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Hitler's Niece: A Novel

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displayed in this author's earlier books ("Marietta in Ecstasy,""Nebraska") but also trivializes Hitler's historical crimes by dwelling, pruriently, on his private foibles. This evolving relationship between Geli and her uncle is laid out by Hansen in clumsy, stage-managed scenes. He lards his narrative with awkward exposition detailing Hitler's political machinations and he resorts to increasingly RH:Writing historical fiction has been mostly accidental. In most cases I have come across a true story and been so captivated by it I felt compelled to write it down. I don’t have any rational explanation for the compulsion: I’m fascinated by some stories because they fascinate me. I have always liked history and biography, and I have a good memory and capacity for research, so I was something of a natural for the field of historical fiction, but I only think of myself as a novelist without a qualifying adjective. Mine rhymes with whittler which is an English word meaning one who complains a great deal. But you can call me Uncle Adolph.”

A Novel Vocation: A Conversation with Ron Hansen A Novel Vocation: A Conversation with Ron Hansen

The relationship between Hitler and Geli Raubal -- the daughter of his half-sister, Angela -- has long been the subject of speculation among biographers and historians seeking a psychosexual explanation for the sources of the

Oh Geli – meine kleine gehaltenmitgemütlichemkirchenkunsterschwartzeweldekirschtorte, is that a hard or a soft G?” RH:“Write about what you know” is a pernicious recipe for dreary and unimaginative autobiographical fiction unless “know” means what you've learned through reading or other investigation. Although my own experiences color much of my writing, there’s little of my own life in the topics I choose. A good deal of Jim Shepard’s and my wife’s fiction is the product of research as well. I look for beauty of language in what I read so Hemingway’s urge for simplicity is also problematic, though especially in his finest stories there’s a rhythmic lyricism in his very plain style. My favorite piece of advice for beginning writers comes from John Gardner, that you should write the fiction you like to read. We immediately recognize phoniness or when a writer’s heart isn't in the material. portion of the book, as bizarrely comic figures, narcissistic oddballs, whose biggest sins are egomania and self-absorption. Hitler's idea of flirtation is to boast about himself and his destiny, while "Doktor JO:Can you tell us something about your writing habits? Describe your writing workplace. Do you have one place where you go to write or do you have several? Where do you do most of your writing? Describe your desk, your walls, what surrounds you—what you like to have surrounding you—when you write. JO:The notion of “Catholic Fiction” is a slippery one---because its representatives can include everyone from J.R.R. Tolkien to Walker Percy (not to mention everyone from Chaucer to Ron Hansen). Considering the world of difference that exists between Bilbo Baggins and Binx Bolling, though, how do you define this term---“Catholic Fiction”---and how do you understand yourself as a Catholic writer in this mode?

The Human and the Monstrous - Boston Review

Hansen's Hitler is a mama's boy who likes to be coddled by women. He likes peanut butter sandwiches, has bad manners and worst taste (his country house features such wall decorations as a picture of "three jolly An American businessman named Owen Young chaired an international commission that sought to give Germany economic relief by amending many punitive conditions of the Treaty of versailles. Agreeing with Gustav Stresemann, Germany’s foreign minister, the commission established a ceiling of 121 billion reichsmarks in war reparations, to be paid off in fifty-nine yearly installments” Later we’ll witness Hitler’s idea of love, but in the meanwhile we read in a state of queasy disbelief as the "man of destiny" gropes his niece who counts the number of times he’s reached second base. This is simultaneously prurient and grossly trivializing, as if history might have been different if only Hitler wasn’t sexually frustrated.

Hello? are you asleep yet? I nearly was. As you see, this stuff could have been cut and pasted from some really dull textbook. And there’s much more… but I’ll spare you. It’s not like this is stuff you need to know to understand what’s going off in the life of Adolph, it’s all just noises off, and anyone with the merest grasp of German inter-war history can do without Ron’s history lectures. Mr. Bukiet begins his review by pointing out that a vast number of books have been written about the Holocaust, and that "the most enduring questions about the subject begin with ‘why.’" And yet later he writes, "Hitler was, above all, what he did. Why he did it is irrelevant." Hitler’s Niece,a novel by Ron Hansen, suggests an answer. Hansen is the author of several other books including Desperadoes,a lucidly deadpan replay of the Wild West, Mariette in Ecstasy,a lyrical portrait of an American saint, and Atticus,a National Book Award nominee. He is an excellent writer, capable of drawing attention to his style when he wishes and letting his narrative speak for itself when need be. He is in command of words and scenes. He has a moral intelligence and a literary curiosity. He cares about letters and he cares about life. Nonetheless, Hitler’s Nieceis a staggeringly misconceived and genuinely atrocious book. I read Hitler's Niece when it came out a few years ago, and I thought it was pretty dry. Much of it sounded like the author was repeating what he had read in history books; he didn't dramatize the situations well. He did have one bit of dialogue that I found clever and memorable, but the rest of the book was pretty boring -- and this is coming from someone with a very high interest in Geli's life! Ron Hansen chose to explain Geli's death in his novel by having Hitler murder her. That's OK, given that this is fiction, but I don't think he did a good job of explaining Hitler's motivation to kill her. Hansen also had some really silly scenes, such as one where Goebbels reads to Geli right out of his diary.

Hitler, in Love With His Niece - The New York Springtime for Hitler, in Love With His Niece - The New York

As the novel progresses, Hansen's Hitler inexplicably metamorphosizes from an awkward, self-conscious outsider into a charismatic politician, sought after by women, and worshiped by colleagues. His relationship with Geli JO:Do you have a regular writing schedule? What are some good practical ways to encourage such a schedule for young writers? Ernest Hemingway had two famous bits of advice for budding writers—“Write about what you know and keep it simple.” Is there any sort of advice that you give young writers regarding what makes a successful writer? Hitler's Niece is a well written book about Adolf Hitler "relationship" with his niece Geli Raubal. It's a entertaining book nonetheless, if your interested in learning about how Adolf Hitler was before he started his Nazi Rise to power. Hitler once said that "Geli was the only woman I've ever loved" and you can see how that statement is true in the book. However his actions clearly show that he doesn't know what love is, he wanted a very controlling relationship where literally Geli couldn't do anything without his premission. German countryside, she looks to him, hoping he'll tell her he loves her. Instead he tries out a line of newly penned verse: "And high above the world," he says, "on the cold fastness of the Kehlstein, and becoming a doctor. Her attitude toward her uncle is ambivalent: on one hand, she cherishes the power she exerts over him and resents his new friendship with Eva Braun; on the other, she knows her uncle has driven awayJO:Speaking of J.F. Powers, who wrote so well and so convincingly about the priesthood in his short stories and novels, is there some unique perspective you bring to writing through your ordination to the permanent diaconate? The deacon’s three main ministries are, based on the Rite of Ordination, to the Word, the Altar and to Charity. How do these ministries play into your work as a fiction writer?

Hitlers Niece by Ron Hansen - AbeBooks Hitlers Niece by Ron Hansen - AbeBooks

Well, the main event in this novel is the grisly pas-de-deux of young Geli and the not-quite-fuhrer-yet. There’s a strong and profoundly unhealthy titillation of the reader going on here, of dripping prurience, a literary leer in lederhosen. In the end though Geli at the young age of twenty three commits suicide however the author gives a very graphic view that it was Hitler who had killed her and not Geli herself. We then get to read just how far the Nazis are willing to go to cover up this scandal and protect there Fuhur and the Nazi Party. The book also gives a very good insight into the mantipilative, hard boiled mind of Adolf Hitler. Hitler demands to know at all times where Geli is, what she is doing and with whom. He retains the freedom to see other mistresses—including Eva Braun—but keeps a tight leash on Geli, discouraging other suitors. Once Emil Maurice, Hitler’s good-looking Corsican chauffeur begins dating Geli, Hitler finds a pretext to dismiss him. “She is with me,” Hitler snarls when another man, Schirach, asks his permission to take out Geli on a date. (244) death did not derail her uncle's rise to political power. Hitler would not die for another 14 years, when he committed suicide in his bunker below the garden of the Reich chancellery in Berlin. Becoming Hitler’s companion, caretaker, maid and eventually his mistress, Geli catches a glimpse of the inner workings of the Nazi party and its key players’ rise to power. Above all, Hitler’s Niece shows us, up close and personal, how a psychopath capable of genocide “falls in love.” Even after her death, Hitler called Geli the love of his life. Neither Eva Braun, his doting life companion, nor any other woman could compete with his obsession with Geli.

Springtime for Hitler, in Love With His Niece

On the other hand, the humanizing process at work in Hitler’s Nieceis even more unsettling as we jump forward to Geli’s perception of her uncle as "affectionate, softhearted and helpless." Of course, Hansen intends this to be ironic and Geli finds out how wrong she is long before her lover presses a gun to her chest. But there you have it: Hitler as an awkward forty-plus year-old adolescent. Attached to his "diffidence," Geli accepts her increasingly well-to-do uncle’s offers of financial assistance and eventually moves in with him. Unfortunately, all is not well in their cozy nine-room inglenook. The man who mesmerizes stadiums shouts, "We have no peace!" like Ralph Kramden in "The Honeymooners." Monsters have feelings, too, but when Geli comforts the poor boy who’s sobbing about his family, "They don’t love me! I need love!," it’s too much. cloying, melodramatic prose. He describes how Hitler's glare swung toward a friend "like a farmer's scythe in wheat," and how Göring wept uncontrollably, like "a planet of grief." Mr. Bukiet condemns me for "relegating the most virulent, violent pathology to a pathetic deviancy." I do not. Rather I point out those aspects of Hitler’s personality–jealousy, treachery, possessiveness, sexual perversity–that would have been immediately obvious and oppressive to his niece. I need to remind the reader that the majority of my novel concerns the years 1927 to 1931. We primarily know Adolf Hitler for the evils that had not yet happened. Geli could not have imagined her uncle, who held no public office and could not even vote, would ever become chancellor of Germany, let alone could she have foreseen the Röhm purge, Kristallnacht,world-wide war, or that six million Jews would be exterminated in the Holocaust. The pathological virulence and violence that Mr. Bukiet wants explained–or does not want; he’s not sure–would have been only hinted at in her uncle’s odious demands on his niece, and that is what I have sought to depict. JO:Your wife Bo Caldwell is also a writer, of course. What particular challenges are there to being married to another writer? What are the benefits? Do you find you mutually inform one another in your work on any level? One of the proposed plans for Germany’s national Holocaust Memorial includes a wall of a million books–one for every six dead Jews. I assume that this wall would, in recognition of the culture the ancestors of its builders destroyed, include scholarship and literature from The Talmud to Sholom Aleichem, but that most of its scores of thousands of linear feet of shelf space would be devoted to the Holocaust itself. Indeed, practically no other subject has engendered such a sheer volume of print. Maybe this single event has proved so compelling because it invariably provides more questions than answers. Yet if "who,""when" and "where" are relatively easy to answer, and "what" and "how" have led to exhaustive analyses of the machinery of extermination, by far the most enduring questions begin with "why."

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