Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)Heidegger's Glasses is a dark, complex, and compelling novel by Thaisa Frank. Set in Germany at the turning point of World War II, Frank carefully constructs a convincing, yet surreal, setting for her characters and uses this to contrast the struggles of Nazis with those in the resistance, and captive Jews. The prose is written in an experimental style and is sparsely poetic--no doubt a turn off for some readers. Frank's results, however, are heart wrenching and the book when given a chance is a compelling read.

The premise of the book is somewhat complicated. Obsessed with the occult, Himmler has created a program to answer letters of concentration camp victims. By answering the letters of the dead, the dead will be able to rest and Germany will be able to win the war.
To this end, Jews who are able to read and write in many languages are diverted from concentration camps to answer these letters. To hide the project underground, a mine shaft is converted by a Nazi architect into an enclave for these scribes. Gerhardt Lodenstein is the Nazi officer commanding this outpost. He, and his partner Elie Schaten, are really part of the resistance. Using his command of the outpost as a cover, Elie and Lodenstein are able to help smuggle out Jews. Just as they seem to have reached a familiar pattern, a request comes from the high command. The philosopher Heidegger has sent a letter to a close Jewish colleague, Asher Englehardt, who is now in Auschwitz.
Englehardt lost his academic position when the Nazis first came to power and found work as an optometrist. Lodenstein has been charged to have his scribes answer this letter and return the last pair of glasses that Englehart made for Heidegger. What seems like a simple task becomes nearly impossible. Lodenstein biggest concern, at first, is whether his scribes would be able to mimic the abstruse style of a major philosopher. But when Elie uses Heidegger's letter as an opportunity to rescue Englehardt and his son from Auschwitz, it puts the whole project in danger.
Frank brilliantly weaves all this together into a seamless plot. We meet many of the denizens of the mine shaft and some Nazis on the outside as well. She paints the hopes and despairs of the captives in muted colors. We get hints of their backgrounds before the war and the depths to which they have sunk as they wait out the war in fear of being found. Frank is able to do this with the barest level of detail. She gives her reader just enough of the details. We fill in the blanks with our own imagination and it seems as though we really know Frank's characters. On some level, we know their hopes, their fears, and their dreams and in the end these are the most important facts.
More striking is that Frank's ability to use these sketchy images to really evoke belief in her reader. I was drawn in by Frank to the point that I started to do some searching the internet. Was there really a program to write letters to the dead? No, it is the product of Frank's imagination. Of course there was a Heidegger, but what about an Asher Englehardt? No, Englehardt is also pure fiction. He does not even seem to be based on a real, historical figure.
There is also a lot of subtlety and depth in Frank's writing. The whimsical setting of the mine, perhaps, alludes to many things: the Nazi's trying to bury their past, the mine's use as a way station for underground activities, or as a metaphor for death itself. It is not a coincidence that Heidegger is, at first, delivered the wrong pair of glasses or that Asher Englehardt became an optometrist. Heidegger, for all of his ability to sort out philosophical truths, is unable to see the the corrupt and amoral world that has sprung up around him. Only Asher Englehardt's glasses enable Heidegger's to see. The idea of the scribes writing letters to the dead is also something more than poetic irony.
Frank chose to write her book in a style that flouts conventional style. Dialogue is not placed in quotations. This can be disconcerting and makes the writing a little difficult to digest at times, but also lends a certain poetic style to the writing. But it may well be that she chose poetry over sheer readability--it is sad that many readers may find this difficult to read simply because she chose to go against the expected writing conventions.
The letters that are interspersed between the chapters are also a little mysterious. They start off innocently enough, but as the book progresses the letters and the translations thereof don't seem to match up.
I do not have a great facility for languages, but there were times where you could clearly see that the text above didn't quite match up with the translation below. In particular, one letter written in Hebrew letters was: 1) not written in Yiddish (which would be more typical for the time); and 2) was written in Hebrew, but written backwards (left to right instead of right to left); 3) the 'translation' had nothing to do with the Hebrew text of the letter. The Hebrew text of the letter is actually the introduction to the 12th Century, Jewish scholar Maimonides' Book of Knowledge (The Book of Knowledge: From the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides). Perhaps I am reading too much into this: I received a review copy, the letters may not have been completely translated, and this text may have simply been used as filler. It could also be another ironic touch by the author, as the quotation discusses the foundations of knowledge, which for Maimonides requires a total belief in God.
For those who can make it through the prose, the book is deeply moving and evocative. It is one of those books that sticks with you long after you read it. Highly recommended.

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