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Using and Abusing the Holocaust
"Langer, by the force of scholarship and literary precision rather than dogmatic affirmation and pathos, is one of the few writers, with the exception of significant poets and novelists, who unsettles both our customary language and conceptual instruments. His book is a moral as well as an intellectual act of a very high order." --Geoffrey Hartman, author of The Longest Shadow
In this new volume, Langer--one of the most distinguished scholars writing on Holocaust literature and representation--assesses various literary efforts to establish a place in modern consciousness for the ordeal of those victimized by Nazi Germany's crimes against humanity. Essays discuss the film Life Is Beautiful, the uncritical acclaim of Fragments, the fake memoir by Benjamin Wilkomirski, reasons for the exaggerated importance still given to Anne Frank's Diary, and a recent cycle of paintings on the Old Testament by Holocaust artist Samuel Bak.
In this new volume, Langer--one of the most distinguished scholars writing on Holocaust literature and representation--assesses various literary efforts to establish a place in modern consciousness for the ordeal of those victimized by Nazi Germany's crimes against humanity. Essays discuss the film Life Is Beautiful, the uncritical acclaim of Fragments, the fake memoir by Benjamin Wilkomirski, reasons for the exaggerated importance still given to Anne Frank's Diary, and a recent cycle of paintings on the Old Testament by Holocaust artist Samuel Bak.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published June 6, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 9, 2014
What's frustrating about this book is what is frustrating about many an academic text: the thesis (albeit a good one) is introduced in the preface and than is so redundantly mentioned that one wonders why an entire book was needed to expostulate on the same thing.
I know Langer is a celebrated Holocaust scholar, but he isn't a writer. I like his concept: that the Holocaust created a sort of "deathlife" for its "survivors" and that the history of the catastrophe has been misappropriated by irresponsible texts and readings of texts that serve a psychological cultural need rather than truth.
But what makes this text outright bad is the vindictiveness with which he presents his arguments. Langer is often hostile, angry, and unreasonably violent in his reviews. He seems to advocate for the belief that Nazi war criminals got off too easy. That isn't to say that they didn't, but he seems to put forth his own agenda in saying so rather than contemplate compassion, a word he finds to be somehow evil.
He also makes strange and presumptuous claims about how Anne Frank (for example) would feel if she survived. The text became less and less academic and more and more self-serving.
I just couldn't help, while reading the banal last essays, that he, a learned scholar on these matters, fails to see how his hostility doesn't counter what he so studies and shuns, but uses its own energy to call contemporary readers fools and those with compassion too lenient. In all, the points made were often good but the sinister tone of the author crept through in an awful violence.
I know Langer is a celebrated Holocaust scholar, but he isn't a writer. I like his concept: that the Holocaust created a sort of "deathlife" for its "survivors" and that the history of the catastrophe has been misappropriated by irresponsible texts and readings of texts that serve a psychological cultural need rather than truth.
But what makes this text outright bad is the vindictiveness with which he presents his arguments. Langer is often hostile, angry, and unreasonably violent in his reviews. He seems to advocate for the belief that Nazi war criminals got off too easy. That isn't to say that they didn't, but he seems to put forth his own agenda in saying so rather than contemplate compassion, a word he finds to be somehow evil.
He also makes strange and presumptuous claims about how Anne Frank (for example) would feel if she survived. The text became less and less academic and more and more self-serving.
I just couldn't help, while reading the banal last essays, that he, a learned scholar on these matters, fails to see how his hostility doesn't counter what he so studies and shuns, but uses its own energy to call contemporary readers fools and those with compassion too lenient. In all, the points made were often good but the sinister tone of the author crept through in an awful violence.
April 24, 2008
This book is a collection of somewhat disjointed essays, but Langer is a great writer.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews