Laurent Binet's HHhH weaves together a strong history of the assassination attempt on Heydrich in WW2 (interesting telling of a terrible mind and time) with an account of its own making. So it's funny and self-absorbed - I think the English publisher reinstated some or all of his comments on Jonathan Littell that had been cut from the French edition. Fans of David Shields's Reality Hunger will love it, fans of Sebald may love it.
The highlights
In German, Nachrichtenoffizier means ‘transmission officer’, while Nachrichtendienstoffizier means ‘intelligence officer’. It’s because Himmler, notoriously ignorant about all things military, makes no distinction between these two terms that Heydrich – who used to be a transmission officer in the navy – is sitting opposite him today. [Location 725]
Having got wind that the head of the British intelligence service calls himself M (yes, like in James Bond), he decides in all seriousness to call himself H. [Location 743]
‘Has there ever been a biographer who did not dream of writing, “Jesus of Nazareth used to lift his left eyebrow when he was thinking”?’ She smiles as she reads this to me. I don’t immediately grasp the full meaning of the phrase and, faithful to my long-held disgust for realistic novels, I say to myself: Yuk! Then I ask her to pass me the magazine and I reread the sentence. I am forced to admit that I would quite like to possess this kind of detail about Heydrich. [Location 753]
I’VE BEEN TALKING rubbish, the victim of both a faulty memory and an overactive imagination. In fact, the head of the British secret service at this time was called ‘C’ – not ‘M’ as in James Bond. Heydrich too called himself ‘C’, and not ‘H’. But it’s not certain that, in doing so, he wished to copy the British: the initial more probably referred to der Chef [Location 811]
‘Oh, really, it’s not invented?’ No, it’s not invented! What would be the point of ‘inventing’ Nazism? [Location 920]
In other words, when the Nazi leaders are – for once – ordered to show a degree of moderation, they are unafraid to thwart the Führer’s will. This is interesting when you consider that obedience to orders, in the name of military honour and sworn oaths, was the only argument put forward after the war to justify these men’s crimes. [Location 1114]
So for several hours on March 13, 1938, the head of the Czechoslovak secret services is travelling through Nazi Germany by train. [Location 1125]
seeking the victims’ active cooperation. The Jews are always invited to make themselves known to the authorities, and in the vast majority of cases – whether for emigrating in 1938 or for being sent to Treblinka or Auschwitz in 1943 – this is exactly what they do. [Location 1173]
Chamberlain makes sure that his diplomats do not promise more than is contained in this muddled phrase: ‘In the event of a European conflict, it is impossible to know if Great Britain will take part.’ [Location 1259]
All he does is sniff the Nazis’ shit.’ [Location 1273]
Daladier, former defence minister of the Popular Front, invokes questions of national defence not to prevent Hitler carving up Czechoslovakia but to backtrack on the forty-hour week – one of the principal gains of the Popular Front. [Location 1303]
He was reportedly seen throwing himself to the floor and chewing the edge of the carpet. Among people still hostile to Nazism, these demented fits quickly earned him the nickname Teppichfresser (‘Carpet Eater’). [Location 1326]
‘But, Mr Ambassador, in the end this agreement must be a great relief, no?’ Silence. Then the Foreign Office secretary sighs: ‘Oh yes, a relief … like when you do it in your pants!’ [Location 1357]
Churchill sums it all up with his immortal phrase: ‘You had to choose between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour. You will have war.’ [Location 1384]
All the synagogues are burning, but Heydrich, ever the professional, has ordered that any official records to be found in them must be sent to SD headquarters. Boxes of documents arrive at Wilhelmstrasse. The Nazis love burning books, but not files. German efficiency? Who knows if the SA didn’t wipe their asses with some of those precious archives … [Location 1435]
Two days later, Göring chairs a meeting at the Air Ministry to find a way of making the Jews bear the costs of all the damage. As the spokesman for the insurance companies points out, the price of broken windows alone comes to five million marks (this is why it’s called ‘Crystal Night’). It turns out that many of the Jewish boutiques are owned by Aryans, which means they must be compensated. Göring is furious. Nobody had thought about the economic implications, least of all the finance minister. He shouts at Heydrich that it would have been better to kill two hundred Jews than to destroy so much valuable property. Heydrich is upset. He replies that they did kill thirty-six Jews. [Location 1445]
I never thought of giving it any other title than Operation Anthropoid (and if that’s not the title you see on the cover, you will know that I gave in to the demands of my publisher, who didn’t like it: too SF, too Robert Ludlum, apparently). You see, Heydrich is the target, not the protagonist. [Location 1693]
I’m not sure yet if I’m going to ‘visualize’ (that is, invent!) this meeting or not. If I do, it will be the clinching proof that fiction does not respect anything. [Location 1821]
Essentially, the work of the Einsatzgruppen – a detailed written account of which would take up thousands of pages – can be summed up in three terrible letters: etc. Until they reach the USSR, at least: at that point, even et cetera’s suggestion of infinity will not be enough. [Location 1875]
Sonderfahndungliste GB, the special search list for Great Britain better known as the Black Book. It is a list of some 2,300 people to be found, arrested, and delivered to the Gestapo as quickly as possible. At the head of the list, unsurprisingly, is Churchill. Among the other politicians, British and foreign, are Beneš and Masaryk, representatives of the Czech government-in-exile. So far, so logical. But the list also contains the names of writers such as H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, and Rebecca West. Freud is there, despite having died in 1939. And Baden-Powell, too, the founder of the Scout movement. [Location 1919]
exclaims: ‘What do you mean, “The blood rises to his cheeks and he feels his brain swell inside his skull”? You’re making it up!’ I have been boring her for years with my theories about the puerile, ridiculous nature of novelistic invention, and she’s right, I suppose, not to let me get away with this skull thing. [Location 2134]
but I don’t know what he was wearing on that particular day. He might just as easily have been in white, for example. I’m not sure if this kind of scruple still makes much sense at this stage. [Location 2202]
the SS – before shooting them – first made them descend to the bottom of the ditch, where a ‘crammer’ was waiting for them. The job of this ‘crammer’ was similar to that of an usher at a theatre. He led each Jew to a pile of bodies and, having found a suitable place, made him or her lie facedown, naked and alive, on top of naked corpses. Then another guard, walking on the dead bodies, put a bullet in the back of the neck. [Location 2245]
it has no place in my novel. But one of the great advantages of the genre is the almost unlimited freedom it gives the author. [Location 2254]
I’m worried that there are some errors in what I’ve written: since this subject has no direct link with Heydrich, I haven’t had time to investigate more deeply. But I didn’t want to write about Kiev without mentioning this incredible story. [Location 2286]
Finally, I will be something more than the Reich’s dustbin!’ The Reich’s dustbin: so that’s how he defined his duties as head of the Gestapo and the SD. [Location 2332]
Memory is of no use to the remembered, only to those who remember. We build ourselves with memory and console ourselves with memory. No reader could possibly retain this list of names, so why write it? For you to remember them, I would have to turn them into characters. [Location 2943]
– a high-level German Abwehr officer called Paul Thümmel (code name A54; alias René). [Location 2979]
his letters: ‘It’s History, I know that. But if a novel is as boring as a scientific book …’ He also felt that he was writing ‘in a deplorable academic style,’ and then ‘what bothers [him] is the psychological aspect of [his] story,’ [Location 3036]
…’ This problem goes hand in hand with that of veracity: ‘As for my archaeology, it will be “probable”, that’s all. As long as no one can prove that what I’ve written is nonsense, that’s all I ask.’ [Location 3039]
Chacko’s art resides in his skill at integrating historical fact – Heydrich really was nicknamed the Blond Beast – into psychologically acute dialogue. It is through dialogue that he turns history into fiction. And I must say, loath as I am to use this method, that he does it very successfully: [Location 3070]
Sorry, I don’t have the faintest idea who this Gregory could be. And just so my falsely offhand tone doesn’t give you the wrong idea: I have tried to find out! [Location 3343]
This scene is not really useful, and on top of that I practically made it up. I don’t think I’m going to keep it. [Location 3453]
The dog probably won’t have a decisive role to play in Operation Anthropoid, but I would rather jot down a useless detail than risk missing a crucial one. [Location 3510]
I WONDER HOW Jonathan Littell, in his novel The Kindly Ones, knows that Blobel had an Opel. If Blobel really drove an Opel, then I bow before his superior research. But if it’s a bluff, that weakens the whole book. [Location 3686]
THIS IS WHAT I think: inventing a character in order to understand historical facts is like fabricating evidence. Or rather, in the words of my brother-in-law, with whom I’ve discussed all this: It’s like planting false proof at a crime scene where the floor is already strewn with incriminating evidence [Location 3708]
the whole city seems to be covered in writing – and not only adverts. There are Vs everywhere: originally they were symbols of the Czech Resistance, but the Nazis appropriated them as an exhortation to the Reich’s final victory. There are Vs on tramways, on cars, sometimes carved into the ground; Vs everywhere, battling it out between two opposed ideologies. [Location 3720]
‘Better solutions, more advanced and more productive, are on their way.’ Then, his audience hanging on his every word, he adds abruptly: ‘All the Jews in Europe have been sentenced to death.’ [Location 3759]
How did I not see it before? Suddenly, everything is clear. The Kindly Ones is simply ‘Houellebecq does Nazism.’ [Location 3922]
I THINK I’M beginning to understand. What I’m writing is an infranovel [Location 3924]
Yes, I must travel to Prague. I have to be there when this happens. I have to write it there. [Location 3932]
I had to cheat sometimes, to betray my literary principles – because what I believe is insignificant next to what is being played out now. [Location 3950]
HE FIRES, AND nothing happens. I can’t resist cheap literary effects. Nothing happens. The trigger sticks – or perhaps it gives way too easily and clicks on nothing. [Location 4138]
When I quote an author, I must be careful to cut my quotations every seven lines. No longer than seven lines. Like spies on the telephone: no more than thirty seconds, so they can’t track you down. [Location 4178]
My story has as many holes in it as a novel. But in an ordinary novel, it is the novelist who decides where these holes should occur. Because I am a slave to my scruples, I’m incapable of making that decision. I flick through the photos of the funeral cortège crossing the Charles Bridge, going back up to Wenceslaus Square, passing in front of the museum. I see the beautiful stone statues on the balustrade of the bridge with swastikas beneath them, and I feel slightly sick. I think I’d rather take my mattress to the gallery in the church, if they’ve got a bit of room for me there. [Location 4731]
they do not anticipate the worldwide repercussions that will be provoked by news of the village’s destruction. Up to now, the Nazis, if somewhat halfhearted in the concealment of their crimes, have nevertheless kept up a superficial discretion that has enabled some people to avert their gaze from the regime’s true nature. With Lidice, the scales have fallen from the whole world’s eyes. [Location 4772]
All the same, no one ever manages to persuade them that Heydrich’s death was good for anything. Perhaps I am writing this book to make them understand that they are wrong. [Location 4799]
Everyone is playing for high stakes today, even on the German side, where a lack of results can easily look like sabotage to the leaders – all the more so when they have to conceal their own errors or quench their thirst for blood (and here both factors are in play). Scapegoats at all costs – that could be the Reich’s motto. [Location 4957]
Most of the time, the spy who accepted the offer to swap sides – even if he had until then resisted the worst kinds of torture – cracked very suddenly. From the moment he made his decision, he (to use Trepper’s memorable expression) ‘wallowed in betrayal as if in mud.’ [Location 5187]
‘Above all, do not attempt to be exhaustive,’ said Roland Barthes. There you go – some good advice I never took. [Location 5270]
Comments