{"id":1042,"date":"2015-05-03T17:11:39","date_gmt":"2015-05-03T15:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=1042"},"modified":"2015-05-03T17:11:39","modified_gmt":"2015-05-03T15:11:39","slug":"cercas-hernandez-de-miguel-and-mauthausen-the-limited-use-of-the-novel-fiction-or-non-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2015\/05\/03\/cercas-hernandez-de-miguel-and-mauthausen-the-limited-use-of-the-novel-fiction-or-non-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"CERCAS, HERN\u00c1NDEZ DE MIGUEL AND MAUTHAUSEN: THE LIMITED USE OF THE NOVEL (FICTION OR NON-FICTION…) <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Knowing about my recurrent interest in the Holocaust, my family gave me as Sant Jordi presents two closely related books: Javier Cercas\u2019 non-fiction novel El impostor<\/em> (2014) and Carlos Hern\u00e1ndez de Miguel non-fiction essay Los \u00faltimos espa\u00f1oles de Mauthausen<\/em> (2015). I have read them back-to-back, half by chance and half on purpose and the result is that I have serious doubts right now about the function of the novel in contemporary culture.<\/p>\n

Cercas became an instant celebrity back in 2001 with the publication of Soldados de Salamina<\/em> (Soldiers of Salamis<\/em>) and remains today one of the few Spanish novelists with a truly high literary reputation. I enjoyed his Soldados<\/em> though still today I find it an over-hyped novel, a phenomenon rather than a literary masterpiece capable of withstanding the test of time. The subject of El impostor<\/em>, however, intrigued me, which is why I was glad to receive the book. In case you have not heard about it, Cercas deals with the extraordinary case of Enric Marco Batlle, a compulsive liar who ended up presiding the association \u2018Amical Mauthausen\u2019 falsely claiming he was one of the 9,000 Spanish Republican prisoners locked up in a Nazi concentration camp (in Fl\u00f6ssenburg). This affable, talkative man became the main spokesperson for the Spanish victims of the Nazis and when historian Benito Bermejo exposed him, in 2005, public opinion was sharply divided between the urge to shame him and the impulse to defend him as one of the main Spanish disseminators of knowledge about the Holocaust, quite unknown in Spain (until Schindler\u2019s List<\/em>…).<\/p>\n

Cercas seems fascinated by Truman Capote\u2019s dubious position when writing his masterpiece In Cold Blood<\/em> (1966), the book which the American writer devoted to the two murderers of a family of farmers in Kansas. This is the volume that originated the genre we know today as \u2018non-fiction\u2019, which uses a mixture of techniques borrowed from the journalistic report and from the novel, with the difference that, unlike the latter, non-fiction is supposed to narrate the \u2018truth\u2019 (or something that approximates it).<\/p>\n

Cercas, very cleverly, calls El impostor<\/em> a \u2018non-fiction novel\u2019 so that his reader never knows whether there is any truth in it or, the opposite, whether this is fiction disguised as something else. I was first taken over by Cercas’ post-postmodern approach to his elusive subject, his constant hesitation about whether Marco\u2019s life had any truth in it, and his insightful suggestion that Marco\u2019s pathological lying responds to a deeper pathology in the Spanish psyche, as so many Spaniards chose to re-invent themselves as victims after the Transition. My initial admiration, though, started paling when I realised that as the volume progressed the repetitions increased without Cercas\u2019 scratching more than Enric Marco\u2019s surface. Above all, I was quite annoyed by the constant authorial presence in the text, that of his friends, family and even his student son, whose banal problems seemed to worry Cercas on their trip to Fl\u00f6ssenburg more than the truths (and lies) of History. In the end, Cercas delivers a trite message about the novel as a genre: just like Marco, novelists are unreliable manipulators who will do anything it takes to pass themselves off in public for what they are not… in Cercas\u2019 world, real writers.<\/p>\n

Next I read Carlos Hern\u00e1ndez de Miguel\u2019s non-fiction essay Los \u00faltimos espa\u00f1oles de Mauthausen<\/em>, a thick book which presents itself as a work of clear didactic intent, aimed at teaching common readers the truth about the sad fate of the Spanish Republicans after 1939, when 500,000 Spaniards faced exile in France little imagining the horrors awaiting them. Hern\u00e1ndez de Miguel, who started his own trip into Nazism chasing leads that would explain his own uncle\u2019s experience, chose to let the few Spanish survivors speak. He disappears from the text, fusing in his portrait of these men and women his own interviews with them, testimonials kept by their families and frequent quotations from other sources, whether these are military and Government documents or well-known volumes like, for instance, Montserrat Roig\u2019s Els catalans als camps nazis<\/em> (1977). The result is extremely vivid, compelling and at the same time absolutely devastating. I have read quite a few volumes about the camps and knew about many of the atrocities I would find in Los \u00faltimos espa\u00f1oles de Mauthausen<\/em>. Even so the immediacy of the Spanish voices\u2013and Hern\u00e1ndez de Miguel\u2019s adamant denunciation of the complicity among Franco, Hitler, P\u00e9tain and even the allies to let the Republican exiles die\u2013made reading this volume a very intense experience. A true History lesson.<\/p>\n

As I read Los \u00faltimos espa\u00f1oles…<\/em> I could not stop thinking, logically, of Cercas\u2019 novel, for what Hern\u00e1ndez de Miguel\u2019s narrates is the truth that Enric Marco usurped for his own false biography. Being familiar with Marco\u2019s very public downfall through the media before reading El impostor<\/em>, I already knew that his lie was grotesque. Yet, when reading the disheartening memories of the real survivors, and understanding the depth of their still unacknowledged grief ad suffering, Marco\u2019s lie appears to be hideous and unpardonable. I am now convinced that Cercas made a very serious mistake in choosing for his novel this monster and not one of the 9,000 lives that passed through Mauthausen and similar places.<\/p>\n

Los \u00faltimos espa\u00f1oles de Mauthausen<\/em> produces the same intense disgust with the human species that many other books on Nazism produce, for the facts narrated touch the very marrow of evil. No wonder many survivors decided to keep silent, seeing that family and friends would not believe them. If you are familiar with Primo Levi\u2019s If This is a Man<\/em> (1947), a volume absolutely fundamental to understand Nazism and the Holocaust, but also human nature, you\u2019ll find that Hern\u00e1ndez de Miguel\u2019s survivors tread the same dark territory. <\/p>\n

Cercas, who has quite a cavalier attitude towards the recent process in favour of recovering historical memory in Spain, may be regarded as a good literary writer but I find in the end his work quite trivial in comparison to what Hern\u00e1ndez de Miguel provides the reader with in his volume. At one point in El impostor<\/em>, Cercas (I\u2019m not sure whether the man himself or a meta-fictional version) claims that Marco could fabricate his ersatz victim personality because of the rampant historical kitsch. He doesn\u2019t explain himself clearly but he seems to mean that kind of superficial, sentimental (or morbid) fashion for Holocaust stories that has led to perversions such as best-selling novel The Book Thief<\/em>. I hope he\u2019s not thinking of Schindler\u2019s List<\/em> for we owe Thomas Keneally and Steven Spielberg much more than they\u2019re credited for. I have no idea what Cercas thinks of Hern\u00e1ndez de Miguel\u2019s book but what worries me is that is can be mistaken for historical kitsch. It is not.<\/p>\n

I express in my title doubts about the function of the novel today and perhaps I mean the novelist. Hern\u00e1ndez de Miguel takes a back seat but even so he makes his indignation palpable all through his book. In contrast, Cercas\u2019 literary vanity is all he thinks about. Novelists used to be good at writing well and spreading indignation (Charles Dickens…) but it seems that now these two aims are incompatible. If you ask me, in the end I even find much better Literature in Los \u00faltimos espa\u00f1oles de Mauthausen<\/em> than in El impostor<\/em>, in the essay than in the novel, non-fiction both. I have no doubt whatsoever about which is the truly good book.<\/p>\n

Now, visit www.deportados.es<\/a> and let\u2019s continue thinking\u2013for here\u2019s the irony: as I read Los \u00faltimos espa\u00f1oles de Mauthausen<\/em>, I wished Hern\u00e1ndez de Miguel had made a documentary mini-series which millions would watch instead of a book which only a few thousand will read. So much for the power of the written word…<\/p>\n

Comments are very welcome! (Thanks!) Just remember that I check them for spam; it might take a few days for yours to be available. Follow on Twitter the blog updates: @SaraMartinUAB. See my publications on my personal web http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Knowing about my recurrent interest in the Holocaust, my family gave me as Sant Jordi presents two closely related books: Javier Cercas\u2019 non-fiction novel El impostor (2014) and Carlos Hern\u00e1ndez de Miguel non-fiction essay Los \u00faltimos espa\u00f1oles de Mauthausen (2015). I have read them back-to-back, half by chance and half on purpose and the result […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}