Kaputt (European Classics)

Rating:
Summary: Mixed feelings
Review: "Kaputt" is about the decay of European society as World War II raged, with a focus on the lands either occupied or allied to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. This story is told through the eyes of an Italian war correspondent travelling about these countries in the uniform of an Italian army captain. Much of the narrative is unique, as the author recounts experiences in the form of conversations about them held with other people in other parts of wartorn or war-effected Europe (such as with the Swedish crown prince in Stockholm or with a group of flighty Italian and other European nobles in Rome). The writing style changes frequently, from straightforward reporting of certain events to more surreal or impressionistic descriptions of people, events, moods and feelings. However, despite all of these intriguing aspects, I found "Kaputt" a rather tiresome book. Often the author's attempts at literary surrealism, impressionism or expressionism are simply overdone and needlessly wordy. Another problem is that although Malaparte presents his narrative as a memoir, apparently parts of the text are fabricated - thus making much of it fiction rather than an actual war memoir (e.g. although I don't know much about the author, I personally found it hard to believe that this erstwhile communist veteran of Italian jails could be such a confidant and almost confessor to Mussolini's foreign minister and son-in-law, Count Ciano). Even so, I can't completely pan this book, simply because it is so original in showing the moral decay of much of Axis-controlled Europe during the war. The conversations with various members of the nobility in Axis Europe, as well as with various high Nazi or collaborator officials in places like Finland or Romania, whether real or fictionalized, add much to the text. Also, as the previous reviewer notes, it does contain, even if only briefly in a few places, perhaps the first literary treatment of the Holocaust ("Kaputt" was first published in 1943). One thing Malaparte does excel at is depicting the manifold suffering the war caused to masses of people - there were a few points where I actually cringed while reading. "Kaputt" would have been a outstanding illustrative account of World War II if so much of the text were not simply superfluous.

Rating:
Summary: [Review]
Review: .... The book is worthwhile reading as a unique first hand
witness for the massacre of the Jews in the Romanian town of Iasi in
the year 1941. Malaparte was not a consul but a journalist going around
in the uniform of a Captain of the Italian army because of the war. He
may shock for his frankness and one should be aware of his very
Italian irony: do not take every word at face value. It seems to me
that his book is the first (chronologically)litterary expression on
the Shoah. ....


Rating:
Summary: A reality too real to touch
Review: Curzio Malaparte was like me, an infantry officer and a journalist. He served in the ranks of the French Army in World War 1 and then as a war correspondent on the eastern front with the Germans, on the northern front with the Finns, and in Poland with the occupation authorities during world war 11. A man who acquired both culture and status by sheer force of personality he was the director of press at the fatal 'Peace' conference of Versailles in 1919, which half ended World War 1 and set the scene for World War 11. The book, as Walter Murch wrote in Zoetrope magazine in 1998 is a searing revelation not only of war and its manifest evil, but of something much more serious, that of the evil that apparently civilised men and women can do, when all restraints are lifted. There comes a time when the facts soar out of our reach, either of the imagination or of the mind, when they are too terrible to contemplate. I find this with the Holocaust. My mind simply refuses to grapple with the enormity of it, taken together with the enormity of the Russian losses, which always make me weep as I enter Moscow past the anti tank traps that are still there. In Kaputt I can feel Malaparte cringing from the horror, but at the same time determined to find some way to decscribe it. And I feel he succeeds. He does enable a person to confront the fact that it was a bunch of classical music lovers, led by Frank, the Nazi Governor of Poland, who created the Ghetto in order to "liberate the Jews". More than almost any other writer on World War 11, he gets under the skin of the Germans, and into the Nazi mind and perhaps even more so, into the mind of the anti semites of Roumania, Poland anD Russia, who made their own awful contribution to the Holocaust. Younger readers should not let the slightly dated style put them off. Here is the inner reality of war as it has seldom been described. Here is the Nazi mind as seldom seen. Here is the terrible truth of World War 11, made accessible (just) to those who did not directly experience it. And learn from the two most poignant scenes in the book; the one in which he fails to do anything about the Jews of Jassy, and the one in which he tries to get under the skin of Frank, a man in whom banality and evil fought for control and in which evil emerged triumphant and out of which 6 million Jews died. Few can have come so close to the ultimate malignancy and lived. But seldom has the effect of guilty and the burden of hoplessness been so well portrayed. A book for all time.

Rating:
Summary: A Grim, Unforgettable Experience
Review: I read Kaputt about a year ago, and I still can't get it out of my head. What I remember most are the gruesome, shocking acts of violence committed by the "humans" in this book. As a portrait of the horrors of war, Kaputt is as powerful as Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird and Tolstoy's War and Peace. My only complaint is that at times Malaparte seems to be exploiting the violence. Don't get me wrong, I'm not politically correct or prudish. I just feel like that for such a touchy subject (genocide), there should be some boundaries. On the other hand, perhaps Malaparte was playing with the Grand Guignol genre (like Thomas Harris and Ridley Scott in Hannibal). Whatever the case may be, Kaputt is an unforgettable novel!

Rating:
Summary: European Classic????Maybe..
Review: There are two very effective descriptive paragraphs in the book. The first passage describes the eyes of a Jewish child 'living' in a ghetto; the second passage depicts a field of sunflowers whose faces follow the movement of the sun. These scenes are so vivid, the reader could be standing there, right next to Malaparte. These beautiful word-pictures are the reason the book got two stars.
The majority of the book was disappointing with a reoccurring attempt to justify the actions of Nazi Germany and the inaction of Malaparte and other Europeans who knew what was happening, but did nothing.
Three specifics points:
A) Malaparte praises the accomplishment of the German people: culturally, intellectually, even citing their wonderful sense of humor and efficiency. However, as Malaparte puts it, Germans are also human, and have one small, irrational flaw, namely, a fear of the weak and helpless. Malaparte frames the flaw to elicit sympathy for the Germans, saying the German people should be pitied for having such a ridiculous failing. (This 'explanation' of the teeny-tiny flaw in German character is so nonsensical that I thought the book was a 'bad translation' from Italian to English. It became clear, with Malaparte's continual attempt to whitewash this 'little blemish', that the translation was probably accurate. I don't accept the premise that Germans are/were so afraid of weak and defenseless people, that the German's have/had no choice but to imprison, torture and kill defenseless people. This explanation is beyond me.)
B) Not only does Malaparte minimize Germany's actions in W.W.II, but he repeatedly justifies his own (and Europeans) inaction. One example from page 111...."if I had only been able to do something to prevent the pogrom. But....I did not feel like walking as far as Copau ..." It is an interesting attitude : do nothing because you feel like doing nothing. Claim to care and be interested, as long as no follow-through is required.
C) Finally, adding insult to injury, Malaparte seems to implies that maybe the people being persecuted, the weak and defenseless, deserved what they got.

The book presents a great example of European attitude, especially if you're having trouble understand their word/ action disconnect.

Rating:
Summary: A Unique Masterpiece about the Destruction of Europe
Review: Yes, it's overwritten. Yes, One becomes impatient with its often flowery prose (translated from the Italian). And no, it's impossible to tell what's true and what's fiction. I first read "Kaputt" when I was about 12 years old and accepted it as journalism. Later, I was surprised to find it described as a novel. Whatever it is, it's a masterpiece. Italian journalist Malaparte, who converted from fascism to a kind of quasi-socialism (despite what some might think, he was never a communist and eventually became a devout Catholic), served time in an Italian prison for his dangerously critical writing about Mussolini. He was freed through the intervention of the italian foreign minister, Count Ciano, who was Mussolini's son-in-law and who was himself later shot by Mussolini for treason. Sounds interesting already, eh? Malaparte gives us supposedly first-hand accounts, while working as a war correspondent in the uniform of an Italian captain, of his experiences in the drawing rooms of fascist officials; at the Leningrad front and the Warsaw Ghetto; and at the sites of a number of massacres of Jews, gypsies, and intellectuals. He writes in two complementary styles. His ironic, laid-back style accentuates the horror of the nazis' matter-of-fact attitude about the atrocities they committed. His lyrical style paints word-pictures of his impressions of the sights and sounds of the towns and fields of old Europe. The result is an almost exhaustingly epic depiction of the destruction of European culture from the unique perspective of one who mingled with many of those responsible. Be patient with the book when you start it. It grows on you.

Rating:
Summary: A Unique Masterpiece about the Destruction of Europe
Review: Yes, it's overwritten. Yes, One becomes impatient with its often flowery prose (translated from the Italian). And no, it's impossible to tell what's true and what's fiction. I first read "Kaputt" when I was about 12 years old and accepted it as journalism. Later, I was surprised to find it described as a novel. Whatever it is, it's a masterpiece. Italian journalist Malaparte, who converted from fascism to a kind of quasi-socialism (despite what some might think, he was never a communist and eventually became a devout Catholic), served time in an Italian prison for his dangerously critical writing about Mussolini. He was freed through the intervention of the italian foreign minister, Count Ciano, who was Mussolini's son-in-law and who was himself later shot by Mussolini for treason. Sounds interesting already, eh? Malaparte gives us supposedly first-hand accounts, while working as a war correspondent in the uniform of an Italian captain, of his experiences in the drawing rooms of fascist officials; at the Leningrad front and the Warsaw Ghetto; and at the sites of a number of massacres of Jews, gypsies, and intellectuals. He writes in two complementary styles. His ironic, laid-back style accentuates the horror of the nazis' matter-of-fact attitude about the atrocities they committed. His lyrical style paints word-pictures of his impressions of the sights and sounds of the towns and fields of old Europe. The result is an almost exhaustingly epic depiction of the destruction of European culture from the unique perspective of one who mingled with many of those responsible. Be patient with the book when you start it. It grows on you.