Book 16/2017 - Look who’s back by Timur Vermes
I think I might just start with the ending. Because it’s creepy as fuck and it perfectly captures the atmosphere that this book has built up over the past 400 pages. And because I’ve heard those words before, in real life, which makes it so much mure realistic and so much more terrifying. It goes like this (in my inexpert translation, because it’s a German book):
I could now use the momentum of publishing a book and broadcasting a new TV show to start a propaganda offensive and then found a social movement. My publisher has already sent me some designs for posters [...]. I like them. I really like them. The slogan reads:
“It wasn’t all bad.”
I can work with that.
Those are the last words of Adolf Hitler after 400 pages of inner monologue during which he is resurrected in Berlin in 2011 and then proceeds to once again win the hearts and minds of millions of Germans by ways of a media landscape ever hungrier for clicks. The book ends with him in the hospital, recovering from an attack by neonazis (who think he’s Jewish, ironically... Not even they realize he’s the real deal, although he’s as unapologetic as ever), getting calls from all the major parties in Germany, a book publisher and various media outlets - and just leaves it at that. No epilogue, no comment on how the story continues, on how he’s finally brought low because someone must have noticed, someone must have seen the signs, someone must have recognized the abyss looming behind his words - only no one has. And worse, no one will. Because just like last time, in spite of his machinations, he has been nothing but straightforward with his intentions and worldview. It’s just that no one takes him seriously. Just like last time. I guess this is why there’s such an open ending: the author doesn’t need to be any more explicit. Everyone who picked up this book and read it already knows where it’s going. Maybe not with the war, because the international climate has changed during the last 70 years, but the rest? It sure seems like it.
It’s actually kinda funny. There’s this huge contrast between the story itself, which is incredibly realistic, and the beginning, which isn’t realistic at all. This is not supposed to be a critique, I love fantasy and science fiction and all that, so I obviously don’t mind unrealistic events as long as they are logical in the universe they take place in. Admittedly this particular beginning doesn’t make much sense in the universe it takes place in either, which seems to be ours without any magical or scientific upgrades, but in this case, for the sake of contrast, it’s okay. The book starts with Hitler waking up on some kind of yard in the middle of Berlin, where his bunker used to be. Just like that - no explanations, no justifications, no similar events with other people, it just stands there like a run-down shack wedged between skyscrapers. This wildly unrealistic event gets handed to you on the very first page, and maybe it makes you believe that this is some kind of alternate universe thing, or some dystopian thing, or science fiction - something that doesn’t directly apply to us human beings living in a universe where things like that don’t happen - but this story is not any of those. From then on it gets awfully realistic, because we all know how TV shows work, we all know how twitter and youtube work, and we all know that we usually don’t see things as they are, but as we are, to borrow from Anais Nin - which means that we hear what we want and expect to hear, and just ignore, misinterpret and excuse all the rest.
I just realized that I make this book appear more sinister than it is. It’s very, very creepy, yes, but that alone doesn’t do the book or the author justice because it’s also so funny! That really doesn’t happen often, but I laughed out loud a few times while reading it, and this was my second time through, so the jokes weren’t even new. Some situations are just so absurd (and luckily innocent enough to laugh about), like when he constantly spells modern names like Mandy (Menndi), Cindy (Sinndi) or handy (the German word for mobile phone = Henndi) wrong in his head, or when he’s absolutely convinced that elderly women who pick up their dogs’ poop with plastic bags are mentally ill. Sometimes it’s so funny I even forgot whose inner monologue you’re listening to, which is terrifying in and of itself, and most times I couldn’t decide whether to roll on the floor laughing or run around outside screaming with terror. Spoiler, I went with laughing and ignored the other urges. How very human of me. But this paradox is great, actually, I think the humorous part is what really hammers the message home: For all our engaging with our past and looking for wrong turns and swearing that something like Hitler will never happen again, we are not safe. And we won’t ever be, which is why we will always have to be on the lookout for people like him, for rhetoric like his, for patterns like 80, 90 years ago.
I’m talking mainly Germany here because I’m German and I know German society best, but we’re not the only ones who have experienced populist and exclusive dictatorian regimes rise to power, and especially these days we all need to be extra attentive. The people that Hitler interacts with are mostly not even stupid uneducated and exploited, but reasonably successful and sometimes even university graduates (so here’s to stereotypes of your typical neonazi) and they still support and enable him. Because they profit off him, because they think they can contain him, because they ignore the parts about him that make them uneasy. Point is, they’re not safe from his charisma in spite of 16 years of education, give or take, because he doesn’t look like a monster but like a guy with a slightly antiquated vocabulary and a weird thing for old suits who happens to have a baffling resemblance to, but none of the monstrosity of the person they’ve been taught to fear. At least not with regard to manners and behaviour, which is all that seems to matter. What he says is not all that important, then, and obviously he can’t mean everything literally because of course we’re way past that dark chapter in our history - only that apparently we’re still vulnerable, and it’s enough that he puts on a normal-looking suit instead of a military uniform to get our attention (which he full well knows). He doesn’t even have to lie, his misanthropic worldview is just as much out in the open as it was back then. And I’m thoroughly creeped out by how realistic this is presented in this book, especially with regards to the US where the current president boasted during his campaign that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and still get away with it. Because I guess he could, if not juridically then at least in the eyes of his followers, which is all that matters, in the end. He’s said awful things during his campaign and done/tried to do awful things during his presidency, and it does not matter. I know you can’t directly compare the two without devaluing and ignoring the millions of lives Hitler destroyed, but... the pattern is there.
I’m sorry, I’m ranting, and I’m not even sure this makes much sense any more, but I’m getting... passionate, one might call it. For the lessons it contains I’d definitely recommend this book, but I’m not sure how understandable it is for someone who doesn’t speak German and doesn’t know the society and political system here. There’s a lot of inside jokes and references which probably don’t make sense without footnotes and/or some thorough research, and I honestly pity all those translators who’ve tried to get the language of this book across in another language. Because the writing is superb. The dialogues feel realistic, all the main characters have distinctive speech patterns including dialects and local expressions, and Hitler’s inner monologue itself feels incredibly authentic. I can’t imagine the amount of research that must have gone into this story. But I’m so glad that Timur Vermes put in all this work, and I’m so glad that it was very successful in Germany and abroad, because it raises awareness in an entertaining way and asks important questions about society, the media, and how the human race just never seems to learn from history.
