The Clown

I suppose this is the German version of the "angry young man" novel. Comedian Hans Schnier has had a kind of professional meltdown after his girlfriend Marie breaks up with him and goes off to get respectably married to someone else; with his last few Deutschmarks he retreats to his Bonn apartment and tries to take stock.

He blames Marie's Catholic friends who have been pressuring her to give up her sinful cohabitation with Hans, but widens this into a more general disgust with his wealthy parents, with Bonn, with the CDU, with the booming Wirtschaftswunder society that is obsessed with respectability and appearances but refuses to think about anything that it might have done wrong before 1945, and with the men in bars who are so happy show more to talk nostalgically about their good old days in the war at the drop of a hat.

Hans has made a stand against the hypocrisy of the world around him by dropping out of school and running away with Marie to build a stage career for himself, but after six years on tour this doesn't seem to have solved anything, and he has simply humiliated himself in the eyes of the world. Ironically, though, Böll seems to be suggesting that it's only by embracing this humiliation that he can start the process of reconciling himself with those around him. When we leave him in the last chapter he may be at the very bottom of his trajectory, but it seems that the only way is up.

In a way, this seems to be a bit like having your cake and eating it: Böll manages to enjoy the best part of 250 pages ranting against the hypocritical values of postwar German society in general and the Catholic Church in particular from the point of view of a radical atheist, but then plucks what looks very like a Kierkegaard-style Christian reconciliation out of it at the end. Very sixties, of course! show less

Hans Schnier, varlıklı bir ailenin oğlu olmasına karşın meslek olarak palyaçoluğu seçmiştir. Evlenmeye ve doğacak çocuklarını Katolik terbiyesiyle büyütmeye yanaşmadığından, toplum baskısına direnemeyen sevgilisi tarafından terk edilir. Hans bu kayıp yüzünden yıkılır, sanatı bitme noktasına gelir.

Palyaço 1963 yılında yayımlandığında Almanya’da büyük tartışmalara yol açmış, Heinrich Böll din karşıtı olmakla suçlanmıştır. Oysa yazar, İkinci Dünya Savaşı sonrası burjuva toplumunun dar kafalılığı ve çarpık ahlakı yüzünden “ayrıksı” bir bireyin o toplumda kendine yer bulamayışının altını çizer. Palyaçonun maskesi ardında en sarsıcı gerçekleri dile getirir; show more günlük hayatın acımasızlıklarını, boş kuralları, haksız baskıları okurun yüzüne bir tokat gibi çarpar. Palyaço makyajı, aslında bireyin acılarını, arzularını, umutlarını sakladığı bir maskedir.

Güzel bir söz vardır: hiçbir şey. Hiçbir şey düşünme. Başbakan’ı düşünme, Katolikleri de düşünme. Küvette ağlayan, terliklerine kahve damlayan o palyaçoyu düşün. show less

::Sobs::
Damnit, Henrich!
This book left me lingering in sadness, crawling around, desperately searching for any sort of comfort and consolation from the cruel world.
This is a devastating tale of a hysterical yet somber clown, Hans. He was left alone by all his loved ones to fend for himself after his girlfriend left him for another man, and shortly after his career went down into a heaping pile of quicksand. This is his moments of healing after attempts to reconcile with selfish family members, the humor comes when he rips into a few questionable characters.
I laughed as hard as I could to forget the pain that Hans felt as he relived horrible yet tender moments of heartbreak and grief.
I relate a lot to this story, as I always seem to show more be the outcast when it comes to religion, I can also relate to the harrowing tale of being thrown to the sharks with minimum protection and zero finances despite having wealthy relatives who cast me as a black sheep for career/life choices because they “have a reputation to withhold.”
Damnit Hans, come be my roommate and babysitter! All I ask in return is that you entertain my family for free food and board and I will help you get yourself back on your feet- no strings attached, except you must promise to never be sad again. :(

“There's nothing more depressing for people than a clown they feel sorry for. It's like a waiter coming up in a wheelchair to bring you your beer."

Unforgettable,
I will read more from this author someday, when I recover from all the strong waves of emotion this stirred.
5 solid strong stars for a character I will never forget. Recommended for anyone who wants a break from fluff and fantasy and wants a raw gritty emotional tale from an unforgettable familiar point of view. show less

La Germania postnazista, coi suoi sensi di colpa e personaggi impresentabili che cercano di rafarsi una verginità, l'aridità morale di una borghesia arricchita che diventa avarizia, un'avarizia tale da lasciare i propri figli sempre affamati, e sopra a tutto questo un' "aria cattolica", una melassa di rigidezza, dogma, scarsa pietà a ipocrisia.
Tutto questo analizzato da un tristissimo clown, che di ciascuno degli elementi di questo asfittico e mefitico ambiente è la vittima, che perderà tutto, ma riuscirà a non farsi assorbire dall'aria cattolica per non perdere la propria anima.

The first third of this book is very funny. The narrator is a young clown afflicted with innocence and an unusual world view. Through his innocence he reveals the hypocrisy of those around him. It's a satire of post-war West Germany, but the failings it highlights are universal. There are hints of something clever going on with the narrator. Although he's innocent he's imperfect and unaware of his failings so at times he is a mirror of society, At other times he seems to be the scapegoat, at other times a mirror of the author.

After this opening, the narrator gives a diatribe against Catholics (Böll was Catholic) and most of the humour disappears. The novel then fails to go anywhere. Still readable though.

Worth reading for the opening.

A book that was done a disservice by its reputation, at least as far as I'm concerned. It didn't help that I read Wolfgang Koeppen's Death in Rome just before this one; in fact, I read this because of that one. Koeppen's novel is superior in many ways: it's stronger as a picture of German society; it's more interesting and entertaining; it's better on the meta-literary "why do we do art stuff anyway?" question. It's less psychologically plausible, but otherwise, The Clown loses out quite badly.

That said, if this had been presented to me as a kind of addendum to Proust's jealousy volumes, only with some post-Nazi world stuff thrown in, I might have enjoyed it much more. The core of the book is jealousy, not society; it's about an show more individual, pure and simple, who stands apart from the society he happens to find himself in (i.e., post-war West Germany), but would have stood apart from any society he found himself in. That makes it hard to take seriously as a tragedy (there's no real relationship between the individual and his society, except opposition).

I'm not sure what Boll was aiming at, then, but I know what he succeeded in doing: giving us a plausible depressed artist who has lost the woman he (thinks he) loves to someone he can't stand, even while he has to accept that the man he can't stand is more successful and competent than he is. If you know that's what's going on, you might enjoy it more than I did. If you go in expecting specific, historical, social criticism, you'll be pretty disappointed. show less

Assegno 3 stelle ma preciso che è un limite mio, non del libro.
Non amo la letteratura verista, specie quella che sfocia nel pessimismo cosmico.
Questo libro è una amara denuncia della società del dopoguerra, delle sue ipocrisie, della solitudine dell'uomo caduto in disgrazia. La sua denuncia è cruda, senza possibilità di salvezza e redenzione, e la solitudine diviene l'unico rifugio possibile. Il protagonista preferisce non essere salvato piuttosto che piegarsi a dover riconoscere validità alle false realtà che lo circondano.
Troppo triste e distruttivo, per quanto sicuramente vero.
Non sono riuscita ad apprezzarlo appieno, ma credo che non lo rileggerò. Troppo pessimista per me, in questo mio momento.