I
I
I
;
BO 0 K S
613
Suddenly the atmosphere and total feeling of that day are re-created in
detail and we are left with the evidence that the events of our lives take
precedence over the events of the world.
Weiss has written the history of a sensitive young refugee discovering
the guilt which is part of his freedom as though it were the major theme
in a larger and more intricate story. The narration is decidedly
post
facto,
controlled and sympathetic though never sentimental, and the
hard truth which emerges is that wisdom is hindsight, that it is only
after the young man has muddled and misunderstood his life that it can
be pieced together with such artistry. This narrative presence controls
the novel with an authority that is sometimes intrusive. The intensity of
the boy's adolescent break from his family, the despair with his first
paintings are never given full rein. They are described in magnificent
detail but with a singularity of tone which is ill-fitting. This is a small
difficulty, indeed, in a novel which, though it abounds in running
analysis, remains completely free of cant and pomposity. Weiss's narrator
is as honestly absorbed in a definition of guilt as his past self is in
admitting to it - and he will not allow his expiation to turn into back–
handed heroics. In considering the extent of his personal failure towards
a girl he has halfheartedly tried to save from the Nazis, he confesses:
While she was being robbed of everything, I was deceiving myself
with the delusion of a permanent home and property. There was
nothing more I could do for Lucie: I had never been able to do
anything for her and had at most increased her suffering by pointless
hope. Now I knew nothing more of her existence and did not want
to know anything more of it, but I shut myself off from this fate
for which I too had been destined, but which I had escaped through
no act of my own, and I had long since betrayed Lucie, the prisoner
condemned to death, with a live free girl. ...
The novel brings the artist (both painter and writer like Weiss)
past a marriage based on a false identity, and through a final visit to
his parents who are mired in the heavy bog of a middle-European
living room which they have dragged about on their travels and festooned
with familiar
haute bourgeoise
inadequacy. He arrives at a point where
he feels free of the past. He sees his exile to be as much self-imposed
and personal as it is an historic fact. There is great drama in the final
proclamation of individual freedom when the narrator comes to the end
of the story, his voice and that of the protagonist become one.
In
Above Ground,
Jack Ludwig assumes the persona of an engaging
narrator, Joshua, who again offers no more plot than the random events
