Book of the Week

Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin (translated by Eugene Jolas, Penguin, 1978)
Recommended by Mr Toller

First published in 1929, this is the story of Franz Biberkopf, an unskilled workman who at the start of the book is being released from prison.

He vows to 'go straight' but is unfortunate in his contacts; he falls in with a criminal gang whose leader Reinhold causes him to be seriously injured.
He is fortunate enough to meet a girl, Mieze, who genuinely loves him, but she is murdered by Reinhold who contrives to make Biberkopf the chief suspect. Biberkopf is arrested and goes out of his mind; he is held in the Berlin equivalent of Broadmoor. Here, however, he undergoes a near-death experience, and as a result sees how mistaken his whole approach to life has been. He recovers his senses and goes out into the world, gaining a new job with the obvious implication that he will now be safe.

The city of 1929 is described in minute topographical detail, but all save the main thoroughfares have been swept away by the war and the subsequent rebuilding. I read it as background for a visit to Berlin, but it is no guide to the city of today; nor for all the precision (Döblin was a practising doctor) is there much atmosphere of place.

The majority of the book is written in a strongly ironic, distancing mode, akin to Brecht’s 'epic theatre' (a term already in use but not taken up by Brecht until later). Thus each chapter has a banner heading describing its contents ('Biberkopf in a stupor. Franz lies low. Franz doesn’t want to look at anything' is one such heading), and each of the nine 'books' has a longer outline, sometimes in doggerel verse.

The writing style is full of colloquialisms and slang, written in the present tense and often addressing the reader directly; so far as I can see, the translator has done a brilliant job here. From time to time there are collage-like collections of descriptions of actual events in the news for that day ('Furthermore, the investigation into the question of responsibility for the tramcar disaster in Heerstrasse is not yet complete'). The source for all this is obviously Ulysses, but the effect is to distance Biberkopf as a person and to make him a symbol.

However, all this changes in the last fifty pages, where the immediacy of Franz’s experience is direct and total. There is a powerful and convincing religious, though non-denominational, note which illuminates the various earlier Biblical references, not least to the Book of Job. I found these pages very moving and they cast a completely different light back on the rest of an extraordinary book.