Crazy in Berlin: A novel

Reinhart #1

by Thomas Berger

CRAZY IN BERLIN is the first novel in the saga of Carlo Reinhart. American literature has produced a number of flawed heroes, but none more memorable than Carlo. Reinhart is a young army medic, stationed in Germany during the early days of the Allied occupation. Large, generous, kind-hearted, he caretakes a shattered civilization. Wartime stereotypes dissolve in the wash of individuals. All this blood, toil and treasure...for what? Reinhart, who deals daily with psychos, drives himself to the brink with his own questions. "With this novel, Berger gains a solid place in contemporary fiction." (Saturday Review)

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, American, Novels, Humor

438 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Thomas Louis Berger was an American novelist, probably best known for his picaresque novel Little Big Man, which was adapted into a film by Arthur Penn. Berger explored and manipulated many genres of fiction throughout his career, including the crime novel, the hard-boiled detective story, science fiction, the utopian novel, plus re-workings of classical mythology, Arthurian legend, and the survival adventure.

Berger's use of humor and his often biting wit led many reviewers to refer to him as a satirist or "comic" novelist, though he rejected that classification.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you read one Thomas Berger novel don't let it be this one.

I've quite enjoyed the three other novels of his. I even enjoyed the equally starred The Houseguest more, although there is no review for the book because it was read during my January Las Vegas reading orgy.

This is Berger's first novel and it doesn't read anything like his later novels. The writing is clunky here. The story is a mess. There are some massive clarity issues going on and his characters have a tendency to pontificate in the way that young men are liable to do when they have big ideas and they want to share them with the world.

But it's still a good book, it's just not really representative of what Berger would become as a novelist when his writing becomes more focused, leaner and more 'literary mainstream' (at least stylistically).

This analogy won't work because of the fairly static nature of time (you know that it runs only in one direction, at least in the way we experience it, theoretical physics aside). But this sort of reads like what you might expect a first time author to produce who thought that Gravity's Rainbow was the bees knees and he'd like to try his hand at writing his own version of Pynchon's masterpiece. This novel was published almost twenty years before Gravity's Rainbow, so you'll see how this just wouldn't be the case. But that is what the novel feels like (or maybe Pynchon read this and sort of thought, you know I can make this idea even better if I added more characters, more sex, rocket science, songs and scatological humor to the mix!)

The novel is set in Berlin, in the months following the start of the Occupation by the Allied Armies. According to the back of the book (keep in mind this was written on a 1970 Mass Market edition, a time in publishing where some, um, interesting choices were used to try to sell books).

A far out cat in a whacked-out human Zoo

When the one and only Carlo Reinhart meets:

Nathan Schlid, an American Communist acting as a U.S. Intelligence Officer

Trudchen, a confusing cross between Heidi and Lolita

Bach, an alcoholic giant who may or may not be a genius, a madman, a Nazi and a Jew

Lori, a lush female who offers her body regardless of race, creed or national origin*

And a number of other very strange inhabitants of a very weird town called Berlin the result is "one of the finest and funniest novels since World War II... genuine gallows humor about the macabre realities of life... Berger is extravagantly talented... a rare and wild talent that should be cherished."

What a load of wanna-be counter-culture crap. I'm glad I bought the book because I was looking for it and didn't read this nonsense on the back until I was already a hundred or so pages into it. I've mentally added the copy on this book to the really long list in my head of reasons to hate my parents generation (but not my parents because they are nice people and they weren't hippies).

Now I'll give you the rundown on life. People are worth more than things, and abstractions have almost no worth at all. when you get an order your sole responsibility is to act as if you are carrying it out. Hypocrisy is the better part of competence. It is foolish, I know, and defies everything you and I were taught; but in the degree to which you serve others and not yourself, the others will foresake you.

Contained in his at times ribald story about life during just after Wartime are the big questions about how did things turn out the way they did. How did a civilized country turn to wholesale genocide? What is the role of The Other (be it the Jew who is the victim, or the German as the villain (and would the main-character (an American of German descent) have been a willing participant if his family had never come to America, instead of being properly outraged about what happened?)? What about similar atrocities going on at the same in the show trial happy world of Stalin's Soviet Union? Dresden? And what is subjective truth about ones own beliefs, past, identities, if you can consider the possibility that contained in all people a possibility in the right situation to be willing executioners (or at least mutely give consent). There were lots of very interesting questions brought up, not all of them necessarily original, but still the sorts of things I think are sort of necessary to think about from time to time, even if it is only to save ourselves from the totalitarian voice in the back of our heads that believes that we know what is right and would like if everyone else would just see the truth and fall in line. The sorts of questions that keep you being humane and on guard from descending into the depths of being just another unthinking asshole who sees the whole world as us versus them.

On the other hand, he, Reinhart, would as soon cut his throat as join the American Legion, or a union or the Communists or the Republicans or the New Deal, or any other outfit the joining of which prohibited one the next day from being malignantly anti-Legion, anti-union, etc., which alternation, irresponsible as it might be, to him signified, as nothing else, the precious quality of humanness.

While reading this I thought I'd write another review about the holocaust, maybe once again mention that Adorno quote, and maybe Paul Celan. I feel like I've written enough of those reviews for now. I'd probably only be repeating myself if I started rambling about that some stuff again. I also thought about writing about my own background, being like the narrator in this story a person of at least some German descent, and like other people in this story, being of partial Jewish descent, and also like some of the characters of this book being of a descent that is somewhat vague and as much a product of my own fancy and the stories I've decided I like best as it is bound by any objective truth. I was going to write a bunch of things but instead I wrote this.

[David Partikian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ask even the very literate to discuss an American World War II novel, and the choices will be restricted almost entirely to “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Catch-22” and “The Naked and the Dead.” Although many future American novelists were in the armed forces during World War II, there is a dearth of memorable World War II literature from both theaters. J.D. Salinger served, had a nervous breakdown, and never wrote about war, preferring to depict upper-middle class angst. Richard Yates fictionalized his own service in “A Special Providence,” not one of his better books, but an honest account of an overwhelmed teenager in combat.

To make matters more complex, the occupations of Germany and Japan are barely mentioned in literary works. Occupations just don’t hold the same allure as war, yet they are often just as absurd, a great stage for bizarre nihilism and lost souls. American Thomas Berger, best known for his third novel, “Little Big Man,” made into a movie with Dustin Hoffman, and the comedic “Neighbors,” with a movie adaption by Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi, is—perhaps—the only American author to situate a novel almost entirely in the chaotic world of post-World War II Berlin, the city newly divided into sectors and with a curfew.

“Crazy in Berlin” (1958) is all but forgotten and certainly not an easy novel to read. The Kirkus review available on-line concludes that it is, “Clumsily written to the point of incomprehensibility, this anatomy of disenchantment leaves a taste of decay.” Berger’s first novel is certainly a precocious work that digresses into needlessly labyrinthine sentences and tormented syntax—often to the point of incomprehensibility. Not only was Berger inscrutable, but his editor must have just waved a white flag and granted him license to create convoluted prose for no discernable reason other than to annoy the reader; as a bonus, the protagonist, Carlo Reinhart, is an American of German descent who majors in German at a Midwest university before enlisting. Many passages, particularly dialogue, are in German; there are elaborate puns and inside jokes that only a reader with working knowledge of German will catch.

Thomas Berger managed to cut back these pretentious, annoying tendencies in his third novel, which became a sensation, and went on to a very successful career of over fifty years as a professional writer. His first novel is cumbersome and largely forgotten. Currently, it is out of print. Why feature it here? Perhaps because of the second part of the Kirkus Review assessment, “. . .this anatomy of disenchantment leaves a taste of decay.” Occupations are chaotic, often counter-productive, and very hard to chronicle. Where to focus in the chaos? Oral accounts of the black market, dissolute decadence and resignation to privation can seem surreal, a checklist of uncomfortable realities that no American wants to dwell on after “winning” the war. Despite its flaws, “Crazy in Berlin” accurately captures that immediate post-war era and the early occupation.

With the caveat emptor that this book is not easy and that the reader will get more out of it with some knowledge of German, the book is more readable than most straight-up historical accounts of the Occupation. There is even a comedic vein throughout, foreshadowing Berger’s later works that often evoke an outright guffaw. While not as philosophically accessible as “Catch-22” and without the moral pretensions of “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Crazy in Berlin” is worth the slog for anyone wanting to delve into the ambience of the Occupation.

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars, leaning toward 4.

First off, I didn't expect to like this novel. The only reason I read it at all, even gave it a chance, was to clear it off my shelves--I did not expect it to be a 'keeper'. The problem was that I had purchased a couple of Berger's books several years ago, at some library sale or another, but after reading one (Sneaky People), I decided that I wasn't as interested in him as I thought I was, and so here lingered the other books I'd bought--I didn't think I'd like them, so I didn't read them, but I didn't get rid of them because I hadn't read them.

That's some serious conundrum there. For me, at least.

In an effort to break through the impasse, I've been slowly taking down books in this category and giving them a chance, and finally it was Carlo Reinhart's turn, he being the main character of CinB, and a recurring character in three more of Berger's books. Here, as a twenty-one-year-old corporal in the American Occupation forces stationed in Berlin, Reinhart confronts The Question of that time, perhaps any time: How could a civilized country such as modern Germany be overcome by a regime of hate and murder, and who is culpable?

Reinhart, a rather likable oaf, and of German descent himself, finds no easy answers, as if there are any. It doesn't help that none of the characters that Reinhart crashes into throughout the book are as they appear--besides the factual phenomenon of former Nazis attempting to pass as 'good Germans', and of espionage agents and counter agents, there are plenty of plain old hidden agendas and false fronts that people put up, except for Reinhart himself (Berger gives the etymology of Reinhart as 'pure of heart'), until the end, where it serves his purposes to be taken for a crazy man.

Maybe that is the answer to The Question in a round-about way: Approaching the world from a position of absolutes as Reinhart does in the beginning, he digs deeper into the lives of the people that surround him and only finds there were no axiomatic principles to build up those assumptions in the first place. The Question makes no sense--or it makes as much sense to ask 'how could it have not have happened?'

And so the 'pure of heart' knight-errant (and watch for the grail references throughout) carries out his quest, though how satisfying the results are will be up to the reader. Though I thoroughly enjoyed Berger's thick, discursive prose at the beginning, as he neared the end, it felt to me like he was having trouble wrapping up the various threads that he'd teased out of his theme--or else I wasn't capable of picking up on them. Considering that his was Berger's first novel, I think the overall product was quite excellent, even with the aspects that I thought were flaws. In the end, I'm glad I finally picked this off my shelves. Given the evidence of Sneaky People, I see that Berger can be uneven, but when he's on, I think he's definitely worth reading. If nothing else, I'll be looking for Reinhart in Love, the second book of Reinhart's adventures.

[Ted Fontenot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not his best or most readable, but still interesting. And of what you get out of it, it does stay with you. I first read this about 40 years ago. Reinhart in Love, the second in the series, the one that followed this one, I read first some 45 years ago when I was in high school, and it is the masterpiece of the Reinhart saga. Vital Parts is close RIL in quality, and Reinhart's Women has a regenerated and very likable Reinhart to recommend it. I know Berger is old, but I'm hoping he's earlier written and has stashed away a finale, although Reinhart's Women reads something like a summing up. If not, though, okay. I think Berger's series is better than Updike's Rabbit novels. As one reviewer said, there are problems with clarity--not only with what is happening, but in how you are to take what is happening. An odd beginning, but then Berger's sensibilities are to a great degree original. Highly recommend Little Big Man of course and another unusual (but highly readable) masterpiece--Killing Time.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finally made it through! It was mostly a tough read, similar to reading a novel written in a foreign language and translated into English, though Berger writes in English and is American.

I am glad I read it. I have read plenty of novels satirizing or dishing on life in the military during WWII, but this is the first of that type taking place just after the war was won and the Cold War is beginning. Berlin, broken into sections for the occupying victors, United States, England, and the USSR, is a confused heap of rubble, displaced people, double agents, Black Market dealers, and more.

Humor and danger abound. Carlo Reinhart, who features in a series of books Berger wrote over the years, is the fall guy. He is actually quite an endearing character. The title of the novel is a summary of these few months in Reinhart's life. But as reviewers have mentioned, it is not the most enjoyable of Berger's books.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in Berlin immediately following WWII, a U.S. medical hospital is infiltrated by black marketeers, refugees seeking a route to the U.S., and Communists subversives. As seen through the eyes of a 20-year-old slightly naive enlisted man, the hospital staff's adventures are never taken from the surgical ward, but are instead all from the unit's personnel quarters and war-torn Berlin. Many of the stories are funny and none are cliche.

It's a weird rambling book, and I enjoyed it. It took several months, as it was my briefcase read.

[Ben Brackett · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave this book 50 pages but couldn't make it further. The sentences were jumbled messes and I wasn't really interested in the war story.

[Hamish Hoyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

First novel blues. The writing is dense and intricate, very complicated. It was hard to get into the flow of the novel and sometimes difficult to follow along with where Berger was going. He loosens up in later works, which made me think he was swinging for the bleachers of fame and reputation with this one, stuffing his prose with as much word salad as could be made of it, like a Faulkner novel without the gentility or southern languor. The content works OK: a corporal wanders occupied Berlin questioning his place in the world and falling in four different kinds of love with an army nurse, two German women and a philosophizing gentleman wreckage. Meanwhile, a young American officer betrays his country with an omnipresent black marketeer and a Communist menace that seems primarily set up to backstab its own membership. It’s intriguing enough of a story, even profound in parts, just hard to see behind the veil of typing.

[Ronald Wise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe you have to be a certain age to fully appreciate this book. This was my third reading – the first while I was in high school in the early 1970s, and second in the 1980s. While I was able – with determination – to understand and enjoy it the first two times, it wasn’t until this reading that I was able to see it as a well-constructed whole. Not that it didn't still take an effort to get into the swing of Berger’s style.

Each time I’ve been surprised by the serious nature of the main characters in this book. The title would suggest something along the line of McHale’s Navy or Soldiers Gone Wild!, and while there does seem to be a general preoccupation with partying and sex, the reader spends most of the time in the presence or heads of intellectually deep characters, who are affected by their pasts, concerned about their futures, and wondering what their role as part of an occupation force in Berlin means with respect to either. Their youth was a key characteristic I appreciated this time – extracted from their American upbringings, placed where everything is in flux following a devastating war, and then in daily contact with a variety of both victors and vanquished, often in some strange scenarios.

What also struck me this time, was that while these characters were trying to make sense of what had just happened in their world, they were already unknowingly participating in a new war which would last for 45 years. So maybe it wasn’t my years that increased my appreciation of this book, but the fact that I’m now reading it from a perspective following the end of that war. (Wikipedia was also a valuable tool for understanding the local German cultural references.)

[Christopher Sutch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thomas Berger's first novel (at the tender age of 34) is an interesting and philosophical take on the American post-war (WWII) occupation of Germany, and the shift away from a more leftist foreign policy (if you can even argue that; sometimes I don't think so) to a more fascistic one. Berger's main thesis here is that, when faced with appearances of people, with no access to their "authentic" or "true" selves, one can only assume the appearances ARE "true" for all intents and purposes. This philosophy is focused through the personality and point of view of the "hero" Rheinhart, however, and I'm wary of taking that position for Berger's (though it often seems as if that's Berger's intent: a proto-postmodern take on identity politics). Along with this, one should not accept group labels for anyone and expect members of that group to necessarily follow the characteristics implied by the label: Jews, anti-Semites, fascists, "communists" (though Berger, like most Americans, mistakes the Soviet Union with "communism" or "Marxism"), etc. The individual, in this novel, is supreme above the group heading, and will usually disappoint those prone to believe all Jews (or anti-Semites, fascists, communists, etc.) must believe certain things and act certain ways. The problem with this book, though, is that Berger's overwrought proces (it IS a first novel) gets in the way of the story. Every paragraph (nearly) I had to stop and reread simply for comprehension's sake (and only part of that is the florid prose; some is due to pronoun confusion on Berger's part). A book with interesting ideas, but ultimately entirely unnecessary to read.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting novel of the American occupation of Berlin. The most memorable character is a Soviet agent who is a former SA man, a survivor of the Night of Long Knives.
Next: Reinhart in Love

[Johnny]

Hard to get into this first novel from Thomas Berger. The writing is all over the place, and in this instance, that is not a good thing. Lots of confusing situations and characters in the first two chapters.