A really, really interesting book. It's a novel written as a memoir of an SS officer. Littell presents an absolutely fascinating, intriguing, disgusting, confusing portrayal of the war from an entirely unique perspective. Dr. Aue, the memoirist, is highly educated, cerebral, introspective, and very, very disturbed. This is not a book for the feint of heart. Not just because of the highly descriptive scenes of einsatzgruppe actions and the concentration camps, but for the explicit, batshitcrazy sex scenes (both real and imagined). Even before the war, Aue is a highly unstable individual with a healthy set of demons. I often found it quite difficult to make it through these scenes, as much, if not more so, than many of the Holocaust scenes.

However, Littell has a gift for the written word. He is one of those writers capable of painting images, emotions, and senses. Which is quite possibly what makes the sex and Holocaust scenes so unbearable. It is absolutely beautiful throughout much of the book, especially many of the travel sequences. The descriptions of people, both in countenance and personality, are quick, thorough, and often quite hilarious. But there basically isn't really anything good that happens, nor a really happy moment, throughout the entire book. Anything happy is fleeting, and is always tinged with bitter regret, or the looming specter of terrible events past or soon to come. Mostly, though, Aue is haunted and obsessed with his one true (lost) love--who I won't go into detail on so as not to spoil it.

Moreover, the style is difficult to get used to. It's not stream of consciousness, but it's also not like your typical narrative. All conversation is not indented from line to line (i.e. characters' speech is split up "Hello, nice to see you."--"You as well."). Thoughts often flow fairly organically, and Aue often takes us into his dreams and fantasies. The line between what reality and his imagination is often blurred, both for him and for us. What it all amounts to is 900+ pages of nearly pure text. There is a certain rhythm and flow to the book, but it can be a bit intimidating, frustrating, and slow going.

Suffice it to say, this book is quite an undertaking. You will be disgusted and disturbed, but also awestruck by the beauty of the world through Aue's eyes, and sometimes even find yourself laughing out loud. It's like nothing I'd ever read before. And while I'm certainly glad to be done with the book, I will definitely be looking for more of Littell's works, and to see where he goes with his style and subject choices.

A beautifully written book that I will never ever read again

[b:Le benevole|9703057|Le benevole|Jonathan Littell|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1459074223s/9703057.jpg|2916549] è un romanzo impegnativo, anche perché di fatto, leggendolo, si ha la sensazione che del romanzo questo libro abbia poco, tanta è l'immedesimazione che suscita nel lettore.
Max Aue, protagonista e voce narrante, è un ex-ufficiale delle SS e criminale di guerra che in seguito alla caduta del Reich trova rifugio in Francia dove, sotto falso nome, ricomincia una vita apparentemente normale come direttore di un'azienda che produce merletti. Ma Max è ciò che di meno ordinario ci si possa aspettare da un Obersturmbannführer del suo livello: è omosessuale, ossessionato dalla sorella gemella Una che è l'unico vero amore della sua vita e con cui ha un rapporto incestuoso; è coprofilo, un soggetto psicologicamente disturbato ma eccezionalmente colto, una personalità eccessiva che soffre di deliri e allucinazioni che risulta difficile considerare totalmente irreali e che trascinano il lettore nel suo stesso buio più nero e profondo. Un buio in cui si resta invischiati, un inesorabile declino (fisico, psicologico, di un'intera nazione) ed un orrore, quello della guerra e dell'attuazione della Soluzione Finale, che si rivive a braccetto con il protagonista in ogni fase e dettaglio più crudo, nonostante egli non influenzi in modo sostanziale il corso degli eventi.
Ma per quanto Max sia morboso, eccessivo, fortemente disturbato, è estremamente convincente nel suo tentativo di corrompere il lettore se non a compatirlo almeno a giustificarlo ("Io sono colpevole, voi non lo siete, mi sta bene. Ma dovreste comunque essere capaci di dire a voi stessi che ciò che ho fatto io, l’avreste fatto anche voi. Forse con meno zelo, ma anche con meno disperazione.") e lascia al lettore il delicato compito di giudicarlo.

È incredibile ed altrettanto notevole il lavoro di immedesimazione e ricostruzione storica di Littell nel comporre un'opera di questo calibro, quasi a metà tra narrativa e saggistica per il grado di dettaglio e fedeltà alla realtà storica. Affrontare [b:Le benevole|9703057|Le benevole|Jonathan Littell|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1459074223s/9703057.jpg|2916549] è stato un'esperienza di lettura lunga, spesso faticosa, scomoda -l'ultima parte poi è davvero delirio allo stato puro-, e sento di doverla far decantare il tempo necessario, ma ammetto di sentirmi sollevata di esserne arrivata alla conclusione per poter prendere le distanze da quell'orrore... per quanto mi riguarda, vivere con Max Aue per 16 giorni è stato abbastanza.

There is no reason why this book needed to be this long. It started off as a potentially interesting exploration of the banality of evil, it promised accuracy but then it got bogged down in fever dreams. Hundreds of thousands of words that are a fever dream. You want to understand how the Holocaust was possible and how it may happen again and may be starting again as we speak? Read "The Escape Artist", read the "Night" trilogy, read from the perspective of the victims as well. Of course we are all capable of re-enacting the holocaust. The proof is in this novel's publication as well: Ellie Wiesel had to cut down his account of real events written from the perspective of a Jewish man who survived Auschwitz to a merely 100 pages, because we cannot tolerate such atrocities described by the victim. But when the atrocities are written from the perspective of the perpetrator? We will publish a 970 page book without paragraphs. The French published both works. And one received accolades right off the bat. Explain that to me.

The whole banality of evil is also undermined by the author's decision to have the main character be gay and incestuous. That cliche was being challenged for its homophobia and inaccuracy back in 2007 when the book was published, so the author cannot claim not to have know. It was a conscious decision which cheapens the reality: that a lot of people, not a few special ones, collaborated enthusiastically in the evil acts of WW2 and will do so again (may try to do so again, based on recent events). I do not care for the myth of the Androgyn, for subverting the expectation of beauty, for the Dostoevskyan philosophy, for the War and Peace comparisons. The final result is a repulsive tone-death experiment that failed to contain itself. An editor and some discipline could have made this an interesting interrogation of evil and xenophobia. Instead it became the fever dream of a deranged incestuous homosexual. And do not compare it with "2666" -- that novel actually bothered to insert an anchor in the name of Lalo; 2666 actually made the reader understand how we become enured to evil, without forgetting about the victims, without spitting on them. There was light in that novel; there was only indulgence in "The Kindly Ones" and insufficient thought on harm. Go ahead and defend this novel, but I learned more about the themes and history of this book from the perspective of Holocaust survivors. I regret the time I spent reading this novel, it did not deliver on its promises.

I'm not rating this because I only got to p. 73. I'm not tough enough to read this book, although I would like to be able to. The narrator, Dr. Aue, is a fascinating character who has enough self awareness to describe his getting involved with the Nazis as being drawn in by the Devil, but who also deceives himself about his ability to cope with the atrocities he has committed. However, I can't cope with reading in harrowing detail about the atrocities, so I will leave this book for others to review.