story rather disgusting and unsympathetic. Humanity ends not with a bang or a whimper, but with a smelly ass of a man with an undeserved sense of superiority. Together these two features make Grand Solo for Anton interesting in the abstract, and there are passages and points that I liked, but overall I couldn't recommend this book very strongly.

Usually a story about the last person on the planet makes the disappearance of all other people a major point of the narrative, but here the overnight depopulation of the globe is never depicted or explained. There are some hints that the rest of humanity has disappeared because Anton is all that is necessary to complete the purpose of mankind, the discovery and reading of The Book, but this is more likely an explanation arising from the addled mind of Anton than it is an actual reason for the disappearances. Instead the early parts of the story deal with Anton wandering the empty city and adjusting to the new state of affairs, confirming that everyone is gone, then gathering food, candles, and guns. This early section was the part of the book I enjoyed the most, as it hits all the predictable but enjoyable beats of Anton's growing realization that he is truly alone, his first forays into exploring the depopulated world, and his immersion in the material pleasures that remain. A part of the setting that I particularly liked was that the world after the disappearance is no pristine place- with all of their human masters gone pets are left to starve or grow feral, rats colonize the grocery stores, and bears take up residence in the strip clubs. In this world Anton quickly devolves into savagery, never bathing, destroying things just for the fun of it, and eventually eating raw meat. Stories of the world before make clear that Anton was not too far off from a savage before he became the last man on earth, the circumstances have merely given him the ability to unleash his savagery completely. I can understand why a reader might be turned off from the story by Anton, as he is disgusting in more ways than one. This essentially leaves the reader with no one to root for, a tricky situation for a narrative to be in.

This potential problem is magnified by the fact that there is no larger plot or narrative stakes for the story to fall back on. Usually a story like this can fall back on the struggle to survive that naturally comes with being the last person on the planet. Here, however, Anton is unsympathetic enough that his struggle for survival is rendered devoid of tension. It's natural to desire that mankind continues to survive, but if the last piece of mankind is Anton, then extinction for our species doesn't seem too bad an idea. Besides the day-to-day life of Anton, Grand Solo's only other narrative thread is Anton's search for a book that is mentioned in notes he finds and letters he seeks out after the disappearance has occurred. At first this thread struck me as even more problematic than the narrative just following Anton around, since I always hate the type of coincidences authors must write in to let a single random man uncover what has happened. Here, however, there is a good chance that Anton is not actually uncovering what has happened to the world, but merely seeing patterns in chaos at first and then suffering from full-blown hallucinations later on. Mankind invents explanations so as to avoid being surrounded by mysteries, and here Anton does so as well.

Because of the lack of narrative, message, or sympathetic character Grand Solo for Anton is left as a meditation on the return to savagery and the descent into madness suffered by someone cut off from human contact. There are other books that use this premise to do something more, but here Rosendorfer was content to follow the wanderings of Anton for a while and explore little else. His writing is not strong enough to make such depictions memorable, and there is little resolution. Even if this premise sounds interesting to you, you are probably better-off exploring another work that explores it in a more interesting way. Perhaps try that short story collection edited by Asimov, if you can find a copy. show less