Having struggled through a piece of pornographic trash, Manfred tells me he's now able to read books for grown-ups. I give him a copy of Die schmutzigen Hände, and a day later he comes back and says he's finished.
"So did you enjoy it?" I ask.
"It was fantastic!" Manfred answers in his predictable teen way.
"Well, what was so fantastic about it?" I want to know. "What was it like?"
Manfred pretends to think carefully. He hasn't actually read many books, though he hates admitting it.
"It was sort of like Sofies Welt," he says after a while.
"Really?" I say. "You know, it's somewhat unusual to compare Jean-Paul Sartre to Jostein Gaarder."
"But look!" says Manfred. "It makes sense! See, they both want to explain philosophy to you, but they're trying to make it more fun by turning it into a story."
"I suppose you might have a point," I reluctantly concede. "So what philosophical ideas is Sartre trying to explain?"
"Well," says Manfred, "let me tell you what happens first. Hugo's this young Eastern European guy in WW II. His country's been invaded by the Nazis, but now the Germans are losing. He's working for the Communist underground. The Russian army is coming so they've got a great chance to take over. But they don't agree on the right strategy to use. The leader of the Communists is a guy called Hoederer. He says there aren't enough of them, they've got to be practical and do a deal with the other parties to share power. The other Communists say that's treason to the Party. They give Hugo the job of killing Hoederer. He's going to become his secretary, and when he gets a chance he's going to shoot him."
"And does he do that?" I ask.
"Oh yes," says Manfred. "You know he's going to do it right from the start, the whole play's a flashback really. But you don't know why he shoots him. That's where the philosophy comes in. It's kind of deep."
"And what is this deep philosophy?" I say. Manfred ignores my sarcasm.
"Well," he says, "Hugo thinks he knows why he's doing it. He's read all these books and he has all these ideas about what's right and wrong. He thinks he's going to kill Hoederer because Hoederer has the wrong ideas and he's dangerous to the Party. But really, you see it's not the ideas at all. He talks with Hoederer and he sees Hoederer's ideas are just as good as his. Better, even. He only thought he had to shoot him because he talked to the other guys first."
"But he does shoot him, right?" I say. "So why does he do it?"
"Oh," says Manfred. "He catches Hoederer kissing his wife. And he gets so mad that he shoots him."
"So what's the moral, then?" I ask.
"People don't really do things because of their ideas," says Manfred. "They think they do. But really it's just their feelings."
He stops and considers for a moment.
"Sartre's really good at explaining things," he adds as an afterthought. "Even better than Jostein Gaarder. Can we get another one?"
"I'll look around," I say.